Re: patch to fix text color in PDF output

[Andrew Hawryluk]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:11 AM, David Kastrup<address@hidden> wrote:
> Andrew Hawryluk <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Long ago I noticed that the text in our PDF manuals is fully black,
>> which results in rough-looking text when printed:
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2008-10/msg00059.html
>>
>> Attached is a patch which corrects this, and the printed output is
>> noticeably improved. (The on-screen output is nearly
>> indistinguishable.)
>>
>> I'll send this to the TexInfo folks as well.
>>
>> Andrew
>> From b2608a3c68f677729d5b72379d18b978b8c6236a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
>> From: Andrew Hawryluk <address@hidden>
>> Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:14:42 -0600
>> Subject: [PATCH] Fix TexInfo PDF output text color
>>
>> Changed CMKY colors to RGB colors, as RGB black prints
>> better than CMYK black on home printers.
>
> In that case, the "home printer" is broken.  It might be conceivable to
> use greyscale black as an alternative, but RGB black appears like a bad
> choice for printing.
>
> Could you specify the details of your "home printer"?
>
> --
> David Kastrup
>
>
>
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I have had identical results on two monochrome laser printers, using
both Evince and Acrobat Reader. The home printer is a Samsung ML-2010;
I don't remember what the work printer is. In either case, they seem
to compensate for the fact that cmyk (0 0 0 1) is not the darkest tone
available. Do you get different results in print?

Ideally, the main color would be set to a monochrome black in the PDF,
which requires either that color-setting syntax in texinfo.tex be
written to accept different color spaces, or that the colors hold the
expanded PDF literal. The first is beyond my TeX skills, while the
second seems like a kludge, but I can try it later tonight to see if
it solves the problem.

I also forgot "Doc:" in the commit message, so I'll change that.

Andrew