Re: PDFs on PCs

In message <fb16f6664f.harriet@xxxxxxxxxx>
Harriet Bazley <harriet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I recently had the opportunity to view a PDF created on the Iyonix using
Ghostscript via 'Adobe' on a Windows PC; to my horror, it looked a
mess. Specifically, each and every letter 'l' was darker and bolder
than all the surrounding text - they may have been emboldened or just
horizontally distorted, I don't know.

This is a "feature" of Adobe Reader and is not a fault of the PDF
file. It is a rendering "optimization" for axis aligned rectangles,
which is what the letter "l" in, say, Homerton, turns out to be when
represented as a shape. Why Adobe thought it was a good idea is beyond
me, it looks terrible.

These PDFs look bad all over when viewed under !PDF (improving as you
zoom in), look fine using !GView, and seem to print OK: but presumably
everyone I've been sending them to as a form of cross-platform
communication thinks there's something wrong with my computer. :-(

For a change, there is something wrong with their PDF reader, but you
will find it hard convincing them. This problem affects embedded
Type-3 fonts only, which is the technology the RISC OS printer driver
uses to embed RISC OS fonts - unless the font comes with its own
higher quality Type1 file (most notably, EFF's so-called "Publisher"
fonts do), which is used instead.

But this case of specific letters apparently getting deformed is very
odd. It's one of the isV fonts from the DrawWorks Millennium CD-ROM
that is affected, so not an EFF 'professional' font - but not a PD
conversion either.

The deciding factor is whether the font has an associated Type1 file
in its directory. If so, then the Type1 file is embedded and that
leads to better rendering quality.

That said, with nowaday's technology Adobe Reader could render the
embedded Type3 font with nearly the same quality, but alas, Adobe
seems to prefer otherwise.

Martin
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