[poppler] (no subject)

[mpsuzuki at hiroshima-u.ac.jp]

Hi,

Please post with appropriate Subject, I've overlooked
your post...

On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:29:45 +0800 (CST)
ddreamer at ms93.url.com.tw wrote:
>So, how can I fix poppler on my computer?
>Or do I need to wait until the next release of poppler?

About your own solution, there are several ways.

1) Modify application personally.

This is Cobra suggestion for Qt4 application. Although
poppler-qt4 has a switch to enable hinting in all fonts
in a document (disabled by default), Okular does not
touch the switch. So the insertion of the enabling of
the switch will improve the quality of Okular result
for PDF including MingLiU.

2) Modify poppler personally.

About Evince or poppler-glib based application for GNOME,
the fix of the application code is insufficient, because
poppler-glib uses CairoOutputDev that has no switch to
enable the hinting in all fonts in a document. This is
contrast with poppler-qt4.

2-a) Modify poppler only.

Also CairoOutputDev disable the hinting by default.
If you modfy the internal CairoOutputDev to enable
the hinting always, the quality by all applications
using CairoOutputDev or poppler-glib shows better
results for PDF including MingLiU.

2-b) Modify both of poppler & application.

Some people will complain as the hint-enabling makes
worse result for their favorite fonts, and they will
insist "hint-enabling in all poppler application is
overkill, violent solution. it should be restricted
to specified application".

At present, both of CairoOutputDev and poppler-glib
does not have a switch for the applications to enable/
disable the hinting. My proposal patch adds such switch.

By the using the switch in the applications (aslike
Cobra used a switch in poppler-qt4), we can restrict
the impact to selected applications.

3) Modify FreeType2 personally.

The most overkill and violent solution. Poppler disables
the hinting by default. If you modify the FreeType2
to ignore the hint-disabling flag, all applications
using FreeType2 show better results for MingLiU.

--

Which looks best for you?

Anyway, all of them are "personal solution". If you
upgrade anything in your computer, you may have to
rebuild the softwares. Also you will have a difficulty
to post bug report, because your applications are
not genuine status anymore.

Although I think it's unbearable situation for
Traditional Chinese users that most PDFs generated on
Microsoft Windows are unreadably broken on GNU/Linux,
situation, the personal solution should be recognized
as a temporal fix, and requires endless effort until
official fix.

Therefore, I'm trying to propose a fix that can be
accepted by the maintainers officially.

Regards,
mpsuzuki