Re: [NTG-pdftex] Re: [tex-implementors] Ugly rules in PDF

Donald Arseneau wrote:

Hans Hagen writes:

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WillAdams@aol.com wrote:

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I think ``horribly'' is a bit extreme. Rules are drawn like any other filled rectangle, and can be set to be anti-aliased in viewers which support that setting for graphic objects. Using a character is an interesting idea, but has difficulties as Hans noted.

get me right: replacing rules in math sounds ok to me, but not in other cases, which reminds me too much of slanted pictex lines built out of periods

True, math mode does not have the problem of selection, but using characters still sounds horrible. It *will* wind up being like pictex or that old sprite.sty in reverse.

The leap to characters is particularly excessive because most rule rendering problems can be relieved by using stroked lines instead of filled rectangles. Add a few heuristics of height/width and you are set.

nevertheless hartmuts suggestion to use a special built in rule char (type 1) and scale that horizontally or vertically makes sense since it then is rendered using the cooltype engine and proper hinting / antialiasing is done; in that case we have just one char for the horizontal bar in a root symbol (which itself is not much different than a bunch of strokes); it's a bit the best of both worlds i wonder how complicated it is to implement something like that so that we can see the results; i attached a sample file, the second line uses a scaled hyphen; i wonder how it renders different on low res screens (don't have one connected now) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------