Is there a LaTeX trick to prevent a PDF viewer from copying the line number?

Question

A PDF output is obtained by compiling the following code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset
{
    language={[LaTeX]TeX},
        numbers=left,
        numbersep=1em,
        numberstyle=\tiny,
    frame=single,
    framesep=\fboxsep,
    framerule=\fboxrule,
    rulecolor=\color{red},
    xleftmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    xrightmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    breaklines=true,
    basicstyle=\small\tt,
    keywordstyle=\color{blue},
    commentstyle=\color[rgb]{0.13,0.54,0.13},
    backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!10},
    tabsize=2,
    columns=flexible,
    morekeywords={maketitle},
}
\begin{document}
\begin{lstlisting}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\title{Sample Document}
\author{John Smith}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello World!
% This is a comment.
\end{document}
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

I attempted to copy the code only inside Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, the line numbers also got copied as shown on the following screen shot.

enter image description here

The line numbers are useful, but readers want not to copy them.

Is there a LaTeX trick to prevent a PDF viewer from copying the line number?

Possible duplicate: How to make text copy in PDF previewers ignore lineno line numbers? — Marco, May 24 '12 at 06:00
@Marco: It is relevant but I cannot find the listings counterpart for \thelinenumber. — kiss my armpit, May 24 '12 at 06:06
You should be able to use the accsupp package as mentioned in the question @Marco linked to, and use \renewcommand*\thelstnumber{} to change how the line numbers are formatted. — Peter Grill, May 24 '12 at 06:07
Something like this might be a nice listing addon package. I could add it to my lstaddons bundle. — Martin Scharrer, May 24 '12 at 08:26
@MartinScharrer, what is the "gobble" effect that you mention when you describe lstaddons, BTW is the feature mentioned in the question implemented in your lstaddons. (suggestion: Another extension can be to have to have a filename in the margin, e.g. next to the line numbers) — alfC, Sep 13 '13 at 07:53
@alfC: "to gobble" within (La)TeX means to remove one or more characters/arguments/tokens from the input stream without displaying or processing them. The gobble option from lstaddons allows to remove whitespaces in front of every line in the verbatim code. This way the verbatim code can be indented. — Martin Scharrer, Sep 14 '13 at 17:38

score 66 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

66

This solution is very similar to that contained in How to make text copy in PDF previewers ignore lineno line numbers? \protecting the accsupp is the only requirement, perhaps due to the nature in which listings treats everything:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor
\usepackage{listings}% http://ctan.org/pkg/listings
\usepackage{accsupp}% http://ctan.org/pkg/accsupp
\renewcommand{\thelstnumber}{% Line number printing mechanism
  \protect\BeginAccSupp{ActualText={}}\arabic{lstnumber}\protect\EndAccSupp{}%
}
\lstset
{
    language={[LaTeX]TeX},
        numbers=left,
        numbersep=1em,
        numberstyle=\tiny,
    frame=single,
    framesep=\fboxsep,
    framerule=\fboxrule,
    rulecolor=\color{red},
    xleftmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    xrightmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    breaklines=true,
    basicstyle=\small\tt,
    keywordstyle=\color{blue},
    commentstyle=\color[rgb]{0.13,0.54,0.13},
    backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!10},
    tabsize=2,
    columns=flexible,
    morekeywords={maketitle},
}

\begin{document}

\begin{lstlisting}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\title{Sample Document}
\author{John Smith}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello World!
% This is a comment.
\end{document}
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Community

1

answered May 24 '12 at 06:14

Werner

603,163

6

For those who want to load hyperref together with accsupp, please read How do I prevent conflicts between accsupp and hyperref?. – kiss my armpit May 24 '12 at 08:09
Another note: If the rendered listing spans more than one page, copying the code might include the header and footer. It is not a requirement, but if you can avoid this, it will be better. :-) – kiss my armpit May 24 '12 at 09:15
1

Don't forget to compile it with xelatex or pdflatex. latex-dvips-ps2pdf cannot produce the expected result!!! – kiss my armpit Jun 20 '12 at 15:32
Note again: Compressing the PDF with gswin64c -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=%1.pdf %1-temp.pdf will make the output no longer behave as expected. – kiss my armpit Jul 06 '12 at 16:58
2

@Werner This solution has the problem that line number references cannot be copied. See Ulrike Fischer's answer or the answer of Garbage Collector. – Heiko Oberdiek Nov 09 '12 at 09:28
@HeikoOberdiek: But wasn't that the intent of the question? – Werner Nov 09 '12 at 14:30
1

@Werner The questions is about line numbers in listings. But in a reference "see line number \ref{foobar}" it would be odd, if the line number is omitted when copying. – Heiko Oberdiek Nov 09 '12 at 14:47
It works (no copy # lines) using Adobe Reader. But using for example Sumatra (v.3.1.2 64bits) , FoxIt PhantonPDF (v.9.1.0) keep the problem (copy all, including #). PDF generated via TeXStudio (v.2.12.10). – cbe-user-99263 Aug 08 '18 at 12:19
@cbe-user-99263: Yes. PDF manipulation techniques are commonly reader-specific, and mostly work with Adobe, not always with others. – Werner Aug 08 '18 at 16:06
This does not work for me. I am using Adobe Acrobat online version (Outlook, Google Drive, and so on). Is it due to Adobe? How can we fix this? – manooooh Mar 12 '19 at 00:41
1

@manooooh: Outlook, Google Drive, ... online? It's all viewer-dependent. It may work in the desktop reader, but can't be guaranteed for anything else. – Werner Mar 12 '19 at 03:01
1

@Werner thanks! Yes, of course online. Nowadays the people do not download documents but read them online, so I thought this answer also covered this type of viewer... – manooooh Mar 12 '19 at 03:38

score 35 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Due to problems that came to light in the first answer when loading also the hyperref package, a related question was asked (How do I prevent conflicts between accsupp and hyperref?). The following solution is based on Ulrike Fischer's answer to that question, and illustrates one other advantage of this solution (as pointed out by Heiko Oberdiek) even if hyperref package is not involved: line numbers in references can be copied.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor

\usepackage{accsupp}% http://ctan.org/pkg/accsupp
\newcommand{\emptyaccsupp}[1]{\BeginAccSupp{ActualText={}}#1\EndAccSupp{}}

\usepackage{listings}% http://ctan.org/pkg/listings
\lstset
{
    language={[LaTeX]TeX},
    numbers=left,
    numbersep=1em,
    numberstyle=\tiny\emptyaccsupp,
    frame=single,
    framesep=\fboxsep,
    framerule=\fboxrule,
    rulecolor=\color{red},
    xleftmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    xrightmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    breaklines=true,
    basicstyle=\small\tt,
    keywordstyle=\color{blue},
    commentstyle=\color[rgb]{0.13,0.54,0.13},
    backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!10},
    tabsize=2,
    columns=flexible,
    morekeywords={maketitle},
    escapeinside={\%LISTING:}{\^^M},
}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\begin{lstlisting}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\title{Sample Document}
\author{John Smith}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle %LISTING:\label{title}
Hello World!
% This is a comment.
\end{document}
\end{lstlisting}

Line \ref{title} shows the title.

\end{document}

Output of the listing showing selection

I deliberately set this answer to community wiki to prevent me from getting reputation points.

In the production, I use this answer because hyperref can be loaded with no problem. — kiss my armpit, May 24 '12 at 09:47
I took the liberty of editing your CW answer to make the advantages of this solution more obvious without having to click through to the follow up question. Hope you don't mind. — cyberSingularity, Dec 15 '12 at 11:33
This method (as well as the accepted answer) does not seem to work on Google Chrome, but it does work like a charm on Adobe Acrobat. — Francisco Escobar, Oct 19 '18 at 18:44
Worth noting that while \tiny can be anywhere (as it takes no argument), \emptyaccsupp must be at the end of \numberstyle. — user202729, Mar 24 '23 at 12:54

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 09 '12 at 10:07

This answer only deals with latex/dvips/ps2pdf.

Package accsupp works well with dvips. The generated PostScript file contains the right pdfmark operators. However ghostscript (version 9.05) has not implemented these tags, from the source file gdevpdfm.c:

/* [ tag propdict /BDC pdfmark */
static int
pdfmark_BDC(gx_device_pdf *pdev, gs_param_string *pairs, uint count,
            const gs_matrix *pctm, const gs_param_string *objname)
{
    return 0;                   /****** NOT IMPLEMENTED YET ******/
}
/* [ /EMC pdfmark /
static int
pdfmark_EMC(gx_device_pdf pdev, gs_param_string pairs, uint count,
            const gs_matrix pctm, const gs_param_string objname)
{
    return 0;                   /***** NOT IMPLEMENTED YET ******/
}

Solution sketch:

If the line number is not text, then it cannot be copied. Thus a solution would be to use bitmap images. For each digit and variant (color, size, …) a bitmap needs to be generated. As image format BMP can be used, that is supported by dvips. Then \thelstnumber is redefined to use these images for its digits.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 24 '23 at 13:42

This is an alternative. Numbers are still typesetted as usual, but instead of typesetting it before each line is typesetted, all line numbers are typesetted after the whole code block is typesetted.

If the PDF viewer respect the "text order" in the PDF, it should work fine.

Needs 2 compilation passes.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\NewDocumentCommand\fakeTypesetLineNumber{m}{%
    \tikz[remember picture] \coordinate (line\the\value{lstnumber});% remember this location
    % --
    \tiny\phantom{#1}% leave space equal to the line number itself
    % \tiny must be outside any group so that it applies to the following \kern
    % --
    \xappto\typesetPendingLineNumbers{\actualTypesetLineNumber{\the\value{lstnumber}}}% remember to typeset it later
}
% this command must be robust because it's used inside \xappto
\NewDocumentCommand\actualTypesetLineNumber{m}{%
    \node [anchor=south west, inner sep=0pt] at (line#1){\normalfont\tiny#1};% actually typeset it now, need to copy the \tiny here
}
\AddToHook{env/lstlisting/begin}{%
    \gdef\typesetPendingLineNumbers{}%
}
\AddToHook{env/lstlisting/end}{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]%
    \typesetPendingLineNumbers
    \end{tikzpicture}%
}
\lstset
{
    language={[LaTeX]TeX},
    numbers=left,
    numbersep=1em,
    numberstyle=\fakeTypesetLineNumber,
    frame=single,
    framesep=\fboxsep,
    framerule=\fboxrule,
    rulecolor=\color{red},
    xleftmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    xrightmargin=\dimexpr\fboxsep+\fboxrule\relax,
    breaklines=true,
    basicstyle=\small\tt,
    keywordstyle=\color{blue},
    commentstyle=\color[rgb]{0.13,0.54,0.13},
    backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!10},
    tabsize=2,
    columns=flexible,
    morekeywords={maketitle},
    escapeinside={%LISTING:}{^^M},
}
\begin{lstlisting}
    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{listings}
    \title{Sample Document}
    \author{John Smith}
    \date{\today}
    \begin{document}
    \maketitle %LISTING:\label{title}
    Hello World!
    % This is a comment.
    \end{document}
\end{lstlisting}
Line \ref{title} shows the title.
\lstset{ numberstyle=\tiny }
\begin{lstlisting}
    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{listings}
    \title{Sample Document}
    \author{John Smith}
    \date{\today}
    \begin{document}
    \maketitle %LISTING:\label{title2}
    Hello World!
    % This is a comment.
    \end{document}
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Of course, this will fail silently for code blocks that span across more than one page.

Is there a LaTeX trick to prevent a PDF viewer from copying the line number?

4 Answers4

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