On Wed 21 Sep 2016 at 18:13:18 (+0200), to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 11:38:41AM +0100, Brian wrote: > > [...] > > > Although it is a different topic > > > > > > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26066535/ps2pdf-creates-a-very-big-pdf-file-from-paps-created-ps-file > > > > backs up your "pretty funny" feeling. KenS is a Ghostscript developer. > > Thanks for the link. > > From a cursory look at the .ps I had that impression: > > "The problem is the paps file, it doesn't actually contain any text > at all, in a PostScript sense. > > Each character is stored as a procedure, where a path is drawn and > then filled. This is NOT stored in a font, just in a dictionary." > > so paps basically "paints" the text. > > Yikes. I still hoped to be wrong :-( > > > Maybe this new version does not fix mouse copying from a PDF generated > > from paps' PS but it isn't in unstable anyway. (Furthermore, paps isn't > > in testing due to a FTBFS). > > Let's hope. In the meantime use a2ps (but I don't know how well that > handles Unicode/UTF-8). Perhaps paps's author had a strong reason to > do it that way.
Yes, Brian, thanks for the link. One reading of http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO-5.html suggests that paps may be doing it the only way possible, apart from the duplication of each occurrence of a glyph. I've just installed uniprint and I can't see that it does anything different, except produce a much larger file. $ paps --font="Freemono 10" --left-margin=54 --top-margin=54 --paper letter \ UNICODE-chars.txt > unicode-chars.ps $ uniprint -out unicode-chars-uniprint.ps -in UNICODE-chars.txt \ -font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf uniprint: printed 17 pages. $ ps2pdf unicode-chars.ps unicode-chars.pdf $ ps2pdf unicode-chars-uniprint.ps unicode-chars-uniprint.pdf 45395 UNICODE-chars.txt 7344022 unicode-chars.ps 3457331 unicode-chars.pdf 27775050 unicode-chars-uniprint.ps 7993797 unicode-chars-uniprint.pdf The comparison is as fair as I can make it: paps opens three font files AFAICT: FreeMono.otf, DejaVuSansMono.ttf and DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf, so I gave uniprint the second one. I gave up using a2ps at least a decade ago because it can't handle Unicode; AFAIK there's no sign of its adopting it at all. I'm always on the lookout for a "pa→pdf" successor to pa→ps, but see no sign of it on the horizon. Cheers, David.
