Bugzilla Bug 135354

Of late I had been having problems with gv, which was rendering fonts very
poorly. Since gv uses ghostscript as backend, I finally traced the bug to
ghostscript. It seems ghostscript 8.x renders font very poorly. This is
particular with documents generated with times font  using latex.

I searched this site for this bug but could not find. Google helped with this
link

http://volker.dnsalias.net/soft/rpm/suse10.0/other/ghostscript-library-7.07.1rc1-pref.spec

So i downgraded from 8.15.1_p20060430 to 7.07.1-r8. Now the fonts are rendered
much better. I have comparitive screenshots and the test postscript, but dont
know how to upload them. 

emerge --info 
Portage 2.0.54-r2 (default-linux/x86/2006.0, gcc-3.4.5,
glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.16-gentoo-r7 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.16-gentoo-r7 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14
ccache version 2.3 [enabled]
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5, 2.4.2
dev-python/pycrypto: [Not Present]
dev-util/ccache:     2.3
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.17
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r7
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config
/usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref
/usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/
/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/
/usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/bind"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks fixpackages sandbox sfperms
strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo
http://gentoo.mirrors.easynews.com/linux/gentoo/
http://open-systems.ufl.edu/mirrors/gentoo
http://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/
http://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/download/gentoo-mirror/
http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com
http://gentoo.ccccom.com/"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.us.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 X aalib acl alsa apache2 apm arts audiofile avi bash-completion berkdb
bitmap-fonts bonobo bzip2 cdr cli crypt cscope cups curl directfb dri dts eds
emboss encode esd ethereal exif expat fam ffmpeg flac foomaticdb fortran gd
gdbm gif glut gmp gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile idn imagemagick
imlib ipv6 isdnlog java jpeg junit kde lcms ldap libg++ libwww mad matroska
mikmod mng motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql nas ncurses nls nptl odbc ogg opengl
oss pam pcre pdflib perl plotutils png postgres pppd python qt quicktime
readline reflection sdl session slang spell spl ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff
truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis wmf xine xml xml2 xmms xorg
xv xvid zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset:  CTARGET, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS,
PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

Created an attachment (id=88236) [edit]
postscript for testing

Created an attachment (id=88237) [edit]
test.ps as rendered by 8.x ghostscript. Note poor font rendering

Created an attachment (id=88238) [edit]
test.ps as rendered by 7.x ghostscript. Contrast this with previous one

Created an attachment (id=88239) [edit]
test.ps as rendered by 8.x ghostscript at one level zoom

Created an attachment (id=88240) [edit]
test.ps as rendered by 7.x ghostscript at one level zoom. Notice the difference

(From update of attachment 88236 [edit])
Ok i finally found how to create attachments. So have uploaded the different
renderings.

It seems this bug is lying around for an year. Are there any work arounds for
this in 8.x?

The behaviour of ghostscript 8.x should be more similar to that of 7.x with
the (gs) option -dAlignToPixels=0, which is said to "improve rendering of
poorly hinted fonts" in Use.htm.

ah cool, can I enable that per default somewhere in gv?

Under State -> Ghostscript Options, probably in the Antialias Device section.

I added a sed call to gv-3.6.1-r4.ebuild to make that option a default option.
Can you please check if it works for you?

rsync mirrors should be up-to-date in an hour.

Thanks for reporting and for the solution!