[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[Rudolf Sykora]

Hello,

I typeset my documents with
cat $stem.ms 9 pic| 9 tbl| 9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post |9 psfonts >$stem.ps
and I encountered a strange problem.
Although on screen, in gv, everything is fine, when printed, some of
my big brackets---which are made up from several parts---, produced,
e.g., with 'left (', do not properly align: the lower part is shifted
like this:
 _
/
|
   |
   \ _

Can, please, enybody explain and if possible help?

Thanks
Ruda

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[Rudolf Sykora]

Well, at least it seems I found some (temporary?) work-around...
If I convert resulting ps to pdf with ps2pdf, the printed pdf is ok.
But, anyway, if you could please comment...

Thanks
Ruda

On 16 March 2011 12:37, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I typeset my documents with
> cat $stem.ms 9 pic| 9 tbl| 9 eqn|9 troff -ms|9 tr2post |9 psfonts >$stem.ps
> and I encountered a strange problem.
> Although on screen, in gv, everything is fine, when printed, some of
> my big brackets---which are made up from several parts---, produced,
> e.g., with 'left (', do not properly align: the lower part is shifted
> like this:
> ?_
> /
> |
> ? |
> ? \ _
>
> Can, please, enybody explain and if possible help?
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[erik quanstrom]

On Wed Mar 16 09:19:56 EDT 2011, rudolf.sykora at gmail.com wrote:
> Well, at least it seems I found some (temporary?) work-around...
> If I convert resulting ps to pdf with ps2pdf, the printed pdf is ok.
> But, anyway, if you could please comment...
> 

sounds like a font problem.  troff is using different
metrics than the font that was originally used.

- erik

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[Jeff Sickel]

It is not just a font problem as discussed heavily leading up to 5eIWP9 (see use of sqrt).  Eqn needs to be revisited and modernize to support output to resolutions > 100-300 DPI.  Until then, brackets, sqrt, and many other elements that make TeX output nice and clean will remain problematic with Plan 9's eqn.

There are markers inserted into the generated PostScript in case someone wants to play around with custom tuning.  That could help investigate where in eqn's output tuning should be handled for modern systems.

Nice comments from p9p's eqn source:

/* sqrt.c: */
	/* sqrt is hard!  punt for now. */
	/* part of the problem is that every typesetter does it differently */
	/* and we have several typesetters to run. */


Maybe fixing eqn output should be a GSoC project.

-jas


On Mar 16, 2011, at 8:54 AM, erik quanstrom wrote:

> On Wed Mar 16 09:19:56 EDT 2011, rudolf.sykora at gmail.com wrote:
>> Well, at least it seems I found some (temporary?) work-around...
>> If I convert resulting ps to pdf with ps2pdf, the printed pdf is ok.
>> But, anyway, if you could please comment...
>> 
> 
> sounds like a font problem.  troff is using different
> metrics than the font that was originally used.
> 
> - erik
> 
> 

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[Rudolf Sykora]

> It is not just a font problem

Well, I feel there are 2 separate things.
1) Eqn's output is usually typographically worse than TeX's. There are
definitely reasons for this, mainly eqn's simplicity. This is not what
bothers me now.
2) The very problem that I face. I produce .ps, it seems ok on screen
in gv. It prints wrong. When ps2pdf'ed, resulting .pdf prints ok.There
must be traceable reason. And there should also be, I believe, some
idiot-proof procedure to enforce a good result when printing .ps.
Isn't it so, that I should be able to embed all needed fonts into the
.ps and that then the .ps sould print the same anywhere? I thought
this is what tr2post together with psfonts do. But I must be
mistaken...

Thanks for further comments.
Ruda

[9fans] troff eqn problem, misalignement of big brackets (at least in p9p)

[Steve Simon]

I assume the problem is to do with the fonts your
printer has, and the act of converting the ps to a pdf
adds the fonts necessary.

I reckon the best way to check what is responsible for poor
typsetting is to try running troff's output through proof(1).

It is not necessarly the nice-est looking rendering of your
document - due to a lack of antialiasing of fonts I suspect,
but if you zoom in the layout should accurately reflect what troff
thinks it has done.

-Steve