Acrobat 11what to do with the f character.

Question

Hello all:
   I am parsing text from a PDF using the Acrobat Javascript API.  The code looks like this
   for(var a = 0; a < PageCount; a++)
for(var b = 0; b < NumWords; b++)
var TheWord     
= this.getPageNthWord(a, b, false);
The problem with this code is that if the word being returned starts with an f or sometimes a Th, the getPageNthWord() function will not recognize the whole word.
For example, the test passage has in it the word "flyway".  getPageNthWord() returns this word in two segments.  In this case the first two letters "fl" are translataed into character decimal 186 and the last four characters are returned as they are.  So I get two returns from getPageNthWord():
the Fahrenheit short-hand sign
"yway"
In another part of the document the word "fishing" appears.  It is parsed into
blank value
shing
In other words in all cases here, the word is split into two with the first return gobbling up two of the characters while the second returns the last X numbr of characters in the word.  What the first ttwo chars are actually interpreted as varies...I can find no pattern, though I suspect there is one.
Anyone have any thoughts on what might be going on  here and how to counteract it?
FYI, the rest of the document is reported on faithfully.
R,
JOhn

Answer 1

It's worth pointing out 2 things...
1 ligatures are normal and considered to show superior, pofessional typesetting
2 if a pdf follows recommendations, acrobat knows what ligatures mean, and will automatically replace with multiple characters on copy/paste
However, if you're extracting text it is up to you to apply the info in the pdf and some foreknowledge, and do your own replacement if needed (IF... Because some situations require the presenvation of ligatures)
You can use copy from acrobat to test if the ligatures are done right