[XeTeX] Jagged Type in PDF

[Bob Kerstetter]

Hello,

Is jagged type in PDF the normal when anti-aliasing is turned off?

Since the fonts are installed in the system or included in the file or 
both why do the characters look jagged in Preview when anti-aliasing is 
turned off? Why would you need to anti-alias installed fonts?

The same jaggedness shows up when viewing the same XeTeX-generated PDFs 
in Adobe Reader for Windows with smoothing is turned off.

Also, the PDF's look great in the TeXShop PDF viewer. Is the TeXShop 
viewer always anti-aliased?

For my example document, I used skia.tex from Jonathan's site---that 
way I know it's probably not my mistake. :)  I don't believe it's a 
XeTeX problem since I get the same jagged results from both TextEdit 
--> PDF and Word --> PDF using the same font in the source doc. Is 
jagged just the nature of PDF when smoothing is disabled?

So, why am I just noticing this after using TeX-etc on the Mac for two 
years? Normally, I create either printed documents, which always print 
nicely, or documents that get converted to HTML from LaTeX source via 
TeX4ht.

Thanks.

Bob