Hey guys,

I just wanted to ask, I'm seeing much better font rendering in acroread vs okular. Is there any way to improve okular's hinting/font-smoothing?

Thank you,

For PDF files, Okular is not really responsible for the rendering - Poppler is.
Can you please provide a link to a PDF file where you are experiencing this issue?

bcooksley wrote:For PDF files, Okular is not really responsible for the rendering - Poppler is.
Can you please provide a link to a PDF file where you are experiencing this issue?

I wouldn't call it an issue per se, as I don't have a pdf that is mis-rendered with okular.
It's just that font smoothing looks better to me when I compare it to acroread or chrome's native pdf reader. The difference isn't huge but enough to notice it. Side by side, fonts are better hinted, more pleasant in acroread.

In okular there's no options about hinting or the backend. That's why I asked if there is a way to change it, since I really don't want to use acroread for my pdfs. So I'm in a position where acroread does better font rendering but okular is much faster and integrates better with kde.

I have a similar issue some pdfs get really bad in Okular, while open with acroread or MuPDF get much better rendering. Is there a way to change poppler to another 'backend"?

sorry i m new here, i whant to know about if there is a possibilty to configure okular s default settings for the "recension" tools. For example to set the default color of the marker.

g. cramirez

cramirez wrote:sorry i m new here, i whant to know about if there is a possibilty to configure okular s default settings for the "recension" tools. For example to set the default color of the marker.

g. cramirez

I'm not sure I know of a way. Maybe someone else can confirm.
I'm doing a lot of reviewing of pdfs and I find this perfect under linux. Check it out http://www.gnurou.org/blog/2008/09/09/f ... nder_linux

@cramirez: Are you referring to the "Review" tools which allow you to highlight text, add annotations, etc? If so - I do not believe that it is possible to change those colours. You could file a feature request I guess, not sure if any changes would eventuate due to it though.

This has been a poppler problem for ages. I've just gone back to KDE (from OS X) and I sorely miss proper font rendering. The default latex font (produced by pdflatex), for instance, looks terrible in Okular. Why haven't they sorted out font smoothing yet? Are there genuine KDE alternatives to Okular that do a decent job with font rendering?

Here's two screenshots that speak for themselves:

same zoom level

okular:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7985427/screenshots/okular.png
acroread:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7985427/screens ... roread.png

Night and day right?

Moved to Okular forum. Please be aware that PDF rendering is actually controlled by Poppler. It may also help to optimise your fontconfig settings.

Hi bcooksley,

my font rendering is pretty good but I see no change in Okular.
Ok so you're saying that the rendering is handled by poppler. Is there a way to change to another pdf render or optimize it to make it better? I'm asking because okular has absolutely no settings to control anything that relates to rendering or fonts. After seeing the two screenshots don't you agree that there's a big big difference?

thank you,

There isn't really another open source PDF rendering engine as Poppler does quite a good job. You may want to try tweaking your Fontconfig settings though, I suspect Acroread may be using different fonts.

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.

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.

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.

rendering is not performed by Okular, it uses the Poppler back end you should contact them