Re: [Texmacs-dev] versioning scheme and PDF export

[david]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 05:04:49PM -0400, Leo wrote:
> On Sunday April 06 2003 15:22, Nix N. Nix wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > Unstable O_o ?!  In what way ?  I use TeXmacs 1.0.1.8 and have not found
> > /any/ stability issues whatsoever.  Could you please be more specific ?
> 
> I my email I never mentioned 1.0.1.8. Instead, I referred to 1.0.1.X.
> I think that the students experienced stability problems with 1.0.1.4 or
> 1.0.1.5. In any case, 1.0.1.X is a "bleeding edge" development tree and 
> its stability varies greatly from one release to another.

Well, it is true that *most* experimental releases are pretty stable.
But occasionally there are releases which are seriously broken. The
1.0.1.4 to 1.0.1.6 indeed had a lot of problems because a big
reorganization was in progress and some small error slipped in.

I agree that the versioning scheme is unconvential and that is a bad
thing.

Another problem is that there are *no* bugfix releases for TeXmacs.
When the devs completed some big iterations, Joris labels a release as
stable, and then all the development goes in further experimental
versions.

Are there proposals for a versioning practise, other than the
Linux-kernel convention?


> > I believe the fault with this lies in the 'ps2pdf' utility. I
> > tried converting both TeXmacs-generated PostScript files and ones
> > generated by other programs, and ps2pdf makes them all look ugly.
> 
> This is incorrect. Both ps2pdf and Adobe Distiller use whatever
> fonts are included (or referenced) in the original PS document.
> TeXmacs generates PS files using bitmap fonts only. Therefore, the
> resulting PDF files also contain only bitmaps fonts. On the other
> hand, LaTeX allows one to use native Postscript fonts without
> converting them to bitmaps. In that case the PDF output looks so
> much better.

Indeed the problem is not with ps2pdf, but instead with AcrobatReader
which purposefully renders Type3 (raster) fonts in an horrible manner.

When you display PDF produced by TeXmacs with GhostView (or other GS
based previewer) there is no problem.

But we acknowledge that the broken AcroRead is the standard so we plan
to fix the font issue soon (a few monthes from now). Indeed, using
Type1 fonts (when available) when exporting to PostScript will likely
be a first step towards PDF.

                                                            -- DDAA