General ⇒ Printing PDFs make content look "fuzzy"

[tripwire45]

This seems to be the opposite problem that most people have according to this source:

http://www.ces.clemson.edu/~regroff/content/latex2pdf/

I compile my tex file to PDF using PDFLaTeX in Kile and review it in Document Viewer on my Ubuntu machine. The output looks fine. I've tried printing it on both a color and black-and-white printer and the text looks "fuzzy". Graphics are nice and crisp, but the text created in LaTeX looks almost smudged. In color, what I assumed was black text is slightly blue...almost purple, actually.

Since this is a user manual, it's not going to fly. Maybe both of our printers just have issues, but if that were the case, I'd think the graphics would come out fuzzy as well, and the don't. They are quite a bit sharper than the text.

I did find something on the web that addressed a fuzzy print out, but it had to do with a document printing fuzzy on one printer but clear on another:

http://tug.org/mail-archives/texhax/200 ... 02912.html

Has anyone else come across this issue?

Thanks.

-Trip

[localghost]

Check the document's properties (in KDVI or Okular) and look for embedded fonts. For good quality there should be Type 1 fonts embedded. If not, add as far as not done yet the activation of T1 fonts in your preamble.

Code: Select all

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

Best regards
Thorsten¹

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Trip,

you also can check the document properties (embedded fonts) with the acrobat reader.
Or just post such a pdf file here as attachment, we would look at it.
Btw. using T1 fontenc you should have the cm-super package installed. Available as Ubuntu/Debian package.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install cm-super

Stefan

[tripwire45]

Before I implement your suggestions, let me mention that I printed the document on my home printer (HP All-in-One Officejet) and the text was completely crisp.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Trip,

you could create an example pdf from your document (we dont need all content, just a sample page), post it here as attachment and we could look at the fonts and their quality.

Stefan

[tripwire45]

Ok, Stefan. Here it is.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Trip,

good! One look into the document properties confirmed, that is uses type 3 fonts of lower quality. cm-super should solve that. If you hesitate to implement cm-super, you may post paragraph2.tex and I will be glad to show you how the pdf looks with cm-super.

Stefan

[tripwire45]

Stefan, you rock! It worked perfectly. Thanks.