Doc-view fonts

Doc-view fonts

[Haines Brown]

I upgraded to squeeze and thus emacs 23.2. Emacs 23 aquired the Doc-view
mode for viewing PDF files.

This works, but the antialiased fonts used to display the PDF are ugly
(more accurately, the cover page for a PDF article is very clear, but
the content pages following it are almost illegible). I suspect the
reason is that I need to install gs fonts or something. 

What do I need to install or configure to make the Doc-view documents
legible? The emacs (23) package does not recommend any such
installation.

[I apologize for how my name appears in the header "-->
gnu.emacs.gnus". Apparently there's a name clash somewhere that I have
not been able to pin down]

Haines Brown 

Re: Doc-view fonts

[Haines Brown]

asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:

> On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:31:02 -0500, Haines wrote:
>
>> What do I need to install or configure to make the Doc-view documents
>> legible? The emacs (23) package does not recommend any such
>> installation.
>
> I think this isn't quite a Gnus question?

I suspect it is a GNUS question in the sense that I can display the PDF
article just fine with xpdf, but in emacs only the cover page is legible
and all subsequent pages are only marginally legible. It seems either a
different (non-aliased?) font is being used by emacs or it can't find
the font it wants. That is, the issue seems to be emacs' access to
fonts, not that I can't properly display PDF files on my system.

>> [I apologize for how my name appears in the header "-->
>> gnu.emacs.gnus". Apparently there's a name clash somewhere that I have
>> not been able to pin down]
>
> It is a feature of Gnus - your own articles don't show your name but to
> where they were sent instead when displayed in the Summary.

It is a feature to hide my name in the summary? Everyone else has their
name shown in the line presented in gnus summary indicating who the the
message is from. 

> ,----[ C-h v gnus-ignored-from-addresses RET ]
> | gnus-ignored-from-addresses is a variable defined in `gnus-sum.el'.
> | Its value is 
> | "\\(asjo\\|adam\\)@\\(koldfront.dk\\|asjo.org\\)"
> | Original value was 
> | "asjo@koldfront\\.dk"
> | 
> | Documentation:
> | *From headers that may be suppressed in favor of To headers.
> | This can be a regexp or a list of regexps.
> | 
> | You can customize this variable.
> | 
> | This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
> | version 21.1 of Emacs.
> `----

I'm afraid you've lost me on this. It seems to say that From headers are
suppressed and in their place is the To header line. I the first, for
anyone visiting the news group already knows to what group the messages
are being sent, but not whom they are from. I want my real name and
address just like all other messages in the summary. What code can I put
in ~/.gnus to get that that?

> When I read your article, your name was displayed just fine.
>
>   :-),

And now I'm completely confused. When I look at messges in gnus
newsgroups, my message line appears like "--> gnu.emacs". You are saying
that it does not appear that way for you? I want to see something like
"haines@histomat.net <Haines Brown>" in the newsgroup summary lines. Are
you saying that is what you see there?

Haines

Re: Doc-view fonts

[Eric S Fraga]

Haines Brown <haines@HistoricalMaterialism.info> writes:

[...]

>> ,----[ C-h v gnus-ignored-from-addresses RET ]
>> | gnus-ignored-from-addresses is a variable defined in `gnus-sum.el'.
>> | Its value is 
>> | "\\(asjo\\|adam\\)@\\(koldfront.dk\\|asjo.org\\)"
>> | Original value was 
>> | "asjo@koldfront\\.dk"
>> | 
>> | Documentation:
>> | *From headers that may be suppressed in favor of To headers.
>> | This can be a regexp or a list of regexps.
>> | 
>> | You can customize this variable.
>> | 
>> | This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
>> | version 21.1 of Emacs.
>> `----
>
> I'm afraid you've lost me on this. It seems to say that From headers are
> suppressed and in their place is the To header line. I the first, for
> anyone visiting the news group already knows to what group the messages
> are being sent, but not whom they are from. I want my real name and
> address just like all other messages in the summary. What code can I put
> in ~/.gnus to get that that?

Set the above variable to something which doesn't match your name...

-- 
Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D)

Re: Doc-view fonts

[Tassilo Horn]

Haines Brown <haines@HistoricalMaterialism.info> writes:

Hi Haines,

>>> What do I need to install or configure to make the Doc-view
>>> documents legible? The emacs (23) package does not recommend any
>>> such installation.
>>
>> I think this isn't quite a Gnus question?
>
> I suspect it is a GNUS question in the sense that I can display the
> PDF article just fine with xpdf, but in emacs only the cover page is
> legible and all subsequent pages are only marginally legible.

Gnus is a mail and newsreader and has nothing to do with DocView, except
that both programs run on the emacs platform. :-)

Concerning your issue: DocView converts the PDF to PNG images, one for
each page, and then displays these images.  For the conversion, it uses
the `gs' (GhostScript) tool.  So if some fonts look bad, then it's a
problem with GhostScript, not with emacs, Gnus, or DocView.

Maybe the PDF contains embedded fonts that GhostScript cannot interpret
correctly, and xpdf simply decides to fall back to some default font?
In any case, if you found a solution, please let me know.

Bye,
Tassilo