Re: Bug in .eps output (or its interpretation?) on Linux: Ledger lines loose fill

[Markus Pfaff]

Am 30.10.2011 03:30, schrieb Nick Payne:
> On 30/10/11 08:22, MarkusPfaff wrote:
> > On my Kubuntu 11.10 system the .eps output generated from a .ly file
> > has ledger lines that loose their fill gradually from left to right.
> > You may see that in the attached example especially if you zoom in
> > heavily on such a line.
>
> If I open the eps file you attached using Evince on Ubuntu 10.04, there
> is no problem visible with the ledger lines, nor is there any problem
> with a PDF generated from the eps using Acrobat Distiller on Windows. So
> I would say that the problem is with the viewer rather than the file
> itself.

Nick, please try the following on your Ubuntu system: Open a new 
LibreOffice Writer document and drag the .eps into it (would be the same 
as to import it as a picture from a file). Now zoom in a lot
on the ledger lines.

Also interesting: Enlarge the picture in the LibreOffice Writer
document (hold shift key to keep the original width/height ratio). Print
the document.


It seems that LibreOffice uses ghostscript to interpret .eps as
well as for printing the document. If ghostscript was just a viewer
I'd not have a problem. Unfortunately ghostscript plays an important
role in a Linux system for conversion and printing of all .ps and .eps.
I doubt it is easy to find a workaround to circumvent it on the way
to a printed document.

To encircle the problem a little more I've tried to generate an
.eps from the same lilypond source under Windows. This file has the same 
behaviour: It will not show artifacts in the Win7 environment even if 
viewed with GSview (which uses the windows version 8.71 of 
ghostscript!). But on my Linux system the same semi-hollow ledger lines 
are there for that file again.

Of course I tried it also the other way round: Using the Linux generated 
.eps on Windows (again GSview). Result: No artifacts.

If you - happily - are not able to reproduce the problem on your system,
but want to take a look at it, I have attached two .png files generated 
on my Linux machine:

SimpleGeneratedByLilypond.png was generated adding the --png option to
  the lilypond command line given in my first mail and

simpleConvertedByImageMagick.png which was generated using this command:
  convert -density 600 Simple.pdf SimpleConvertedByImageMagick.png
  where the .pdf was of course generated by lilypond.

The high resolution .png shows the effect with high precision.

Markus

SimpleConvertedByImageMagick.png
Description: PNG image

SimpleGeneratedByLilypond.png
Description: PNG image