David L. Johnson wrote:
Paul A. Rubin wrote:
August Linuxland wrote:
I just tried to use LyX for my little paper I have to write, but
there seems to be some issue with my Preferences.
Here are two versions of the same Document, one processed through
LyX, the other processed through TeXShop, which both use pdflatex:
www.pogona.net/eight_lyx.pdf www.pogona.net/eight_texshop.pdf
As you can see, there's a big difference in Quality. Maybe someone
has a tip on how to improve the output quality of LyX.
What did you do in LyX to generate the first file: View->PDF
(pdflatex), File -> Export -> PDF (pdflatex), or something else?
Paul's explanation is much more complete than I can provide. I
presume that LyX turns it into a dvi first, then exports to pdf, and
that last converter (dvipdf? -- depends, probably, on your TeX
distribution and your OS) is not very good --- for the reasons Paul
mentioned.
LyX has three ways for creating PDF output, and they
works like this:
File->Export->PDF(dvipdfm)
LyX exports a .tex file,
LaTeX makes a .dvi file
dvipdfm turns that into pdf.
File->Export->PDF(pdflatex)
LyX exports a .tex file
pdfLaTeX makes a .pdf directly
File->Export->PDF(ps2pdf)
LyX exports a .tex file
LaTeX makes a .dvi
dvi2ps makes a postscript file (.ps)
ps2pdf makes a .pdf
I seem to remember that the dvipdfm way is getting
outdated, as dvipdfm isn't maintained much.
The pdflatex way is the fastest by far, and
necessary if you want to improve line-breaking and
hyphenation by using the microtype package. Also
nice if you're including jpg/png bitmaps, as they
won't need conversion to postscript.
The ps2pdf way is the slowest, and necessary
if you want to use pstricks for your graphics.
This is also the process used for printing (File->Print)
I usually have better luck with ps2pdf than with dvipdf4 or pdflatex.
Also, it may print better than it displays.
A .pdf usually prints nice anyway. If you want it to look nice
_in acrobat_ then you have to consider acrobat's own
peculiarities and basically avoid bitmap fonts. Fortunately,
LyX supports many vector fonts that look good in
acrobat.
Document->Settings->Fonts, and select
something other than "default" or "Computer Modern"
(which usually is the default.) "Latin Modern" will
get you a vector version of the same font, so
it looks good in acrobat and prints the same way.
Helge Hafting
