4 ms·
The fonts in almost every PDF that I have ever seen created with Latex just look horrible to me. Am struggling to understand why my perception is so much differ
by tux1968 12y ago
The fonts in almost every PDF that I have ever seen created with Latex just look horrible to me. Am struggling to understand why my perception is so much different than most people who seem very happy with the results.
Just googled "latex pdf" and looked at the very first pdf on offer[1], and indeed the fonts look horrible to me, like there is no anti-aliasing applied -- jagged and inconsistent weighting of stems.
Am genuinely confused here, and wish I had an explanation of why my perception of Latex output is so different from the majority.
[1] https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf
- dunham 12y agoThe original TeX fonts are rendered as bitmaps from an outline format that isn't very compatible with PDF (based on pen strokes rather than outlines). Some older toolchains embed these fonts as bitmaps. It doesn't look particularly good in a PDF. There now are TrueType versions of these fonts, that are default in modern TeX distributions, but not everybody uses them. (Especially older papers.). There are some scripts out there to do substitution in ps files, but not PDF.
- dubya 12y agoFrustratingly, Donald Knuth still uses the bitmap versions; see any of the TAOCP fascicles. I don't mind the appearance that much, but OS X does a terrible job handling files with bitmap fonts.
- frankzinger 12y agoIt's your system. That PDF looks fine on mine (there is definitely antialiasing, for example). This is how it looks on mine: https://imgur.com/qH5Kun0 https://imgur.com/qH5Kun0
- jimhefferon 12y agoAll the fonts in the linked-to document are Type 1. Looks great on my system (I use Acrobat Reader under Linux).
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoUnrelated to the rendering technicalities, I agree that Computer Modern (the default) is not a beautiful font. It's the Times New Roman of the LaTex world, saying "I don't give a shit about typography". But throw on something like Sabon with a proper microtype config, use some nice large chapter/section headings, and LaTeX will give you the paper equivalent of world class latte art.