Volker Kuhlmann
It's been annoying me for years that printing web pages from konqueror produces some braindead rubbish where fonts are outline-traced with polygons somehow when creating PostScript output (there is no pdf output from KDE),
There is but I think it uses ps2pdf (i.e. Ghostscript).
which is then converted into a type 3 (bitmap) font by ghostscript.
Apparently not anymore if you use konqueror4: mfabian@magellan:~$ ll print* -rw-r--r-- 1 mfabian suse 198792 2008-04-29 18:58 print3.pdf -rw-r--r-- 1 mfabian suse 1111239 2008-04-29 18:53 print3.ps -rw-r--r-- 1 mfabian suse 87409 2008-04-29 18:58 print4.pdf -rw-r--r-- 1 mfabian suse 214270 2008-04-29 18:52 print4.ps mfabian@magellan:~$ These are printouts of the test page http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/fonts.html print3.ps has been printed from /opt/kde3/bin/konqueror and print4.ps has been printed from /usr/bin/konqueror (i.e. konqueror from KDE4). The .pdf files have been created by ps2pdf (i.e. ghostscript). pdffonts (from xpdf-tools) shows that indeed all TrueType fonts have been embedded as Type 3 in case of the print3.ps produced by konqueror3: mfabian@magellan:~$ pdffonts print3.pdf name type emb sub uni object ID ------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- --------- [none] Type 3 yes no yes 198 0 GYTYEM+AdobeTimes Type 1C yes yes no 304 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 441 0 OKUUUL+NimbusMonL-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 373 0 CQSLYV+NimbusRomNo9L-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 302 0 Courier Type 1 no no no 306 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 14 0 GSYXPF+AdobeHelvetica Type 1C yes yes no 203 0 [none] Type 3 yes no no 134 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 63 0 Courier Type 1 no no no 375 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 301 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 268 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 167 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 369 0 [none] Type 3 yes no no 235 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 335 0 MJRBZG+URWChanceryL-MediItal Type 1C yes yes no 508 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 506 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 474 0 OKUUUL+NimbusSanL-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 201 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 407 0 [none] Type 3 yes no yes 96 0 mfabian@magellan:~$ But when the print4.ps produced by konqueror4 is converted to pdf by ps2pdf and the fonts are checked with pdffonts, you see that there are no Type3 fonts embedded anymore: mfabian@magellan:~$ pdffonts print4.pdf name type emb sub uni object ID ------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- --------- CQSLYV+NimbusRomNo9L-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 27 0 GSYXPF+LuxiSans Type 1C yes yes no 42 0 OKUUUL+DejaVuSans Type 1C yes yes no 14 0 GYTYEM+Times-Regular Type 1C yes yes yes 29 0 GSYXPF+LuxiSerif Type 1C yes yes no 44 0 GSYXPF+AlbanyAMT Type 1C yes yes no 16 0 GYTYEM+Courier Type 1C yes yes no 31 0 GSYXPF+LuxiMono Type 1C yes yes no 46 0 OKUUUL+NimbusSanL-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 18 0 Courier Type 1 no no yes 39 0 GYTYEM+CourierNewPSMT Type 1C yes yes no 33 0 MJRBZG+URWChanceryL-MediItal Type 1C yes yes no 48 0 Helvetica Type 1 no no yes 20 0 OKUUUL+CumberlandAMT Type 1C yes yes no 35 0 WAZTNM+Times-Roman Type 1C yes yes no 21 0 OKUUUL+NimbusMonL-Regu Type 1C yes yes no 37 0 VGRYXP+Helvetica Type 1C yes yes no 8 0 GSYXPF+TimesNewRomanPSMT Type 1C yes yes no 23 0 VIEUNM+ArialMT Type 1C yes yes no 10 0 GSYXPF+ThorndaleAMT Type 1C yes yes no 25 0 GSYXPF+Arial-Black Type 1C yes yes no 40 0 OKUUUL+ComicSansMS Type 1C yes yes no 12 0 mfabian@magellan:~$
No good (lousy quality, big files, can't copy text out, seriously below standard).
As you can see above in the “ll print*” output, print3.pdf with the Type3 fonts is bigger indeed. But I cannot reproduce neither the ugliness nor the copy problem. The Type3 fonts in print3.pdf look nice even at zoomlevel 6400% in acroread. Equally good as the same fonts when print4.pdf is viewed at the same zoomlevel in acroread. And I can copy and paste text just fine from both print3.pdf and print4.pdf just fine.
Now I find that this only happens with truetype fonts, but not with type 1 (postscript) fonts (though some parts of the page are always printed with truetype).
Seems to be caused by KDE3 because it doesn’t happen anymore with KDE4.
Of course, the default font config of openSUSE switches completely to truetype and forgets all about postscript as soon as one installs e.g. the agfa fonts. I always thought these fonts to be an optional nice-to-have but didn't realise just how much they're screwing up. Today's testing with KDE 3.
I don't think much of the default font resolution. Am I alone here? Is this something that should be an option/choice? How does one actually change it (I never quite got the hang of all the X11 font stuff)?
I don’t know what you mean by “default font resolution”.
Maybe size?
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Mike FABIAN