WEIRD! Parentheses turn into alien heads when copy/pasting from scientific articles

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This is a problem I have found when trying to copy and paste text from a PDF (usually a scientific article) into a plain text editor like TextEdit or Notational Velocity.


This picture sort of speaks for itself.
2011-10-18025300pm.png



Now this doesn't happen all the time with all PDFs, but when it does I notice a few patterns. For example....

2011-10-18030120pm.png




Intriguing! Can anyone help me solve this puzzle?





2011-10-18070341pm.png
 

RavingMac

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Obviously you've broken the code, and now THEY will be coming for you! ;)


Funny and strange . . . thanks for sharing.
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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I was going to help - but then made the mistake of reading part of the source article...and only just now woke back up. :p

I didn't look hard - but only found one similarly described problem Adobe: Acrobat - Adobe Acrobat Pro Can't Copy and Paste? Maybe that guy can tell you what he found?

It must be an encoding issue of some kind.
 

chscag

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Where is Scully and Mulder when you need them? ;P
 
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I was going to help - but then made the mistake of reading part of the source article...and only just now woke back up. :p

I think part of my immense drive to get to the bottom of this aliens issue must come from wanting to do ANYTHING I can to procrastinate reading more of these papers.

"Whoops, I was going to be productive today but I can't. Aliens."
 

RavingMac

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Interesting!

The aliens appear to have gotten wise to this thread, as my reply now is now the first post. Anyone who reads this will wonder what we are talking about.
 
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Interesting!

The aliens appear to have gotten wise to this thread, as my reply now is now the first post. Anyone who reads this will wonder what we are talking about.

It looks like its on the bottom to me--maybe it fixed itself.

Yesterday afternoon I edited the post and put the enlarged alien head picture on it. My entire post promptly vanished, along with the buttons that would have allowed me to edit it.

Today it is back, so I guess They must have just borrowed it temporarily for some routine probing.
 

RavingMac

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it looks like its on the bottom to me--maybe it fixed itself.

Yesterday afternoon i edited the post and put the enlarged alien head picture on it. My entire post promptly vanished, along with the buttons that would have allowed me to edit it.

Today it is back, so i guess they must have just borrowed it temporarily for some routine probing.

lol :)
 
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No clue what the heck is up, but I sure want to try it on my own system...
 

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