Truetype font rendering...

Greg Skelhorn

I have a couple of drawings here that use the MS Trebuchet truetype font. With Bricscad this font is not rendered well to hard copy. Does anyone have any tips on making it look better. The on screen rendering looks fine and the results from other programs are all okay using this font. I have attached a couple of images to show the difference between the on screen (in Bricscad) and hardcopy result.

Thanks...

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Greg, if by 'hard copy' you mean a PDF file from a virtual printer you could try experimenting with the DPI setting.
See attached image. The first line uses the Arial font and the second the Trebuchet MS font.

TTF_Problem_600dpi_vs_2400dpi.png

Roy Klein Gebbinck

... Using Bricscad's own PDF export option is perhaps the better advice.

Greg Skelhorn

@Roy Klein Gebbinck:

... Using Bricscad's own PDF export option is perhaps the better advice.

This has never worked well for me... perhaps I should look at it again.

Thanks

Greg Skelhorn

To update this, I am unable to create a hard copy with Trebuchet font rendered well. It does not matter whether I plot to PDF via a pseudo print driver or if I plot directly to HP plotter. The same font is rendered properly using desktop word processing software regardless of the text size and this works using the same PDF pseudo printer driver and the HP plotter. I tried increasing the PDF DPI and the printer / pre-press quality settings but I did not see the improvement you did Roy.

I tried the export to PDF option again (see attached images):

1. the fonts look good,
2. the colours do not match,
3. the geometry of the entities is incorrect (I did have the option to enable simple geometry optimizations on, I will try with that of later),
4. the file size is five times larger
5. solid hatches do not look as good
6. I feel uncomfortable that I can properly control scale, perhaps it is just me.
   

Both the PDF printer driver (two different ones tested) and the HP plotter routes result in colour matching paper plots with identical poor renderings on the font.

I give up on this one, and will change the font for now :-(   Printers are evil...

output-from-print01.jpg

output-from-export02.jpg

Roy Klein Gebbinck

FWIW: For my test in post #2 I have used version 2.2.8 of PDF reDirect Freeware: http://www.exp-systems.com/.
I confirm the quality problems with the built-in PDF export option. My post #3 was based on a drawing with only text. Playing with Pdf simple geometry optimization does not seem to improve the quality.

Greg Skelhorn

Thanks for the info Roy.  I have added a support request since it seems to be more than a possible misconfiguration.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Untested: tweaking the variable TEXTQLTY (smoothness of TTF) may help.

Walter Vardanega

 Sorry to come in so late. With other cad software I have found that some fonts do not even print. It may be that the font that you ar

Greg Skelhorn

@Roy Klein Gebbinck:

Untested: tweaking the variable TEXTQLTY (smoothness of TTF) may help.

Good thought Roy but it had no effect at all in my test. Sounded promising though...