[XeTeX] xelatex pdf files much larger than latex dvipdfm pdf files

[Daniel Greenhoe]

--- On Thu, 4/24/08, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:
> If you're on the Mac, by default xelatex uses the
> XDVI-to-PDF  
> converter xdv2pdf which relies on the OS X Quartz
> "libraries" (if that  
> is indeed the correct term) to produce PDF output. As a
> result, the  
> output is in the PDF 1.3 format and does not use
> compression.

I am using Miktex 2.7 on a Windows XP platform.

I did take a look and found that xelatex is compiling using pdf version 1.4, while dvipdfm uses version 1.2. So this is strange -- the newer version of pdf is actually producing a pdf file that is about 2 times as large as the old version. 

Here are the results of producing pdf files using three different methods:
  1. latex+dvipdfm:     ~1.6Mbytes   pdf 1.2  (tex-->dvi-->pdf)
  2. xelatex:           ~3.3Mbytes   pdf 1.4  (tex-->pdf)
  3. xelatex+xdvipdfmx: ~3.3Mbytes   pdf 1.4  (tex-->xdv-->pdf)

Dan


--- On Thu, 4/24/08, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:

> From: Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [XeTeX] xelatex pdf files much larger than latex dvipdfm pdf files
> To: dgreenhoe at yahoo.com, "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
> Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008, 10:13 PM
> Le 24 avr. 08 à 15:44, Daniel Greenhoe a écrit :
> 
> > When I compile a book of mine using xelatex, the
> resulting pdf file  
> > is about 1.8 times as large as when I compile using
> latex together  
> > with dvipdfm. The xelatex pdf is ~3.7Mbytes and the
> latex-dvipdfm  
> > pdf is ~2Mbytes. Why would this be?
> 
> If you're on the Mac, by default xelatex uses the
> XDVI-to-PDF  
> converter xdv2pdf which relies on the OS X Quartz
> "libraries" (if that  
> is indeed the correct term) to produce PDF output. As a
> result, the  
> output is in the PDF 1.3 format and does not use
> compression.
> 
> If you make xelatex use xdvipdfmx instead of xdv2pdf, the
> PDF  
> production will rely on xdvipdfmx only. Output will be in
> PDF 1.4  
> format and use compression.
> 
> > The tex test file I tried was similar to this (with
> the dolit10.txt  
> > somewhat modified for compatibility with tex):
> >
> > \documentclass{book}
> > \begin{document}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \input{dolit10.txt}
> > \end{document}
> >
> > However, in this case, the xelatex pdf was actually a
> little smaller  
> > than the latex-dvipdfm pdf file, with both being about
> 1.4Mbytes.
> 
> With this test, I get (on Mac OS X 10.5.2) 7.7 MB output
> with xelatex  
> + xdv2pdf:
> 
> $ pdfinfo test.pdf
> Title:           XeTeX output 2008.04.24:1609
> Creator:        xdv2pdf
> Producer:       Mac OS X 10.5.2 Quartz PDFContext
> CreationDate:   Thu Apr 24 14:09:48 2008
> ModDate:        Thu Apr 24 14:09:48 2008
> Tagged:         no
> Pages:          510
> Encrypted:      no
> Page size:      595 x 842 pts (A4)
> File size:      8038865 bytes
> Optimized:      no
> PDF version:    1.3
> 
> and 1.5 MB output with xelatex + xdvipdfmx:
> 
> $ pdfinfo test.pdf
> Creator:         XeTeX output 2008.04.24:1601
> Producer:       xdvipdfmx (0.6)
> CreationDate:   Thu Apr 24 16:01:44 2008
> Tagged:         no
> Pages:          510
> Encrypted:      no
> Page size:      595.27 x 841.82 pts (A4)
> File size:      1589001 bytes
> Optimized:      no
> PDF version:    1.4
> 
> Bruno Voisin