TIL: (on MacOS) When selecting and copying text from a PDF that has line numbers[1], Adobe and Voice Dream Reader segment the main text from the lines (the selection does not get 'polluted'[2] by the numbering). Selecting in Apple's Preview and Skim includes the line numbers (and the watermark).
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1. At least for this particular PDF I am looking at, different PDFs may perform differently.
2. Pollution here is clearly a user intent specific word. Some use cases may want line numbers included.
Interestingly, search is a different story. If you search a phrase across line breaks (not looking at end-of-line hyphenation here):
Adobe: finds the match
Skim: fails
Voice Dream: fails
Preview: finds the match (b/c matches the terms to a page, not the query as an exact string search, highlights all matching terms)
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Note: these are all in the default settings, I haven't looked for options to change the defaults.
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