Summary: | app-text/ghostscript-esp-8.15.1_p20060430: fonts appear more ugly in gv (compared to 7.07.1-r8) when antialiasing is on | ||
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Product: | Gentoo Linux | Reporter: | Andy <andyreif> |
Component: | New packages | Assignee: | Printing Team <printing> |
Status: | RESOLVED UPSTREAM | ||
Severity: | minor | CC: | xalanxerces |
Priority: | High | ||
Version: | unspecified | ||
Hardware: | x86 | ||
OS: | Linux | ||
Whiteboard: | |||
Package list: | Runtime testing required: | --- | |
Attachments: |
The test pdf
Helvetica as rendered by acroread 7. This is completely wrong rendering Helvetica as rendered by xpdf, which is the correct rendering we expect. What is my mistake? My updmap.cfg |
Description
Andy
2006-05-16 03:09:16 UTC
Feel free to complain upstream or use ghostscript-gnu... does it also happen with ghostscript-afpl? Seems strange to me .. Probably due to the fontconfig patch. OK, I've done some further tests: - ghostscript-afpl-8.53-r4 produces an output that is worse than ghostscript-esp-7.07.1-r8 but better than ghostscript-esp-8.15.1_p20060430 (the fonts appear smaller, and upper parts are rendered worse (e.g. the upper part of 'T' is somewhat smeared, that of 'a' is flat instead of being somewhat rounded) but you still see the subsection titles in bold and bold characters appear as bold). - ghostscript-afpl-8.15 is just as bad as ghostscript-esp-8.15.1_p20060430. - ghostscript-gnu-8.16-r1 is just as bad as ghostscript-esp-8.15.1_p20060430. So ghostscript-esp-7.07.1-r8 still produces the best antialiased output. well, downgrading is not really an option for me. So I guess we need to find out what exactly is causing the rendering regression and patch that in .. Any ideas? Just to be complete, the unstable versions: - ghostscript-afpl-8.54 behaves as ghostscript-afpl-8.53-r4 (i.e. middle way between good and bad). - ghostscript-esp-8.15.2_p20060520 behaves as bad as does ghostscript-esp-8.15.1_p20060430. - ghostscript-gnu-8.16-r3 is as bad as ghostscript-gnu-8.16-r1. -ghostscript-esp-7.07.1-r10 is as good as 7.07.1-r8 (In reply to comment #4) > well, downgrading is not really an option for me. So I guess we need to find > out what exactly is causing the rendering regression and patch that in .. > > Any ideas? Hey Stefan: I followed Karl's suggestion in #135354 that did not help. I can confirm the claim that antialias has no effect in gs. I am using the latest stable ghostscript-esp-8.15.2_p20060520. That is not the only problem I have with gs. It seems that acroread is not able to properly decipher the fonts spit out by the following chain, latex -> dvipdf. It is rendering different fonts for helvetica. I also tested with times roman and it is rendering different. I will post the screen shots shortly. To further test the issue, I opened the test pdf in acroread in windows XP, there it is rendering the fonts properly. How so?? I thought acroread's punchline was platform-agnostic rendering :) I am generating the pdfs with embedded fonts. Please see the attachments that follow. Created attachment 89276 [details]
The test pdf
Created attachment 89277 [details]
Helvetica as rendered by acroread 7. This is completely wrong rendering
Created attachment 89278 [details]
Helvetica as rendered by xpdf, which is the correct rendering we expect. What is my mistake?
Created attachment 89279 [details]
My updmap.cfg
Never mind about the acroread problem. I upgraded acrocread and it is showing the proper fonts. But there is a catch. It shows the improper fonts for about a second or so and then it is able to find the proper font. I hear the sound of disk turning, it seems acroread is using some greedy scheme to map the fonts of the document and then finds the correct font and redraws the screen with proper fonts. The point of original poster remains, that is in ghostscript 8.x there is little effect of anti-aliasing. It is specifically in the case of documents generated using times font and generated by latex. The documents using computer modern i.e. default latex font, are rendered properly and anti-aliasing shows the effect. The antialiasing effect is less in case of times font. The problem in bug #135354 remains. ghostscript 7-0 is renders all fonts great. May be the new gpled version of ghostscript-8.53 has some solution to the problem. ghostscript-afpl is the same as the newly released gpl version which does not have an ebuild yet. In gv I have added a patch: # Make font render nicely even with gs-8, bug 135354 sed -i -e "s:-dGraphicsAlphaBits=2:\0 -dAlignToPixels=0:" \ src/{gv_{class,user,system}.ad,Makefile.{am,in}} Does the-dAlignToPixels=0 param maybe help for you? I see no differences between app-text/gv-3.6.1-r3 and app-text/gv-3.6.1-r4 (the one with the patch), neither with app-text/ghostscript-esp-7.07.1-r8 (with its good quality), nor app-text/ghostscript-gpl-8.54 (with the somewhat decreased quality, as described in comment #3 for ghostscript-afpl-8.53-r4). obviously I have no idea here :( Can you please contact upstream about this and tell me in case you have a patch? Upstream contacted: http://www.cups.org/espgs/str.php?L1937 After the answer from CUPS guy: > [STR Closed w/o Resolution] > > This is a known regression with the GPL Ghostscript X11 driver, and I don't > know if it is fixed in the 8.5x releases or not. > > The fix has to come from upstream, please report this to the Ghostscript > folks... I searched the bugs on ghostscript.com (GPL Ghostscript bugzilla linked from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/), and found from there on that it is indeed known to them ghostscript x11 rendering bad enough to be unusable: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=140100 ( Fonts in TeX output look ugly in ghostview: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=132624) In Screen rendering with x11 device unusable: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1363 a CUPS guy suggests to use: > [...] the PNM device with antialiasing for screen viewing - the X11 device no longer provides any advantage due to how fonts are handled in modern Linux distros... Some relevant bug reports on ghostscript.com: text rendering in 8.14 poorer than in 7.x in small sizes: http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=687376 ( bad antialiasing: http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=688867) This one offers some patches (which I didn't test) in comment #21 bad artefacts with X11 antialiasing at small font sizes: http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=688496 but perhaps it's easier to wait for a new revision. |