Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 76492
openoffice PDF converter produces bad fonts
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:47:52 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021003 Description of problem: The openoffice PDF converter, which can be reached from File->Print, and then picking 'PDF converter' as the printer name, generates PDF files that have really ugly, aliased fonts. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): openoffice-1.0.1-8 ghostscript-7.05-20 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Download the presentation: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~wtcorrea/misc/egpgv02.sxi. 2. Try to print it to a PDF file using File->Print, and then picking 'PDF converter' as the printer name. Actual Results: Generated PDF file will have bad fonts. Expected Results: Generated PDF should have nice, anti-aliased fonts. Additional info: When I was using Red Hat 7.3, Ximian GNOME, and openoffice 1.0.1 downloaded from http://www.openoffice.org, I was able to generate a postscript file from File->Print, and then generate a nice, anti-aliased PDF file using ps2pdf without any optional arguments. I can't do that anymore using Red Hat 8.0.
I am not sure what is meant by "bad fonts". If I use only Type I fonts in the OO document, the resulting PDF document will include outlines of non-standard fonts. This produces a high quality result in any PS device. However, if one attempts using TrueType fonts in the document, the generic OO PS driver will not include Type 42 fonts (TT under PS) in the .ps file. ps2pdf will then include Type 3 bitmap fonts in the .pdf. This will display poorly with the Acrobat reader -- ggv does a better job scaling Type 3 fonts to screen resolutions. Acrobat's "Document Properties/Fonts" will give you complete information on what fonts are actually used in the document. The solution would be a better PS driver in Open Office.
A workaround I discovered by trial and error:- - Use ttf2pt1 <http://ttf2pt1.sourceforge.net/> to convert all your TrueType fonts to Postscript Type 1 fonts. Store them in /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/ttf2pt1 or similar. - Remove references to your TrueType font directories from /etc/X11/fs/config - Add a reference to /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/ttf2pt1 to /etc/X11/fs/config - Keep/Add references to your TrueType font directories to /etc/fonts/fonts.conf (so as to keep screen rendering optimal). - /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart - Try now. Ghostscript will use the equivalent Type1 fonts when it encounters a Type42 font in the OpenOffice-generated PostScript it converts to PDF. An alternative would be to hack the GhostScript config to include references to the Type1 fonts, but the format of the config file isn't pleasant to generate if you have lots of fonts. If/When xfs becomes integrated with fontconfig, it'll have to be done this way (or have OpenOffice convert TTF fonts to Type1 and embed the results in the PostScript it generates).
Please try current OOo 1.1.0, and reopen if problem still occurs. Specifically, use the File->Export to PDF functionality and see if that works.