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Re: generating pdf files

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Captain's log. We received a signal from Stephen Harris on StarDate
24/10/05 02:49. Translated to English it stated:
>>>> Well, I recently indeed found out (and can confirm) that different
>>>> routes to generating the PDF's led to different outcomes. This was
>>>> quite worrying, to me at least. Now I have to fiddle and experiments
>>>> with outputs, just to ensure all is fine.
> 
> dvipdfm and pdflatex generate different outcomes by design which I
> think has been influenced by historical developments such as release of
> newer fonts, Type I, formerly commercial, for pdflatex as opposed to
> Type III fonts for divpdfm(default), unless restricted in the preamble.
> 
> It is a known problem/condition that Type III fonts often display poorly.
> Quoting from the lyx extended documentation:
> 
> 5.3.6.2 Why does the text look so bad when viewed with Acrobat Reader?
> 
> Bad Fonts in Acrobat Reader: The problem is that bitmap fonts are
> displayed poorly by Acrobat Reader. When creating a PDF from the LyX
> file, you need to use outline font instead of the default bitmap fonts
> (in fact, you should also use outline fonts for Postscript files).
> Recent LaTeX
> distributions come with Postscript® Type 1 version of the standard
> (Computer Modern) fonts. pdfLaTeX uses these font by default.
> Dvips doesn't use these fonts by default, so to make it use them, add the
> following to lines to your ~/.dvipsrc
> p+ psfonts.cmz
> p+ psfonts.amz
> 
> SH: dvipdfm uses dvips which will include Type III fonts. Pdflatex
> does not use dvips and should use Type I fonts. Originally, pdf was
> designed for uniform printing, not uniform viewing, so I think that
> both methods will print the same, but not look/display the same.


I suspect that's the case as well. It's rather odd though. Figures tend
to be a little sharper when printed although that depends on the
printer, monitor, etc.


> I think that the super computer modern fontset has its fonts saved
> into the file. But the equally good pslatex method also has Type I
> fonts but I don't think the fonts are embedded. So the machine
> displaying the pdf file needs to have those fonts installed which
> should be quite standard. The problem with pslatex is (was) that
> there was no bold. There is a fix for that:


Well, the point about support by the software package is an important
one. More recent versions of Acrobat Reader are probably more
self-contained. I also noticed that when generating PDF's, some embed
the font and some don't. This affects the size significantly, but it
also depends on the size of the document. It is neat when you generate
20k PDF's, but when writing a book, for instance, that factor is negligible.

> 5.3.6.3 Why doesn't the \boldsymbol{} command work when I use
> pslatex?<sec:pdfbold>\boldsymbol{} and pslatex
> 
> The Postscript® fonts do not have a bold symbol font. The solution is to
> use the \pmb{} (poor man's bold) command.

Let's pretend I didn't read that... *smile*

> It is possible to redefine the \boldsymbol command to use \pmb by putting
> 
> \renewcommand{\boldsymbol}[1]{\pmb{#1}}
> 
> in the preamble.
> 
> SH: Postscript and super computer modern fonts display differently.
> I think that a pdf file prepared on linux with lyx 1.3.6 with pdflatex
> using Type I fonts will display imperceptibly different on a windows
> machine also running lyx 1.3.6 (because the standardly included
> fonts will match). Earlier versions of lyx may not have the fonts
> installed which used to be available commercially only.

It's re-assuring to know that we no longer deal with fonts that are
proprietary. This comes to show the issues associated with ownership of
display formats.

> I haven't done any research (like I have on this) about A4 vs.
> letter. Letter is standard in North America, and A4 standard
> most other places. The dimensions are different. Printers can
> usually be set to print in either A4 or letter. Letter can be
> shrunk (94% I think, shrink to fit) so that it prints out like A4.

I rarely print out any documents, but since others may do, I'll keep
this in mind.

> I'm not sure how much/many fonts are embedded using Type 3.
> It seems to me that if both computers had the same Type 3
> font installed, so no substitutions of fonts were required,
> that they should at least print out the same using xpdf or
> adobe reader. Although Reader is available for Linux now
> and the more shared standards, the closer the produced output.
> 
> Regards,
> Stephen

I agree. I installed Acrobat reader 7 (5 has a vulnerability in Linux by
the way), but I still tend to use KGhostView, which opens PDF's almost
instantly. I also like the PDF previews in KDE.

Roy
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