Font Issue

med2033 wrote on 2010-09-10:

Using the Direct Input feature of your Web site, the following code generates too much space following the 'W' character.

<html>
 <body>
  <p style="font-size: 6pt"><b>DELAWARE is AWARE of the problem with W's</b></p>
 </body>
</html>

Thanks for looking at the problem.

support wrote on 2010-09-10:

Try to increase the 'HTML Zoom %' value, e.g. to 200% -- that should improve text formatting.

The corresponding property in the API is called html_zoom.

med2033 wrote on 2010-09-10:

It's not a zoom issue. The code.

<html>
 <body>
  <p style="font-size: 6pt"><b>DELAWARE is AWARE of the problem with W's</b></p>
  <p style="font-size: 6pt">DELAWARE is AWARE of the problem with W's</p>
 </body>
</html>

produces

The only difference is the <b> tag being present in the mis-rendered text.

support wrote on 2010-09-10:

Did you try it? See the attached PDF.

The increased html zoom value causes that text is rendered to PDF in a higher resolution which results in nicer text formatting. The PDF font size itself is not affected.

med2033 wrote on 2010-09-10:

No, I hadn't tried it. Thank you. I noticed it as a difference caused by <b>, which seemed to indicate a font issue. I should have just tried your suggestion on the Direct Input page. I apologize.

The AI documentation says HTML zoom in percents. Defaults to 100%. Larger values can improve text formatting., which is accurate, but your explanation above is better. :-)

As you can see, I'm really interested in making pdfcrowd work for my application. I hope that I'm not causing you too much aggravation with explaining things.

PS - what is the minimum CSS font-size value? It appears anything 4 pts or less renders as 4 pts.

support wrote on 2010-09-10:

No need to apologize, we are glad we can help you.

As to the minimum CSS font-size value - it depends on the current HTML zoom value. It is 4 pts for 100%, higher zoom values allow smaller font sizes.

med2033 wrote on 2010-09-10:

So, the HTML zoom parameter is actually pretty important if you want high-quality PDF output! Good to know, since I'm really trying to match a certain look.

What is the upper limit on the zoom value? Why not set 200% as the default if it avoids issues like the above?

support wrote on 2010-09-10:

Yes, the HTML zoom parameter affects the quality of PDF output significantly.

We use 100% as the default since many badly designed web pages become broken when zoomed in.

There is no hard-wired limit on the zoom value, but high zoom values might lead to arithmetic overflows in PDF. You can experiment with it, but values around 300% seem to be ok.

med2033 wrote on 2010-09-10:

200% seems to render 1.333pt type legibly (i.e. 1pt type in screen land).

Nice product. Hopefully, it will be affordable when it comes out of beta.