Searching page for text with ligatures not working

[reckoner]

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I'm trying to do search for text=modified like this,

page.search_for(text)

but the text in the page has the word modified where the fi have been merged as a ligature so the search does not match.

Describe the solution you'd like
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Search for text using correct encoding.

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None

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[JorjMcKie]

Have you tried searching with switched off fitz.TEXT_PRESERVE_LIGATURES?

[reckoner]

If this is correct,

page.search_for('modified',flags=fitz.TEXT_PRESERVE_LIGATURES)

then it is still not finding the modified text in the page that has the ligature.

[JorjMcKie]

you switched it ON not off!
Try flags=0 for a start.

[reckoner]

This works!

page.search_for(text, flags=fitz.TEXT_ENCODING_LATIN)

[JorjMcKie]

Yes, but only because fitz.TEXT_ENCODING_LATIN == 0.
Before a misconception establishes:
The flags parameter in text search and text extraction pertains to the underlying TextPage object. There is zero connection to the encoding of the underlying text.
The flags parameter only controls what becomes part of the TextPage and how:

• should ligatures be dissolved
• should general white space be transformed to normal space 0x20
• should images be extracted
• should spaces be generated between distant characters
• should spans always start a separate line
• should hyphenation dash be detected
• should text outside the mediabox be ignored

[JorjMcKie]

Look at the TextPage documentation to see which text function uses which flags to generate its TextPage.
If you use the textage parameter in these functions, then the flags used in generating that TextPage will prevail.

[reckoner]

OK. Let me study this.