Bug 340637

Summary:	Highlighting in a two-column document highlights both columns instead of one
Product:	[Applications] okular	Reporter:	icymist <icymist>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Okular developers <okular-devel>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	aacid, illumilore, julioacb10, justin.zobel, m.lincetto, mrgono3, naught101
Priority:	NOR
Version:	20.12.3
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
See Also:	https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439791
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	Shows both the columns highlighted instead of just the first column (as intended). pdf as requested I just selected "However," but the selection became a mess

Description icymist 2014-11-04 16:06:19 UTC

I am using the default Okular on opensuse 13.2.

Highlighting a two-column document (journal article http:dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja3080117) on its first page highlights both the columns instead of just one.

I can attach a screenshot, but I don't know how.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. I guess it depends on the page set up in the pdf. On other pages, I can highlight the columns separately without a problem.
2.
3.

Comment 1 icymist 2014-11-04 16:09:15 UTC

Created attachment 89442 [details]
Shows both the columns highlighted instead of just the first column (as intended).

Comment 2 Albert Astals Cid 2014-11-04 19:45:17 UTC

We will need the pdf to fix this.

Comment 3 icymist 2014-11-04 19:50:09 UTC

Created attachment 89446 [details]
pdf as requested

Comment 4 Albert Astals Cid 2014-11-04 20:17:55 UTC

Yeah, our algorithm gets confused by the first paragraph that is just one column.

Comment 5 Albert Astals Cid 2015-02-16 22:18:44 UTC

*** Bug 342892 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6 Albert Astals Cid 2015-03-16 20:49:34 UTC

*** Bug 343355 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7 Justin Zobel 2020-11-20 03:12:50 UTC

Confirmed still an issue on 1.11.3, tested with attached PDF.

Comment 8 Massimiliano L 2021-03-17 11:47:51 UTC

Problem is still present in 20.12.3, does not happens with all two-column PDFs but it still occurs with the example provided here. Evince on the same document behaves correctly.

Comment 9 Laura David Hurka 2021-07-13 09:38:56 UTC

Happens with any document, even in .txt with just many spaces between words.

Comment 10 mrgono3 2022-06-02 03:52:18 UTC

also having problems with this windows 10 Okular 22.04.1 PDF: https://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/AJR.19.22076

Comment 11 Julio Augusto de Castilhos Borges 2023-12-08 16:41:37 UTC

Created attachment 164012 [details]
I just selected "However," but the selection became a mess

Yesterday I had to edit a two column document, however Okular sometimes copies the entire line (ignoring the columns). This behavior doesn't happen on Chrome or Firefox. 

I decided to do some experimentation with the raw (without any modifications) template document: https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/word_style/interim-template-style/interim-layout.docx and it seems to be a LibreOffice Write PDF export related issue in tandem.  I believe it to be because if I just download the PDF sample from ACM: https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/word_style/interim-template-style/interim-layout.pdf  Okular correctly copies text as expected. Can't say for sure all multi-columned LibreOffice Write documents exported as PDF will cause this, but all I generated to test had that issue or worse! When selecting a single word, the selection picks the first word of multiple lines! (see attatchment)