msdobrescu wrote:Take this, for example: http://assets.red-gate.com/community/bo ... -plans.pdf

It is pretty awful in Acroread itself, but still readable. In Okular is eye damaging.
There is a need for tuning, at least.

Just for comparison, on the following screenshot depicted the same document page (different fonts + picture) of the linked document in Okular 0.17.60 (poppler from git) Foxit Reader (6.0.5, wine), Abobe Reader for Linux 9.5.5, muPDF 1.1.

System: Mageia 3, x86-64, KDE 4.10.5.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/552 ... iewers.png

Can you tell me what is wrong with Okular/Poppler? I cannot see any bad thing in its rendering (I might be too heedless ). Please tell the page where I should see the wrong things.

The rendering itself, the pixelation, the barely visible letter lines, compared to others, especially Adobe's.
I have Okular 0.16.2 on KDE 4.10.2 on Windows, but the issues remain.
I'd say, in your picture, foxit is the best.

I think the problem shows much worse in small font sizes. When you zoom in, everything renders clearly. See this example comparing Adobe Reader and Okular:

http://i.imgur.com/crLBdLZ.png (click to zoom in to 100% on the image)

Especially note how the Author names under the title are rendered and the bold text in the abstract. Hinting is also wrong (see the spacing between B & J in the first word of the main body text: "OBJECT"), even though it has been enabled in Okular settings.

I have found this happens when rendering certain Truetype fonts (here MS Times New Roman, embedded in the document). It does not matter if the system ones are used or embedded ones. Other fonts look great and if you zoom in the document, things look much nicer. But you have to agree this example looks pretty terrible, doesn't it? This is quite a problem, since this tends to be the most common font in documents!

My setup is Okular 0.17.2 on OpenSuse 11.2 x86_64 with kde 4.11.2. I have Freetype subpixel rendering enabled from the suse repos. The version of Adobe reader shown is 9.5.5, which most likely uses its own font here. I also tried the Infinality Freetype patches but they did not seem to make a difference.

vespas wrote:I think the problem shows much worse in small font sizes. When you zoom in, everything renders clearly. See this example comparing Adobe Reader and Okular:

http://i.imgur.com/crLBdLZ.png (click to zoom in to 100% on the image)

Especially note how the Author names under the title are rendered and the bold text in the abstract. Hinting is also wrong (see the spacing between B & J in the first word of the main body text: "OBJECT"), even though it has been enabled in Okular settings.

I have found this happens when rendering certain Truetype fonts (here MS Times New Roman, embedded in the document). It does not matter if the system ones are used or embedded ones. Other fonts look great and if you zoom in the document, things look much nicer. But you have to agree this example looks pretty terrible, doesn't it? This is quite a problem, since this tends to be the most common font in documents!

My setup is Okular 0.17.2 on OpenSuse 11.2 x86_64 with kde 4.11.2. I have Freetype subpixel rendering enabled from the suse repos. The version of Adobe reader shown is 9.5.5, which most likely uses its own font here. I also tried the Infinality Freetype patches but they did not seem to make a difference.

Cannot reproduce here with the default Okular settings (hinting is disabled, as it is not recommended by Poppler developers, see Okular help). No subpixel rendering packages were installed. Default Mageia 3 (Okular and Poppler from git/master):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/552 ... okular.png

Tweaks to the line rendering can be made by backend tweaking (not used here):

http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeg ... g-pdf.html

You are correct, disabling hinting fixed rendering quality! (AND hints properly!) So the option works in the opposite way to what is expected: http://i.imgur.com/nQz7vHo.png on the LEFT, hinting is ENABLED. This should be a bug IMO.

yurchor wrote:Just for the record, the new versions of Poppler/Okular has the options for antialiasing/hinting.

As for me, the font and images rendering is better in Okular now and it can be switched to and fro for the different needs.

Which version of poppler is required for this? I compiled Okular 0.19.60 from source on Kubuntu 13.04, and I don't see the antialiasing settings mentioned in the documentation you link to. I have libpoppler28 version 0.20.5-1ubuntu3.