Re: PNG output

["George N. White III" <gnwiii@gmail.com>]

On 7/12/07, w.neimeijer@hccnet.nl <w.neimeijer@hccnet.nl> wrote:

> I want to convert my standalone formulas to PNG to display these formulas
> on my website.
>
> What I am doing is the following
>
> \starttext
> \startTEXpage
> \startformula
> e^{i x} = \cos x + i \sin x
> \stopformula
> \stopTEXpage
> \stoptext
>
> and process this via texexec --pdf to get a PDF file.
> I tried to convert the resulting PDF file via gswin32c to png
> but the resulting PNG output is not so good.

Are you using the current version of gs?  There have been changes
to the font rendering over the years, so you want to try a current
version.

A quick way to get a second opinion is to install the emacs+auctex
bundle for Win32 to see how you like the preview images.

What does "not so good" mean -- there are lots of parameters to
adjust anti-aliasing, color models, and resolution with gs, but I'm not sure
about things like gamma.  ImageMagick's convert may provide an
easier interface.  If you are using pk fonts you may encounter problems
if the fonts resolution isn't "compatible" with the output resolution.

> Then I read dvipng could do the job, which means I have to produce dvi
> output via texexec --dvi but than I get complaints from dvips that it
> cannot find the file tex.pro for the specials. However a png file is
> produced.
>
> Help appreciated

In the long run, using pdf  has the advantage that the tools are supported
by a much wider community than the small set of people who have heard of
.dvi format.  The number of people who would be affected by a problem in
gs rendering is orders of magnitude larger than the number who would
notice a problem with dvipng.  The latter group can always switch to pdf and
gs, while the former group doesn't have viable alternatives.   As a  result,
assuming the problem is not related to TeX-specific font formats, it is very
likely that gs can do what you need today and that future version on future
platforms will also "work".

If you are still having problems, provide a minimal example (.tex
source and .png
image) along with the software versions so others can try to reproduce
the problem.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
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