Re: Doc-view fonts

[Haines Brown]

Stefan, I've tried to find out about how Doc-view, xft and ghostscript
are related in emacs PDF rendering, but without much luck.

I understand that Emacs 23.2 uses xft by default to gain
anti-aliasing. However, it seems that emacs' "display system" or
doc-view mode are independent of xft or any anti-aliasing. I was unable
to find out why anti-aliased fonts are not used to build the PNG image.

Do emacs' "display system" and Doc-view mode refer to the same thing? 
In any case, I can't take it very seriously:  

  a) Because I'm viewing a PNG, I can't select text in it for
  pasting. So is Doc-view mode merely for passive reading of a text? 

  b) But apparently it is not for that either: the non-anti-aliased font
  used to build the image of the text is very diffiult to read. So just
  what is Doc-view mode for?

  c) There is no message indicating that a PDF can't be displayed
  because it is broken, but only a hang of the conversion process. 

  d) As you point out, the search facility is of little use.  

I have none of these problems when I do: "! xpdf file.pdf". Am I
therefore to conclude that Doc-View is an experiment gone awry and that
one ought not to use it? Or are all my difficulties because I'm not
making proper use of Doc-view or have left something out that would make
it useful?

Haines Brown