Re: PDF file problem

[Mats Bengtsson]

> Chris Sawer wrote:
> 
> > A user of Mutopia has encountered the following problem when printing
> > out some PDF files from the archive. I'm at a loss to explain the
> > problem
> [...]
> >> When I print out music in a PFD file I get all the notes but not the
> >> staff lines.  I am using Windows 98.  Any ideas why I am having this
> >> problem and/or suggestions to correct it?
> 
> I don't know if this is relevant, but I've had problems with ps2pdf before
> when printing maths small (underlines disappeared).  It was OK on a laser
> printer, but didn't work on a HP Deskjet 720C.  I wonder if the following
> is the cause (from the ps2pdf.txt file which comes with ghostscript)?

This is not relevant here for two reasons:

- The bar lines are not typeset using font symbols but are
  drawn directly as narrow black rectangles.

- Your ghostscript is old. Since version 6.0, ghostscript (and
  hence ps2pdf) can handle all Type1 fonts (vector fonts) that
  are available in the Postscript file. Unfortunately, we don't
  have Type1 versions of the Lilypond fonts but that's another issue.
  I recommend that you upgrade to AFPL Ghostscript 7.00 or 
  GNU Ghostscript 6.51, see www.ghostscript.org.


I have seen similar problems for ordinary LaTeX documents with
some version of Ghostscript, however I think it was difficult 
even to repeat the problems when I tried a few days later. 

For the production of PDF files for Mutopia, I recommend:

- Use a fresh version of Ghostscript. The 5.50 version that
  Chris uses today is outdated.

- Run dvips with the flag -Ppdf. Then, at least the titling and
  copyright text will be typeset using vector fonts which looks
  much better on screen (shouldn't matter when you print with 
  ordinary printers). It might also help to solve the problems
  with disappearing bar lines, but I don't promise anything.
  The only disadvantage is that dvips will print a number of 
  warnings that it cannot produce the feta fonts in the 
  desired resolution, but the output should still be correct.


 /Mats


> > Limitations
> > ===========
> >
> > The most serious limitation of ps2pdf is that text in any font other
> > than the 14 Adobe base fonts (Courier, Times, and Helvetica families,
> > Symbol, and Zapf Dingbats) is converted to bitmaps.  ps2pdf also usually
> > converts strings to bitmaps if the string is in one of the 14 base fonts
> > but it contains a character that uses a non-standard encoding.
> 
> If this is the problem, then using gsview instead would fix it.  But it
> may well be a different problem.
> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> David

>