I manage style files for an academic journal. A typical article will contain authors' email addresses, which we attempt to obfuscate in order to give some measure of protection against e-mail harvesters.
Our current strategy: We replace the @ and . in e-mail addresses with bitmapped images of these symbols. (Specifically, we define new commands \imageat and \imagedot which print .pdf images of their respective characters; then an email address like me@place.com is typeset as me{\imageat}place{\imagedot}com.) This has some problems:
- The images don't reflect the font or size of the surrounding text.
- With this solution, our LaTeX distribution must include the .pdf of these images, which can lead to errors and confusion.
What I would like: I would like (you to tell me how) to define two commands \crazyat and \crazydot which have the effect of typesetting @ and . in the current typeface, but appear as non-standard characters in the generated .pdf file. Specifically, I would like to temporarily populate a little used part of the current font with the @ and . so that they appear correctly, but make no sense to anyone else. (Other suggestions very welcome.)
A few notes about other postings on this (and closely related topics):
- I am aware of the
AccSuppackage. It seems very appealing, but only Adobe Acrobat seems to play along. Specifically, the LaTeX lineMy email address is \BeginAccSupp{ActualText={email address}}me@place.com\EndAccSupp{}produces output that copies and pastes (in)correctly with Adobe Acrobat (giving the intended behavior) but misbehaves (so that copy/paste gives the e-mail address) on other .pdf readers. Anyway, I guess this will not fool an e-mail harvester. (See What can cause generated PDF document whose text are not correctly copyable?.) - I do not want to, e.g., simply replace the @ symbol with the text
[AT]. I am dead set on this symbol actually appearing correctly in the .pdf document. (See How to redefine @ and . to obfuscate email addresses?.) - There seems to be a way to blow away the "cmap," which I do not understand. However, I would only like to be "locally" destructive--I would like the rest of the document to be well-formed. (See Is it possible to produce a PDF with un-copyable text?.)

@with few commands using Tikz, for example. Then you can use it any time. Also you can put it on a box such that it would be possible to resize it together the text. – Sigur Jan 24 at 1:19john.doemy@pantsfoo.com – to e-mail me, remove my pants.From a related question on Super User, but with a focus on HTML/web sites: Does e-mail address obfuscation actually work? – doncherry Jan 24 at 2:12shapes.lettersat launchpad:tex-sx that transforms letters into shapes. I have never tested the library but my guess would be that the actual text representation is lost in the final output. – Qrrbrbirlbel Jan 24 at 2:20\includegraphics[width=1em]{atsign}as your\crazyatmacro. – Christian Jan 24 at 2:49randtext. – Werner Jan 24 at 2:59