The recommendation at
https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/251ca80557e3599332c218c8b5c60029
to use
convert -density 300x300 TOOLIGHT.pdf -monochrome \
-quality 100 DARKER.pdf
works pretty well (the alternative -threshold 80% on that page
doesn't seem to work at all, at least not for me).
But I'm wondering if there's any better method to darken pdfs,
i.e., even darker while preserving antialiasing.

Also, most stuff I want to print is from arxiv.org, whereby
I can usually download latex source as well as pdfs.
What fonts or \usepackage{} and/or other preamble stuff
could I change so that pdflatex would produce darker pdfs
to begin with?
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

On 8/7/23 9:33 AM, John Forkosh wrote:
> The recommendation at
> https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/251ca80557e3599332c218c8b5c60029
> to use
> convert -density 300x300 TOOLIGHT.pdf -monochrome \
> -quality 100 DARKER.pdf
> works pretty well (the alternative -threshold 80% on that page
> doesn't seem to work at all, at least not for me).
> But I'm wondering if there's any better method to darken pdfs,
> i.e., even darker while preserving antialiasing.
>
> Also, most stuff I want to print is from arxiv.org, whereby
> I can usually download latex source as well as pdfs.
> What fonts or \usepackage{} and/or other preamble stuff
> could I change so that pdflatex would produce darker pdfs
> to begin with?

What I often do with preprints from arxiv.org is download the latex
source, and add the following line just after \documentclass:

\usepackage{stix}

Then recompile. The STIX fonts are a bit denser than computer modern.
IIRC, the STIX fonts are included in the texlive distribution -- that
must be where I got them from.

-- David

On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 08:27:04 -0400, David N. Williams wrote:
> On 8/7/23 9:33 AM, John Forkosh wrote:
>> The recommendation at
>> https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/251ca80557e3599332c218c8b5c60029
>> to use
>> convert -density 300x300 TOOLIGHT.pdf -monochrome \
>> -quality 100 DARKER.pdf
>> works pretty well (the alternative -threshold 80% on that page
>> doesn't seem to work at all, at least not for me).
>> But I'm wondering if there's any better method to darken pdfs,
>> i.e., even darker while preserving antialiasing.
>>
>> Also, most stuff I want to print is from arxiv.org, whereby
>> I can usually download latex source as well as pdfs.
>> What fonts or \usepackage{} and/or other preamble stuff
>> could I change so that pdflatex would produce darker pdfs
>> to begin with?
>
> What I often do with preprints from arxiv.org is download the latex
> source, and add the following line just after \documentclass:
>
> \usepackage{stix}
>
> Then recompile. The STIX fonts are a bit denser than computer modern.
> IIRC, the STIX fonts are included in the texlive distribution -- that
> must be where I got them from.

As of April 2018 the stix package is considered obsolete.
Use stix2-otf or stix2-type1 instead.

Bob T.

Bob Tennent <rdtennent@tennent.ca> wrote:
> David N. Williams wrote:
> > John Forkosh wrote:
> >> The recommendation at
> >> https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/251ca80557e3599332c218c8b5c60029
> >> to use
> >> convert -density 300x300 TOOLIGHT.pdf -monochrome \
> >> -quality 100 DARKER.pdf
> >> works pretty well (the alternative -threshold 80% on that page
> >> doesn't seem to work at all, at least not for me).
> >> But I'm wondering if there's any better method to darken pdfs,
> >> i.e., even darker while preserving antialiasing.
> >>
> >> Also, most stuff I want to print is from arxiv.org, whereby
> >> I can usually download latex source as well as pdfs.
> >> What fonts or \usepackage{} and/or other preamble stuff
> >> could I change so that pdflatex would produce darker pdfs
> >> to begin with?
> >
> > What I often do with preprints from arxiv.org is download the latex
> > source, and add the following line just after \documentclass:
> >
> > \usepackage{stix}
> >
> > Then recompile. The STIX fonts are a bit denser than computer modern.
> > IIRC, the STIX fonts are included in the texlive distribution -- that
> > must be where I got them from.
>
> As of April 2018 the stix package is considered obsolete.
> Use stix2-otf or stix2-type1 instead.
> Bob T.

Thanks, David and Bob. I'll give those fonts a try and compare
with results from convert. Actually, already tried to try, but
turns out my slackware linux (from Feb 2023) installs texlive
without stix2, so I'm looking at googled docs and still have
some work to do before those "File not found" errors go away.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

On 09/08/2023 05:34, John Forkosh wrote:
> Bob Tennent <rdtennent@tennent.ca> wrote:
[snip]
>> As of April 2018 the stix package is considered obsolete.
>> Use stix2-otf or stix2-type1 instead.
>> Bob T.
>
> Thanks, David and Bob. I'll give those fonts a try and compare with
> results from convert. Actually, already tried to try, but turns out
> my slackware linux (from Feb 2023) installs texlive without stix2, so
> I'm looking at googled docs and still have some work to do before
> those "File not found" errors go away.

Does the package at https://ctan.org/pkg/stix2-otf do what you need?
I'm not sure what Google knows about that package.

Peter

On 2023-08-09, Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> wrote:
> On 09/08/2023 05:34, John Forkosh wrote:
>> Bob Tennent <rdtennent@tennent.ca> wrote:
> [snip]
>>> As of April 2018 the stix package is considered obsolete.
>>> Use stix2-otf or stix2-type1 instead.
>>> Bob T.
>>
>> Thanks, David and Bob. I'll give those fonts a try and compare with
>> results from convert. Actually, already tried to try, but turns out
>> my slackware linux (from Feb 2023) installs texlive without stix2, so
>> I'm looking at googled docs and still have some work to do before
>> those "File not found" errors go away.
>
> Does the package at https://ctan.org/pkg/stix2-otf do what you need?
> I'm not sure what Google knows about that package.
>
> Peter
>

On 2023-08-09, Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> wrote:
> On 09/08/2023 05:34, John Forkosh wrote:
>> Bob Tennent <rdtennent@tennent.ca> wrote:
> [snip]
>>> As of April 2018 the stix package is considered obsolete.
>>> Use stix2-otf or stix2-type1 instead.
>>> Bob T.
>>
>> Thanks, David and Bob. I'll give those fonts a try and compare with
>> results from convert. Actually, already tried to try, but turns out
>> my slackware linux (from Feb 2023) installs texlive without stix2, so
>> I'm looking at googled docs and still have some work to do before
>> those "File not found" errors go away.
>
> Does the package at https://ctan.org/pkg/stix2-otf do what you need?
> I'm not sure what Google knows about that package.
>
> Peter

On my system (Linux Mageia 8) there are only stix2 and stix2-otf
subdirectories, , both
part of the texlive-dist-20200406-5.mga8 package.
There is also a stix subdirectory.

>

On 07/08/2023 14:33, John Forkosh wrote:
> The recommendation at
> https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/251ca80557e3599332c218c8b5c60029
> to use
> convert -density 300x300 TOOLIGHT.pdf -monochrome \
> -quality 100 DARKER.pdf
> works pretty well (the alternative -threshold 80% on that page
> doesn't seem to work at all, at least not for me).

Is this needed because the documents can't be read or printed easily?

Were they typeset in Computer Modern Roman (LaTeX's default)?

Or it is because there is some defect in the acceptance or serving
process of documents on arxiv.org

Do you have a particular bad example we can look at?

> But I'm wondering if there's any better method to darken pdfs,
> i.e., even darker while preserving antialiasing.

If you have the source, just re-typeset it using a different typeface.

Peter