GS: pdf2ps quality

[Vladimir Klebanov]

Hi folks,

I am wondering, why does pdf2ps translation (using GS) result in such poor
quality of the PS-output? The text looks chunky, like badly rastered. I have
put up a comparison screenshot at

http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unny/pdf-raster.png

(The original PDF was from http://www.effectiveperl.com/EP.04.pdf )

Perhaps someone can throw some light at it.

TIA
Vladimir

--
Vladimir Klebanov -- un...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up." -- Wilde

[Johan Vromans]

Vladimir Klebanov <un...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> writes:

> I am wondering, why does pdf2ps translation (using GS) result in such poor
> quality of the PS-output? The text looks chunky, like badly rastered. I have
> put up a comparison screenshot at
> http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unny/pdf-raster.png
> (The original PDF was from http://www.effectiveperl.com/EP.04.pdf )
> Perhaps someone can throw some light at it.

As usual, a font problem.
The original PDF uses BookmanICTbyBT, and Acrobat Reader substitutes
its generic multi-master serif font, which looks nice.

Ghostscript does not have BookmanICTbyBT, and cannot substitute fonts
as nicely, so you get an uglier replacement.
I don't know of a solution except to provide the right fonts to
Ghostscript.

-- Johan

[robertr...@my-deja.com]

In article <wl3em3j...@plume.nl.compuware.com>,

The fonts in his example look like the Times-Roman family, which GS
should handle with no problem.

Bob Rutledge

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Valentijn Sessink]

Vladimir Klebanov wrote:
>
> Hi folks,

>
> I am wondering, why does pdf2ps translation (using GS) result in such poor
> quality of the PS-output? The text looks chunky, like badly rastered.

man ps2pdf tells you:

Currently ps2pdf does a reasonable job on filled/stroked
graphics, on bitmap images, and on text in the 14 built-in
PDF fonts in the intersection of Windows and ISO Latin-1
encodings. It converts all other text in the PostScript
file to bitmaps in the PDF file

V.
--

[Johan Vromans]

robertr...@my-deja.com writes:

> The fonts in his example look like the Times-Roman family, which GS
> should handle with no problem.

To judge whether something "looks like" something else is not a thing
current computer software can do easily. The reason why Acrobat Reader
can do it, is because it inspects font properties like serifs and uses
MM (multi-master) font technology to construct a font that matches (in
a mathematical, not optical sense) the original font: each glyph has
serifs, and is as high and wide as the original. Therefore it looks
like the original font.

Ghostscript does not do this kind of font substitution. It might be
added in some future version.

-- Johan

[Vladimir Klebanov]

Hi Johan et al.,

Johan Vromans <JVro...@squirrel.nl> wrote:
>> [Bad output quality of ps2pdf]

> As usual, a font problem.
> The original PDF uses BookmanICTbyBT, and Acrobat Reader substitutes
> its generic multi-master serif font, which looks nice.

First of all, thank you very much for this hint. I have created an alias
for BookmanICTbyBT to URW Bookman distributed with GS and the document
looks much nicer now.

Unfortunately this cannot solve the problem with chunky conversion to PS. As
it looks the PDF is converted as graphics. That is the resulting PS file
contains neither any text no references to fonts. I'm not familar with PDF
enough -- isn't there another way to do this, extracting real text i mean?

I could finally improve the PS output quality by /explicitly/ requiring
antialiasing and a 600 dpi resolution but this results in a 90MB PS file fo
a 36 page document.
Yikes!

Vladimir

--
Vladimir Klebanov -- un...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unny

[Matti Vuori]

But what does man pdf2ps tell?

Matti Vuori