[racket-dev] [plt] Push #28945: master branch updated

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> I will push a repair for that soon.
>
> Just to clarify a little, `--pdf` files generated on Robby's machine
> look fine in Preview on my machine, and `--pdf` files generated on my
> machine look bad in Preview on Robby's machine. The machine dependence
> is in how the output is viewed, and not what is generated.

Is this to say that `--pdf` files always look bad on Robby's machine,
but ok on yours?

> For some reason, the way that PDF fragments are pulled in by `pdflatex`
> makes the fragments look worse in some PDF viewers/machines than the
> way that PS fragments are pulled in by `latex` plus `dvips`. I think it
> has to do with heuristics in PDF viewers, and I think there's no
> difference when going to a printer.

My impression was that PDF was supposed to be a pixel-accurate format,
at least when self-contained and not using system fonts, and thus
there wouldn't be any such heuristics. Is that not true?

Sam

> At Fri, 27 Jun 2014 11:30:06 -0400, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
>> I'm trying to determine how different they look on my machine, but
>> unfortunately the two processes put the lines at different places on
>> the page. Do you have an easy way to control that?
>>
>> Sam
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Robby Findler
>> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>> > No, the lower-down aspect is actually something else. The "x" and the
>> > "y" in the sans serif font on that line and the big "f" on the line
>> > above are from picts. The other characters on those lines are directly
>> > written in the latex code. The grammar is also a pict. The picts look
>> > worse in one screen shot than the other (the one whose name has
>> > "8.01.25" is the uglier one). This effect is, I believe, one of the
>> > main things people mean when they say that Redex's typesetting is ugly
>> > (and it is indeed ugly in larger quantities).
>> >
>> > Robby
>> >
>> > On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
>> > <samth at cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>> >> And the one with the second x in the bottom line lower down is the one
>> >> that's from --pdf and is not intended? Are there other differences
>> >> between the pictures?
>> >>
>> >> Sam
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Robby Findler
>> >> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>> >>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
>> >>> <samth at cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>> >>>> Is the program in the commit message what I should try to see the
>> difference?
>> >>>
>> >>> It looks different for me, yes. I'm attaching two screenshots for the
>> >>> difference I see between --pdf and --dvipdf.
>> >>>
>> >>> Robby
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