Bug 213998

Summary:	poor rendering of type1 fonts in DVI files
Product:	[Applications] okular	Reporter:	Sergei Ivanov <svivanov>
Component:	DVI backend	Assignee:	Okular developers <okular-devel>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	aacid, luigi.toscano, svivanov
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	screenshot DVI file

Description Sergei Ivanov 2009-11-10 16:04:17 UTC

Version:           0.9.3 (using KDE 4.3.3)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

Outline fonts look worse in okular than their bitmapped counterparts.
They are thinner, less uniform and harder to read at low resolutions.

Evince, xdvi and (AFAIR) kpdf do not have this problem.
The dvips + ghostscript combination has this problem
on screen (but not on a 600 DPI printer);
dvipdfm + okular does not have this problem (with a patched poppler). 

To reproduce: load a DVI file such that some of its fonts have type1 versions installed on the system and some do not. Observe the difference.

I will attach a test DVI file and a screenshot. The DVI uses two fonts:  CM and LH. CM is the standard TeX font and LH font is basically CM plus Cyrrilic letters, the Latin part is the same. In the screenshot the CM fonts are outline and LH fonts are bitmapped.

Comment 1 Sergei Ivanov 2009-11-10 16:06:55 UTC

Created attachment 38230 [details]
screenshot

Comment 2 Sergei Ivanov 2009-11-10 16:08:48 UTC

Created attachment 38231 [details]
DVI file

Comment 3 Albert Astals Cid 2009-11-10 20:43:22 UTC

kpdf didn't render dvi so obviously didn't work
kdvi works though and since our code is mostly a copy of it, shouldn't be "that" hard to make it work.
Luigi can you have a look?

Comment 4 Luigi Toscano 2012-07-15 22:54:53 UTC

Can you still reproduce this problem? I think it is (was) due to hinting setting, and the  default rendering should be better now, as the default hinting was changed. In the version of Okular shipped with KDE SC 4.4 (so the version after the one where you found the problem), a new hidden configuration key for hinting has been introduced:
https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kdegraphics/okular/repository/revisions/27830a988ef5c98aafee6ad96f6904b57bbed094
The default value of this key is 'Disabled', while hinting was previously enabled (at least for DVI).

Comment 5 Albert Astals Cid 2012-11-14 14:14:27 UTC

No answer in 4 months, I'll assume it's fixed, please reopen if you can still reproduce