On 2009-11-09, Sebastian Guttenberg wrote:
> --=-mP/gqFkSw2Oj9z5Utvva
> Content-Type: text/plain
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Guenter Milde wrote:
>> This is (most probably) a side-effect of using different fonts.
>> Unfortunately, you do not specify what about the PDF is so much worse.
> I thought that perhaps it was a known problem.
It most probably is one of serveral known problems ;-)
> In general the text looks a bit irregular when compared to the dvi. The
> thickness of the lines and the distances of the letters change somehow.
...
> Instead test.tex produces still a reasonable dvi, but a pdf-file which
> has the above described problems.
This could be bad hinting in the used font or a problem of the PDF
viewer(s). This also depends on the TeX system configuration/setup.
Looking at the PDF at big magnifications reveals that (on my system) a
bitmap font is used.
> And I am confused that this is not an everyday-problem of many people.
It is. It is also a LaTeX and LyX FAQ (treated in e.g. the LyX wiki).
>> Did you also try to copy and paste a text with umlaut? Or search for
>> my name?
> Ah, interesting. I didn't know that. At least finally I see some use in
> this package. However, usually I am working only with English text and
> don't need Umlauts, but still fontenc is loaded (I've just tried it with
> a lyx file that contained just one word without any special characters).
You can change the effect of this by specifying the font encoding OT1
(which is used by latex without fontenc):
\usepackage[OT1]{fontenc}
In LyX, set Tools>Settings>Export>LaTeX>TeX encoding
(names may differ, I translated them from my German speaking LyX).
>> The recommended method to produce readable PDF files is to select a
>> suitable font, e.g. LatinModern or one of the PSNFSS fonts.
> Well, it's one thing to optimize a file for the pdf-output and another
> that I am working usually with dvi and ps, but from time to time need
> to produce a pdf-version of it to somebody (who might use acroread on
> windows). It cannot be that the standard output (without changing any
> settings) produces such a bad quality?
This is the TeX way: do not change the default. PDF is (in TeX terms)
new, so settings for reasonable PDF output are not the default.
Also, as there is a choice of settings/fonts that solve this problem,
there is also no pre-set default in LyX. (If we made LatinModern the
default font, we would get complaints from people that do not have it
installed.)
However, you can easily select LatinModern in your standard template(s).
Günter
