Re: Lout website

[Mark Summerfield]

On Wednesday 30 July 2003 10:31, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 01:43:31AM +0800, K. H. Man wrote:
> > I wonder if anyone's managed to convert the 3.28 docs to PDF
> > with textures using something other than Ghostscript? It would
> > allow Sébastien to update the documents to 3.28.

Lout 3.28 seems to produce PostScript with textures that ghostview can't
display, but doesn't choke on: it just shows whitespace instead. The
textures print beautifully but ghostscript can't convert PostScript that
has these textures into PDF -- even version 8.00 just dies with a stack
trace. This is a great pity, but not lout's fault of course.

> Yes.  GNU Ghostscript 7.05 does not have any problem with textures.
> However, there are still several issues with the ps2pdf generated PDF
> files:
>
> *  the upper margin seems to be smaller in the PDF file than in the
>    original PS file (this may be a GS problem but this doesn't happen
>    e.g. with LaTeX generated PS files);
>
> *  ligatures seem to be broken (e.g. something like `fi' produces
>    overlapping letters followed by a white space);

This is due to a bug in ghostscript. It is definitely fixed in version
8.00.

> *  @Diag nodes that use the `translate' option produce weird things in
>    the PDF output when watched with xpdf: each such node gets displayed
>    twice, once where expected and once somewhere else on the page;
>    other PDF viewers display the same weird things.
>
> I'm not sure whether these are all Ghostscript bugs.  Does anyone have
> any idea on why this happens with Lout PS files and not with most other
> PS files?
>
> Thanks,
> Ludovic.

-- 
Mark.