The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
Posted Nov 30, 2004 1:52 UTC (Tue) by utidjian (guest, #444)In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers by jwb
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
Strange, I find xpdf to have better rendering on that document than acroread. xpdf-3.00 versus acroread-5.0.9 on Fedora Core 3.
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Posted Nov 30, 2004 3:04 UTC (Tue)
by jwb (guest, #15467)
[Link] (2 responses)
http://saturn5.com/~jwb/xpdf.png
There's something system-dependent about xpdf, because when I view that document at my office, the text is much worse. The letters of words are literally placed over each other. But even here you can see it's not as good as Acrobat.
Posted Nov 30, 2004 5:23 UTC (Tue)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 30, 2004 7:40 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Interesting. I find the typography in xpdf to be pretty poor. In the following screenshot, xpdf is on top and acroread is below. Taken on Debian unstable x86:The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
That seems to be an issue of the fonts that the programs have access to. It looks like xpdf doesn't have the original font, and is using a different one with different metrics instead, which causes the document's typography to be messed up. Notice that the fonts don't even really have the same aspect ratio (xpdf is using a much squarer font). Acroread probably has the fonts that people actually use stashed away somewhere, so it can render documents more nicely.The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
If you want decent rendering out of xpdf, you simply have to point it at GhostScript's Type 1 fonts. I've also pointed it at all Type 1 fonts I own, including all the TeX Type 1 fonts; there really are some documents out there that use (e.g.) non-embedded Computer Modern...The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
