[projectaon] Re: PDF Comment Period
- From: David Davis <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:43:35 +0100
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?
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.
David
--
http://www.feline1.co.uk
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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