Working with Alignments in Simple Engine Mode

Auto Adjust

This button instructs Data Prep Studio to automatically select the optimum settings for the displayed sample page. Note that if you have changed any of the PDF import settings, clicking this will likely restore the original settings.

Monospaced (for PDF Engine versions 4.4 and below)

This setting specifies that a monospaced font (i.e., a fixed-width or non-proportional one) was used in the PDF file. Monospaced fonts are fonts in which each character has the same width. For example, in a monospaced font, the "o" and "i" characters would have the same width, i.e., they would take up the same amount of horizontal space on a line. Other terms for monospaced are fixed-width and non-proportional. The opposite of monospacing is proportional spacing, in which different characters have different widths, e.g., in a proportionally spaced font, the letter "o" would be wider than the letter "i".

When you import a PDF file into Monarch Data Prep Studio, the application tries to detect when monospaced fonts are used and optimizes the conversion accordingly. In some cases, Monarch Data Prep Studio may not detect that monospaced fonts were used for the PDF file. When this happens, it is usually due to a mix of monospaced and proportional fonts existing in the same PDF file. If you know that the PDF file uses monospaced fonts, but the fonts are not displaying correctly, you can select this setting to force Monarch Data Prep Studio to optimize for Monospaced fonts. While proportionally spaced fonts look more appealing, monospaced fonts are superior for tabular data because the uniform width of each character makes alignment of columns easier.

In general, PDF files generated using monospaced fonts will convert more successfully, so if you are trying to optimize your PDF producing application for Monarch Data Prep Studio, use monospaced fonts. Some of the more common ones are: Andale Mono, Anonymous, Crystal, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Courier, Courier New, Elronet Monospace, Everson Mono Latin 6, Fixedsys, Lucida Sans Typewriter, Lucida Console, and PrestigeFixed.

Free-form (for PDF Engine versions 4.4 and below)

This option tries to optimize text that is more free-form than columnar or grouped columnar text. A columnar document is a simple table format, while grouped columnar might be something similar to one of the Monarch Data Prep Studio sample reports, such as Betty’s Music Store (Classic.pdf). A typical document that might benefit from using this setting would be an academic report that is 95% text, but which also contains a few tables that you want to extract. Note: This setting will sometimes work effectively on columnar documents when the default settings are not producing a good result.

Snap Text Left (PDF Engine version 4.5)

This setting aligns the text to the left of the imputed PDF grid.

Snap Text Up (PDF Engine version 4.5)

This setting aligns the text to the top of the imputed PDF grid.

Always Align Left (PDF Engine version 4.5)

This setting instructs the application to always align text the to left of the imputed PDF grid.