Are PDF files searchable?
A. Your PDF files should be searchable by standard internet search engines as long as you keep them in binary format, which is the default for PDF files generated on Athena using distill. The alternative “asciipdf” format is 7-bit ASCII, which is not supported by all search engines (in addition, asciipdf files are larger than binary pdf). Whether all of your text is searchable from the search feature within Acrobat programs depends on your choice of fonts. The short answer is that Type 1 fonts are always searchable. For more details, see: How Acrobat Distiller and PDF Writer Handle Fonts, section on “How Font Types Affect Text in PDF Files” Adobe doc. 319266 Note: if this link does not take you to the named document, go to Adobe’s main page, hit the Search button, and type in the document number shown here.
