LyX, LaTeX, PS, PDF

[bscott at ntisys.com]

  Yes, the alphabet soup in the subject line is actually intended.  :-)

  I have been playing with LyX (http://www.lyx.org) to write documentation.  
It appears to be more or less what I am looking for, the lack of
user-definable character styles notwithstanding.  As part of a recent
project, I wanted to generate PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format output for
distribution.  LyX includes an option to generate PDF output.  However, when
viewed in Adobe Acrobat Reader, the visual quality of the text rendering
sucks.

  By exporting various formats, and using various conversion tools directly,
I have been able to determine that the LaTeX output from LyX is valid, and
produces a DVI file that looks fine when viewed with "xdvi".  If I convert
said DVI file to PostScript using "dvips", the PostScript looks fine on
screen, or when printed on our HP LaserJet.  So far, so good.

  If I convert said PostScript to PDF using "ps2pdf", and view it in
Acrobat, it looks bad on screen.  But if I *print* from Acrobat, the
resulting PostScript looks fine on-screen in GhostView, or on paper from our
printer.

  So the issue is somewhere between ps2pdf and Acrobat Reader (inclusive).  
One thing that occurs to me as a possibility would be if ps2pdf is somehow
choosing a font that Acrobat Reader does not have (or has a poor version
of), but GhostScript and our printer do have.

  Anyone know what I might do to fix this?

  (Note that I have zero knowledge of LaTeX and TeX, other than to say I
know what they are used for.)

  My goal here, FWIW, is to distribute documentation written in LyX so that
it can be viewed on Linux, Unix, Mac, Windoze, etc, etc.  PDF generally
works well for this, while still maintaining a fair degree of accurate page
reproduction.  I can (and currently do) fall-back on plain-text or HTML, but
such formats do not look as "slick" as a PDF does.

  Software environment:

  Red Hat Linux 7.3
    XFree 4.2.0-8
    TeTeX 1.0.7-47
    GhostScript 6.52-9.4
  LyX 1.2.0, built from pristine sources
  Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.x, on both Linux and Windows

  advTHANKSance

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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