Re: DjVu (was: cross-platform font issue)

[John Mallinckrodt <ajm@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

> I'm grossed out.  PDF allegedly stands for
> Portable Document Format.  If it's not portable, what
> good is it????  ...  I wanted it to look nice, so I rendered it
> at high resolution. ... It's just a bitmap.  If PDF can't encode
> a bitmap, what can it do?????  The PDF looks fine on all
> my machines.  Something is rotten somewhere.

I'm not sure how you are producing your pdf but it *certainly*
shouldn't end up as a bitmap unless you are starting with a scanned
image of a printed page.  (In truth, I wasn't even aware that it was
possible to produce a bitmap pdf directly from a text file.)

> I decided to light a candle rather than just cursing the
> PDF.  I rendered a couple of the documents in DjVu format:
>   http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/degeneracy.djvu
>   http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/rapidity.djvu
>
> You will have to download the viewer plugin for your
> browser.  It's free.  Go to
>   http://www.lizardtech.com/download/
> and click on
>   Win - Mac - Solaris - MacX - Linux
> as appropriate.

Interesting, but despite several tries I wasn't able to get this page
to load before timing out.  Perhaps the website is simply overwhelmed
with Phys-L'ers trying to download the viewer.  (Right...)

> Note that DjVu is a really wonderful thing.  For example,
> rapidity.djvu is about 1/4th the size of rapidity.pdf,
> yet has vastly greater image quality.  Hit Ctrl-3 to
> zoom in and see the quality.  And/or hold the Ctrl key
> to use the mouse as a magnifying glass.

But, of course, this is completely to be expected of any textual
document that is encoded via characters rather than bitmaps.  The
same thing is true of standard pdf files.  I would like to see a fair
comparison between properly encoded djvu and pdf files.  At the
present pdf enjoys an enormous advantage in that virtually everyone
already has the viewer.  DjVu would need to offer significant
advantages to overcome its current liability in this regard.  One
possible advantage would be to offer a free encoder, but apparently
(from what you say) DjVu only does so for semi-exotic platforms.

--
John Mallinckrodt        mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm

Visit my Interactive Physics[TM] page at
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/ip.html
(featuring new "Molecular Interaction" modules)

... and get FREE MUSIC (worth every penny) at
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/personal.html#music