🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov2.222018.5523@imax.imax.com>, linda@imax.imax.COM (Linda Xiao) writes:
>We use Ghostscript to convert Postscript to high-resolution raster
>images that are eventually fed to a film recorder.  The output
>frame is about 8000 pixels wide, which is considerably higher than
>most laser printers use.
>
>Simple graphics look fine at this resolution, but text is awful.
>Diagonal lines have "jaggies" that are much coarser than the output
>pixel resolution.  To see an example of this try:
>
>	% gs
>	GS>/F1 /Times-Bold findfont 200 scalefont def
>	GS>F1 setfont 0 0 moveto (AY) show
>	GS>quit
>
>Notice the awful-looking edges of the letters.  Feeding the same Postscript
>code to "xpsview" produces fine-looking output, so the problem is in
>Ghostscript itself or perhaps its font descriptions.

This is NOT A BUG and not surprising at all. The font you are using is NOT
a Type 1 font - it is a rough font generated from a bitmap. If you try

	% gs
	GS>/F2 /Charter-Roman findfont 200 scalefont def
	GS>F2 setfont 0 0 moveto (AY) show
	GS>quit

you'll get lines smooth as silk.

>Is this a known problem?  Is there an easy fix?  We just got
>Ghostscript running last week, but the images will be shown at a
>conference a week from today, so there is some urgency to getting this
>fixed!

Have a look in FONTMAP and see which fonts are true Type 1 (CHARTER, COURIER
UTOPIA in version 2.5.1). I suggest you use these fonts where possible.

The fact that xpsview gives you smooth lines simply shows that your X11 Server
has Type 1 fonts built in. The next version of GhostScript (2.6) will use these
fonts where available, until then use the Type 1 fonts in the GhostScript
distribution.

Cheers

Bernhard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bernhard Fabricius              |
Academic VAX/VMS Support           |  "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,
Department of Nuclear Physics      |           and long words Bother me."
Australian National University     |
                                   |                           - A.A. Milne
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As several people have pointed out, the default Times-Roman font looks so
ugly because it is actually a vector outline produced from a raster font.

May I humbly suggest that the default Fontmap be set up to alias Times-Roman
(and other Times fonts) to the perfectly reasonable CharterBT-Roman fonts
that are included with the distribution?  And further that the default
Fontmap not contain any of the bitmap-origin fonts?  In my opinion, even the
Ugly font looks considerably better than the grotesque "ptmr" fonts.

This way, people installing Ghostscript for the first time will get
good-looking output on their first try and they will be happy.
At the moment, the first output they are likely to see is from one of
the raster-based fonts, while will at least give them indigestion and
may cause them to conclude that Ghostscript itself is sick.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A newsgroup nit:  gnu.ghostscript.bug is handled as a moderated newsgroup
on Usenet, so postings are mailed to a central site rather than being
posted directly.  The "moderator", whether that is a person or a program,
turns the mail into news articles and posts them from a central site.
When this article is rebroadcast, the "Path" line will end with
"imax.com!dave", which means that the article will never make it back
to this machine - the presence of a machine in the Path line is taken to
mean that the article already travelled through there.

Could whoever performs the moderation change things so that the Path line
reflects the machine where the moderator works, not the machine where the
original author lives?  Of course, the real author should still appear in
>From and Sender headers, so mail replies work, just not in the Path line.
That way, postings will eventually make it back to the machine they
originated from.

	Dave Martindale

bear@nucvs7.anu.edu.au (Bernhard Fabricius) writes:

>In article <1992Nov2.222018.5523@imax.imax.com>, linda@imax.imax.COM (Linda Xiao) writes:
>>Simple graphics look fine at this resolution, but text is awful.
>>Diagonal lines have "jaggies" that are much coarser than the output
>>pixel resolution.  To see an example of this try:
>>
>>	% gs
>>	GS>/F1 /Times-Bold findfont 200 scalefont def
>>	GS>F1 setfont 0 0 moveto (AY) show
>>	GS>quit
>>
>This is NOT A BUG and not surprising at all. The font you are using is NOT
>a Type 1 font - it is a rough font generated from a bitmap. If you try
>	% gs
>	GS>/F2 /Charter-Roman findfont 200 scalefont def
>	GS>F2 setfont 0 0 moveto (AY) show
>	GS>quit

>you'll get lines smooth as silk.

A possibility to solve it, is to get additional (e.g. commercial)
type-1 fonts - or to read-out the buildin fonts of any laserprinter.

Till now I haven't tried to read out the fonts, but I'm told, that it
should be possible. But we have the additional fonts (from a utiliy
disk for the laser to work with the adobe type-manager), installed it
in ghostscript - and have smooth lines, too.

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