Ok, here's a question. I know this question comes up occasionally. I have been one of the people bringing it up. Why do lilypond PDF's look crappy on-screen, even though they print fine? particularly on windows.
Here is a simple example. This screen shot is from around page 15 of the lilypond pdf manual, as displayed on my computer: http://www.nabble.com/file/p11699420/ScreenHunter_05%2BJul.%2B19%2B15.55.jpg here is an example I created with current stable Lilypond: http://www.nabble.com/file/p11699420/ScreenHunter_04%2BJul.%2B19%2B15.53.jpg Notice that some stems and barlines are thicker than others. Also, the spacing between staff lines does not appear to be consistent to me. Those were both displayed at 100% in adobe reader 8.x Can anything be done to improve it? I don't know enough about postscript to analyze it and find the culprit postscript code. But I sure wish someone who does know would figure it out. here is some more background that my help: 1 - I have had the same problem on Windows Finale for years 2 - On Mac Finale, the PDF's produced through built in OSX support look great on screen, and the same PDF's can be viewed on windows and also look great there. On windows finale, the PDF's produced look terrible, no matter which machine you use to view it. So in other words, there is something about the PDF creation process on the Mac that creates a PDF which can be viewed well on screen on both the Mac and Windows. However, something about the windows PDF creation process that doesn't look acceptable on screen. 3 - I found out a work-around for #2 on windows. If I use the "Compile Postscript Listing" command in Finale to render the entire score as a postscript file. Then I exit Finale and use Ghostscript to convert the ps file into a PDF file, then I end up with an excellent PDF which views well both on screen and print. 4 - This leads me to believe that the main reason the WinFinale PDF's were having a hard time is because Finale was not sending the "ideal" postscript to the printer driver. It must be sending some other generic vector information and then letting the printer driver create postscript if it makes sense to. A finale expert explained to me that Finale actually sends significantly different stuff to the printer driver than what it compiles into a ps file. For example, beams are comprised of many small lines next to each other, for some silly reason, as opposed to one thick slanted line that can be done in postscript. In any case, what I have found is that I take the "ideal" postscript compliation from finale and use that to create a PDF with ghostscript, it works just fine and I end up with a beautiful PDF on screen. 5 - Knowing the above, I try to do the same with lilypond, convert the ps file manually with ghostscript, which is sort of a moot point since that is what lilypond does normally anyway, and the PDF's still look bad on screen. 6 - For whatever its worth, when I use a ghostscript-based print driver to create PDF's with Overture, they look just fine on screen and print, and that is without any special postscript rendering first or anything. Overture does not understand anything about postscript like Finale does. So it is sending whatever it sends to the printer as generic print commands. And ghostscript creates PDF's from it that blow away both Lilypond and Finale when used that way. I only mention this to show that it *IS* possible. 7 - I have tried Adobe distiller as well and it produces exactly the same results as ghostscript. No better, no worse. Just more expensive option and perhaps more complicated to use compared to the freebies that are based on ghostscript. Anyone have any thoughts? Any work-arounds for making PDF's from lilypond that look good on screen AND print(not including generating PNG files, etc.??? thanks -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/PDF-Problem-tf4114229.html#a11699420 Sent from the Gnu - Lilypond - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user