[texhax] More on Fedora 12/cmr12 font shrinking

[Tom Rokicki]

Right, I'd start by using plain old latex and dvips to generate two different
PS files (one sample page).  If they are different I can help figure out why
from those files.

If that's too difficult, why not just put up two sample pages, one from 11
and one from 12, in PDF format somewhere, and we can take a look on
our systems.

If you print the -12 generated PDF using the -11 system, do you still
see the same problem?  How about the -11 generated PDF using the
-12 system?

-tom

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Frank Shute <frank at shute.org.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 12:34:57PM -0500, Scott McMahan wrote:
>>
>> Thanks to the folks who have given me assistance on this baffling issue.
>> I have ruled out that it is not a change in LaTeX itself, but have not
>> found the cause of the shrunk font.
>>
>> I upgraded to Fedora 12 last week, and printed a draft chapter of a book
>> I was working on. I immediately noticed that the page had smaller print
>> than the other draft chapters I had printed.
>>
>> Because I had changed nothing in my print settings, I thought at first
>> that the font cmr12 had changed. I couldn't find any explanation for
>> what happened. Someone sent me an "old" LaTeX test page and a "new" one
>> from the versions before and after the Fedora 12 upgrade, and both
>> printed the same way. This has ruled out LaTeX itself as the source of
>> the shrinking font.
>>
>> I am using pdflatex to generate a PDF from my source files. I use Evince
>> to print this file. I have written two fairly involved books this way,
>> and this is the third. The only change in anything has been from Fedora
>> 11 to Fedora 12. I have not changed printers, the LaTeX source, etc.
>>
>> I looked at the print settings in Evince's print dialog, the printer
>> defaults, and the printer driver defaults. None of these have changed.
>> They are set to American letter size paper, the correct orientation,
>> etc. Plus they are set to the correct scale factor. There is not any
>> "best fit" or "fit to page" setting active. If it was something as
>> trivial as this, I'd have found it by now.
>>
>> There are no errors in CUPS' error log to indicate anything at all.
>> Whatever the Evince -> CUPS -> printer driver system is doing, it
>> doesn't think anything has gone wrong.
>>
>> I used the scale factor to scale the document to 105% and printed a test
>> page. I held the new page up along with an old page to a strong light,
>> and the individual letters are the same size, but the space between each
>> letter and word, plus the space between lines, is not the same, so this
>> can't be a scale issue.
>>
>> I'm baffled by what has happened to cause the font to shrink. I know
>> that what's printing out is not a 12-point font. Whatever is going on is
>> below the level of user control, either deep inside CUPS, or in the
>> latest version of the printer driver. I do not have the expertise with
>> print systems to debug this sort of thing. Nor the time, because I have
>> to finish this by the end of the year, so I don't have time to debug it.
>> I mainly wanted all three books to have a uniform look on the printed page.
>>
>> Scott
>
> CUPS will probably use Ghostscript to change the PDF to postscript if
> you're using a PS printer.
>
> Have you tried using dvips to produce a postscript version and then
> examine it with gv or print a page? If your printer supports
> postscript then that would avoid using Ghostscript (or Evince?) to do
> the pdf->ps conversion.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
>
>  Frank
>
>  Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html
>
>
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