[Tex/LaTex] Smooth rendering of bitmap fonts

bitmapfontspdftex

I would like to use the Concrete Math font in LaTeX, which is a bitmap font. The rendering with pdflatex is naturally poor-quality with jagged edges.

My solution so far has been to generate a DVI file and then convert to PDF using Linux's dvipdf. This tool effectively traces and smooths the edges of the glyphs and the end result is beautiful. However, using the DVI output format (with latex) causes a host of other problems with including figures, etc. For instance, you can't include .png or .pdf figures when using plain LaTeX.

Is there a way to somehow get the same bitmap font-smoothing effect in pdflatex? or via an intermediate format that still allows you to include at least .png figures?

Best Answer

You can set up in order that Metafont uses a high resolution device for producing the fonts; this should be run with pdflatex.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{concrete}

% MF mode dpdfezzz is for 8000dpi
\pdfpkmode{dpdfezzz}
\pdfpkresolution=8000

\begin{document}
\noindent
Some test text with\\
\textit{italic} and \textsl{slanted}.
\end{document}

Here's what appears on my screen at almost maximum zoom

enter image description here

You see that there's no jagged letter. Compare with what's obtained when the resolution and mode are the default

enter image description here

Load the images on a separate browser window or tab and maximize them to see the full comparison.

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[Tex/LaTex] CMYK poster example: fitting pdf page size to (bitmap) image size

How can I generate an A4 PDF, from an a4@300 PPI bitmap, using pdflatex (or if there is a better alternative to pdflatex, which one?)

You can use the standalone class to get a PDF which is just as large as the the image, which gives you A4 if the image is in the size of A4. If the image is actually a PDF document the pdfpages package would be better suited.

\documentclass[border=0]{standalone}
% For older version without the `border` option:
% \renewcommand{\PreviewBorder}{0bp}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\includegraphics{someA4image.png}
\end{document}

Which image format should I use, so that I ensure that the generated PDF file is in CMYK color mode?

If you are going to use pdflatex there are only PDF, PNG and JPG (or maybe MetaPost, but that support might also been dropped). You shouldn't use JPG because of the loss of quality. If you don't want to use PDF than only PNG remains. You could export the inkscrape document to EPS and import this in a DVI/PS latex document instead. Or convert the EPS to PDF using epstopdf and hope your printer likes it.

I personally wouldn't try to export, convert and import a poster from one software to the other like that. I would mind the loss of quality and the arising troubles.

[Tex/LaTex] concrete font for text in matplotlib

This does not answer your question directly, but is perhaps a possible workaround:

As I mentioned in Set fonts in matplotlib graphs equal to tex document you can perhaps export your plot with the script matplotlib2tikz. This gives you a .tex file with a TikZ/pgfplots figure that can be input in your document. This will use the same fonts as the document.

Edit: For reference, here is a brief explanation of installation and use.

Having downloaded the files from github, navigate to the folder in a command line, and run python setup.py install to install matplotlib2tikz.

In your Python script add from matplotlib2tikz import matplotlib2tikz, and add matplotlib2tikz('filename.tex') after your plot, e.g.

from numpy import arange
from matplotlib2tikz import matplotlib2tikz
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = arange(0,10,0.5)

plt.plot(x,x**2)
plt.title("A lovely plot")
plt.ylabel("$y=x^2$")
matplotlib2tikz('test.tex')

You can also specify the width and height of the plot in the Python script, as mentioned in the readme of matplotlib2tikz.

Best Answer

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