Scrapbook copy tool?

[Juhana Sadeharju <kouhia nic funet fi>]

[ Sort of re-try here. More justified, I hope. ]

I have used the term "scrapbook copy" but really it is at the moment
the only copy which works for math texts and for textual images,
e.g., scanned papers in PDF available from digital libraries such
as of IEEE. As it is only copy which really works, it should be in
any reader.

I have used different term because the copy in PDF readers is the
copy defined in PDF standard: totally different operation working
on the source code of PDF and restricted by the copy-protection flag
of the source code. That copy seems to be restricted to text only
and works poorly because digital libraries have PDFs which use
characters which does not match, e.g., with Emacs.

We users need a working and intuitive copy, not a half-complete
engineer-oriented copy of the source code. Scrapbook copy is such
a tool and has been proven to work for many decades, prior computers
were invented.

I don't know why engineers have failed to implement a working copy
by using the source code, but I have waited the fix for as long
as Acroread has been available. It is highly unlikely they will
fix it for the years to come. The problem requires an alternative
solution sooner.

The scrapbook copy can be equipped with OCR tool if user wishes copy
the text as text, otherwise it works on renderings in non-restricted
manner. Because OCR technology is not perfect, the source code copy
and the scrapbook copy are disjoint copy operations, and may live
together if so is wished.

OK. Do you wish to have the scrapbook copy tool in Evince?

Technically, the scrapbook copy is done by rendering to offscreen
pixmap with wanted resolution and copying that.

Juhana