CHAT: PDF woes (Was: Re: Handwriting (was: Re: CHAT: Coming out of the conlang closet))

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 06:58:10PM +1000, Tristan McLeay wrote:
[snip]
> I don't know if it's your fault or mine, but whenever I convert
> PostScript files from you into PDFs (or get PDFs from you), they look
> really rather dodgy, even though PS files I generate from LaTeX sources
> come out nicely nicely. So would I be able to steal the sources off you
> and generate my own PDFs? (I dislike the interfaces of all the PS
> viewers out there that I've used, much preferring Adobe's (proprietary)
> Acrobat 4 for Linux's.)
[snip]

OK, I've just about exhausted all reasonable possibilities for converting
PS into PDF. I've had Christophe G. convert it for me, I've tried ps2pdf
(thanks, Peter Clark), I've discovered that GSView (a Windows PS viewer I
highly recommend) has a PDF writer option, and I've tried it with various
different parameters, etc..

BUT the PDF still comes out UGLY! It's blocky, pixelated, and hard to
read. Perhaps the problem is that the version of Acrobat I'm using sucks.
When I zoom in, it doesn't look too bad; but it's unreadable the way it
appears by default (and Acrobat Reader's navigational, uh, system--if you
can call it that--is abysmal, esp. if you need to zoom in 400% to get
readable text).

<rant> Why is it that GSView, on the SAME computer, displays the document
*perfectly* ??? At the same resolution, Acrobat reader gives me an
unreadable mess of pixelated smudges, but GSView gives a perfectly smooth,
readable page??? What's wrong with Acrobat Reader?! </rant>

Anyway, having gotten that off my chest... if people want the LaTeX
sources, they are here:

        http://quickfur.myip.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/grammar-tex.tar.gz

Keep in mind that they are generated files, and so they may be partially
(or completely) unintelligible -- at least the orthographic parts of it.
Note that you will need to install the TIPA fonts if you want to actually
see any orthographic output.

Oh, and BTW, the webserver port has moved to 8080, so the grammar
postscript file is now at:
        http://quickfur.myip.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/grammar.ps

I *still* think the PS is the best output. Do yourself a favor and install
GSView with the latest version of AFPL Ghostscript :-) It's really quite a
nice viewer. Most importantly, it antialiases the postscript fonts so that
you can actually read it(!); but also, it has *sane* scrolling behaviour
with the wheel-mice, arrow keys, and dragging the scrollbar actually
scrolls the page instantly (instead of the b0rked Acrobat Reader behaviour
where you have to guess how far to drag the scroll bar). Overall, I feel
that it's superior in terms of display quality and user interface.


T

--
"I'm running Windows '98." "Yes." "My computer isn't working now." "Yes, you
already said that." -- User-Friendly

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