[Doc-SIG] Issues with 2.1 doc PDF files

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Dinu Gherman writes:
 > I've just noticed that there are considerable differences
 > between the PDF files documenting Python 2.1 and those for
 > 2.0. Basically, these are:
 > 
 > - file sizes are much bigger for 2.1 (50-100%)

  Yeah, I thought they looked a little large, but wasn't sure why.
I've also noticed (and this isn't new) that the A4 versions are quite
a bit larger than the US-Letter versions: about 50% for the PDF, not
so much for the PostScript.  I have no idea why this would be the
case.  I presume you were looking at the A4 version.

 > - fonts are approximated with pixelized bitmaps

  That's not good.

 > As a result you get:
 > 
 > - much longer page building times in PDF readers
 > - considerable longer search times
 > - much longer print times (probably - haven't checked) 
 > 
 > I've not verified this for each PDF file (it's prominently
 > obvious for the tutorial, though), but I assume the same 
 > effects can be observed for all of them, when comparing with 
 > corresponding files from the previous release.

  This would be something to look at -- recall that we added some
magic to the tutorial to control interpretation of the document
encoding, so that some Latin-1 characters would be typeset correctly.
(This was at your prodding, as I recall!  ;-)  Could you please look
at at least one of the other documents to see if they exhibit the same
symptoms?

 > So, I'm really curious what the reason for this phenomenon
 > could be? If there isn't any, I suggest reproducing the 
 > files to no longer show the described effects as they will

  If you can tell me how to control these things, I'm sure we can
build another distribution.  I have no idea how to control this --
this goes deeper into the LaTeX/pdfLaTeX magic than I'm familiar
with.

 > definitely distract people from reading the files online
 > and simply lead to a bad overall impression about their
 > generation process, if not even their content.

  Do people really use the PDF onscreen?  I've always imagined Windows
users use them to print from, since PostScript printers are less
common under Windows than under Linux & Unix.  I'd be curious as to
whether onscreen display or printing is widespread for the PDF
version -- for onscreen viewing I'd expect a very different layout.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Digital Creations