4 ms·

I know this is a real tangent from the content of this paper, but why is it that every academic PDF renders in such poor quality fonts[1]? My guess is it was d

by tux1968 12y ago

I know this is a real tangent from the content of this paper, but why is it that every academic PDF renders in such poor quality fonts[1]? My guess is it was done in Latex which seems to always produce results of this nature. It's really confusing why this quality keeps being quietly accepted by everyone. [1] http://picpaste.com/pics/c5f9cc612f213523876362234155499e.1415215368.png http://picpaste.com/pics/c5f9cc612f213523876362234155499e.14...

ams6110 12y ago
This paper certainly appears to be produced using the LaTeX 'article' template but not sure why the fonts look so bad. I have never had this experience using LaTeX myself.
Filter 12y ago
Older LaTeX articles used postscript as their output format instead of PDF. These conversions look bad on screen for some technical reason; it'll probably still look good printed, though.
pmoriarty 12y ago
I think there must be something wrong with your PDF viewer. It's rendering fine for me[1], using Sumatra PDF 2.3.2 [2] [1] - http://picpaste.com/76610ba89c0650c0a80a48574c965aff.png http://picpaste.com/76610ba89c0650c0a80a48574c965aff.png [2] - http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-read...
talideon 12y ago
My guess is that it was turned into a PDF directly from a TeX DVI file with bitmap fonts rather than compiled directly into a PDF using outline fonts with pdflatex. Some people are just used to using their existing document processing pipelines rather than using more modern tools like pdflatex, I guess. Edit: the file predates pdftex. Back then, the file would've just been sent to a printer rather than rendered on screen for anything other than a preview, and it looks fine when rendered. If it was passed through pdflatex these days, it'd look much better.

4 ms·

I know this is a real tangent from the content of this paper, but why is it that every academic PDF renders in such poor quality fonts[1]? My guess is it was d

by tux1968 12y ago

ams6110 12y ago
This paper certainly appears to be produced using the LaTeX 'article' template but not sure why the fonts look so bad. I have never had this experience using LaTeX myself.
Filter 12y ago
Older LaTeX articles used postscript as their output format instead of PDF. These conversions look bad on screen for some technical reason; it'll probably still look good printed, though.
pmoriarty 12y ago
I think there must be something wrong with your PDF viewer. It's rendering fine for me[1], using Sumatra PDF 2.3.2 [2] [1] - http://picpaste.com/76610ba89c0650c0a80a48574c965aff.png http://picpaste.com/76610ba89c0650c0a80a48574c965aff.png [2] - http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-read...
talideon 12y ago
My guess is that it was turned into a PDF directly from a TeX DVI file with bitmap fonts rather than compiled directly into a PDF using outline fonts with pdflatex. Some people are just used to using their existing document processing pipelines rather than using more modern tools like pdflatex, I guess. Edit: the file predates pdftex. Back then, the file would've just been sent to a printer rather than rendered on screen for anything other than a preview, and it looks fine when rendered. If it was passed through pdflatex these days, it'd look much better.