[projectaon] Re: PDF Comment Period
- From: Ingo Kloecker <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:36:31 +0300
Hi,
On Wednesday 07 July 2010, David Davis wrote:
> I think I may have confused things slightly by mentioning TrueTypes
> - I just mentioned them as a possible quick and easy way
> to troubleshoot the process, but I didn't realise it's actually
> difficult to use them on Linux - in which case they're not a quick
> and easy way! :)
>
> I strongly suspect the Souvenir font in the PDFs is looking a bit
> ugly because it is a "Type 3" PostScript font, and wikipedia
> tells me Type3 fonts don't support *hinting*.
> Hinting is the method fonts use to makes themselves look nicer on
> screen, basically (because monitor screens don't have enough
> pixels to display the letter shapes properly) - the hinting process
> makes better choices of what pixels to use and not use, to fool the
> eye into seeing a nicer smoother letter shape.
>
> The more usually-encountered form of PostScript fonts are 'Type1',
> which do support hinting (as do TrueType fonts).
>
> I suggest the way to troubleshoot this is:
>
> - Is the Souvenir font on Ingo's linux machine a PostScript Type3 to
> begin with?
No, it is Type 1. So we just need to figure out how to use it directly
in the PDFs.
> If yes, then it's no good! And we need to get a PostScript Type1
> version - which should be fairly easy to do (and not too
> expensive...does Project Aon have a budget for this?).
>
> If no, then the pdf creation process is converting the font from
> Type1 to Type3, and stripping out the hinting facility in the
> process. In that case, I suggest seeing if there's either some
> config that can be done to the process to stop it doing Type1 >
> Type3,
> or finding a different convertor.
Regards,
Ingo
> On Wed 07/07/10 10:20 AM , Javier Fernandez-Sanguino
> jfs@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> sent:
> >> Not sure what to do about this. I'm using the standard way for
> >> using a PostScript font with LaTeX.
> >
> > It would seem strange to me that the standard way for LaTex to
> > process PostScript fonts in the year 2010 is to convert them to
> > Type3. But I
>
> have zero experience
>
> > with desktop publishing on linux, so I do not know.
> > Does you LaTex support TrueType fonts? If so, the quickest way to
> > troubleshoot the problem might simply be to uninstall your
> > PostScript
>
> Souvenir, and install a
>
> > TrueType one (someone on this list must have one you could use to
>
> test...?),
>
> > and see if that generates a PDF that where the text renders better
> > on-screen.
>
> LaTeX, as far as I know, does not support TrueType fonts. TrueType
> fonts are something which is more specific to Windows and MacOS than
> you think because these fonts are not necessarily available in Linux
> systems due to licensing and patent encumberement reasons (for more
> info, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType
> [1]">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType).
>
> As far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong, TrueType fonts look
> better on screen but the Postscript Type 3 fonts used by LaTeX
> should work better in printed output. Maybe an in-between option
> would be to use Postscript Type 1 fonts?
>
> Using TrueType fonts in LaTeX is more than just installing the fonts
> in the system that compiles the PDF, LaTeX needs information related
> to the fonts in order to include them when generating a Postscript
> version of the document. If we were to do this that would mean that
> the system building the PDFs would have to be tailored-made, since
> this cannot be implemented in the (automated) building system I
> introduced in SNV. You have a (good) overview of LaTeX font
> processing, if interested in
> http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/fonts.html
> [2]">http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/fonts.html.
>
> I will try to investigate (using these tips:
> http://www.radamir.com/tex/ttf-tex.htm%29
> [3]">http://www.radamir.com/tex/ttf-tex.htm) how to make the PDFs
> with TrueType fonts. I remember (and indeed, found in my mailbox)
> that we had this same conversation almost two years ago when I
> provided PDF versions of the books. Unfortunately, I have not been
> able to pursue this further, let's see if this summer...
>
> Upon reviewing, I found this source:
> http://dsanta.users.ch/resources/type1.html%2C
> [4]">http://dsanta.users.ch/resources/type1.html, describes the
> issues with
> LaTeX and Truetype fonts. An alternative might be to generate the
> PDF versions from the Postscript version in a Windows system. Maybe
> Ingo can provide you with the PostScript versions and you can
> convert them in your system with Adobe Distiller to see how it turns
> out.
>
> It looks to me that we several options right now regarding fonts in
> the PDF:
>
> 1- Do nothing, use the fonts used by LaTex / pdf2ps and see if users
> complain about them
> 2- Change the building system so that it use Type 1 Postscript fonts
> instead of Type 2
> 3- Generate the PDFs using TrueType fonts on Linux, which might mean
> having a dedicated setup (not easy to replicate) for building PDFs
> 4- Generate the PDFs usign TrueType fonts with a combination of
> Linux (to generate the Postscript version) and Windows (to generate
> the PDF versions using Adobe's Distiller?).
> 5- Do nothing, publish both Postscript and PDF versions at the site
> so that users have an option (they could do PS->PDF conversion if
> they wanted to themselves)
>
> Right now, I would favor doing the last option so as to not delay
> PDF publication, which is a very common request from our users.
> Opinions?
>
> Regards
>
> Javier
>
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>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType
> [2] http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/fonts.html
> [3] http://www.radamir.com/tex/ttf-tex.htm%29
> [4] http://dsanta.users.ch/resources/type1.html%2C
> [5] //www.freelists.org/list/projectaon
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