PDF-Xchange Editor renders wipeout incorrectly.

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Sat Feb 17, 2018 5:57 pm

the bench and the light scone have wipeout background.
PDF-Xchange Editor rendered

Chrome rendered correctly

same as Edge

Post by **Will - Tracker Supp** » Sat Feb 17, 2018 8:20 pm

Hi tuanccs,

Thanks for the post, but I'm afraid that we'll need the actual PDF before we can assist.

Thanks,

Willy Van Nuffel · Post by **Willy Van Nuffel** » Sat Feb 17, 2018 9:19 pm

Could it be that "Override Document Colors" is ON, via Edit > Preferences > Accessibility ?
If so, then turn it OFF.

CTRL+SHIFT+6

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:52 pm

Accessibility is not on.

sample PDF

wipeout.pdf: (862.85 KiB) Downloaded 77 times

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:25 pm

Hello tuanccs,

Thanks for the sample file!
This file has lots of elements in that sofa and light that are a thin black line with a white image on top. The problem in how those are displayed in our product is called "Stroke Adjust" and we are working on solving that out, but for the moment I do not have an estimate when this will be done.

Regards,
Stefan

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:42 pm

Wipeout is an autocad object to wipeout the backgoround behind it. When print to PDF it would create an overlay object to cover everything behind it from showing.
I wish that you give it a highest priority. I've highly praised your product and recommended my company to buy 50 licenses of PDF-Xchange Editor Pro. I've asked our users to use it exclusively for PDF. Now I have to tell them to use a different product to print PDF because it is not usable for print as it is.

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:18 pm

Hello tuanccs,

Thanks for the follow up. I will see what can be done - but at a higher zoom - the issue should not be present. Is printing at higher DPI producing a better result?

Regards,
Stefan

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:08 pm

Maximum resolution for our wide format printer is 600pdi and the printed copy looks totally dark.

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:13 pm

Thanks tuanccs,

You can be sure that I will bring this up on the next meeting and we will have a serious discussion on the topic!

Cheers,
Stefan

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:15 pm

Two months went by but still don't have this issue corrected.
Hope we will have it fix before our one year support end.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:18 pm

"Stroke Adjust" is a problem with Editor for quite a long time now. It seems that quite fundamental changes are needed to fix it, else we likely would have seen this changed/fixed earlier already.

This problem coupled with other print related issues is why I keep using Adobe Reader for more complex documents that need correct reproduction. Fortunately there is this small "Open in" button at the lower right corner of Editors window.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:45 pm

Yes, very sorry it still has not been addressed,
As per usual we are working on it, but Timur is correct in the assumption that it is a very complicated issue and may yet take some time to solve.

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:44 pm

Timur Born wrote:"Stroke Adjust" is a problem with Editor for quite a long time now. It seems that quite fundamental changes are needed to fix it, else we likely would have seen this changed/fixed earlier already.

This problem coupled with other print related issues is why I keep using Adobe Reader for more complex documents that need correct reproduction. Fortunately there is this small "Open in" button at the lower right corner of Editors window.

Agree, but it's hard to explain to my boss why did I purchase 60 licenses and still have to rely on Adobe Reader for printing.

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Apr 25, 2018 4:29 pm

Hello tuanccs,

Please do accept my apologies as well! We do know this feature needs improvement and are working on it.
I will bring this up on a meeting a bit later today and see if I can come up with any further info for you!

Regards,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Apr 25, 2018 4:39 pm

I am all for having this fixed, the sooner the better. But for me there are several reasons why I regularly need to use Adobe Reader for printing, so it's just another drop.

Maybe you need to return your licenses until this is fixed?

Arnold · Post by **Arnold** » Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:13 pm

Over here if I print the file with my normal monochrome settings (see below), the dark areas print clear. They look dark on the monitor, but printed clear on everything I tried. This might be useful if all of the files to be printed are monochrome. The printers over here are a Brother laser and inkjet.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 12:07 am

Hi guys,
Do not worry too much, we are looking at the issue, also after testing arnolds method, it works quite well on my end as well. If you don't need color while printing these, it may just be a good interim solution!

Have a good one!

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 4:48 pm

If you want these areas to be displayed in Editor as white/clear instead of gray then you need to disable "Line Smoothing". Of course that will have a negative impact on everything else, too, especially if you zoom out. If you want to see why smoothing has this erroneous impact then turn it on while zooming in on the supposedly "white" box areas. Take a closer look at the area with diagonal lines going "behind" the boxes.

On my HP LaserJet Pro 500 color these boxes always print as white/clear using PCL6, even if I specifically set printing to use color instead of "Auto". So there might also be some printer driver setting for your printer that could help to get rid of this issue. I would first look to disable any kind of "smoothing"/antialiasing options, because your printer driver may suffer from the same issue that Editor's own on-screen line smoothing suffers from.

Also check that you are printing at 100% (no rescaling) instead of having the print scaled down to your paper/printer margins, at least for testing.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 6:45 pm

Excellent points Timur, thanks for the assist!

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:44 pm

Could also be worth testing Postscript vs. PCL drivers, one might work better than the other in this regard.

I do consider both the printing and on-screen smoothing results a bug. So hopefully there will be a fix in the future.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:24 pm

tuanccs · Post by **tuanccs** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:27 pm

The PDF rendered correctly with PDF-XChange Editor 7.0.326.0 but still print with black background.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 11:53 pm

Hello Tuanccs,
Apologies for this, Ive created a Development ticket for this issue:
#4408: Documents needing stroke adjust do not print properly
Have an excellent day!

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Mon Jul 16, 2018 6:23 pm

Great news that this was worked on. Unfortunately X-Change still cannot display thin lines properly, I had hopes that this would be included in the fix.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:02 pm

I am sorry, but it turned out that the update installation did not properly went through. So I tested the old version instead of the new one. The new version does indeed improve thin lines in that it now renders them as single pixel lines.

"Enhance thin lines" option (still) does not seem to do anything. Which personally I can live with, but I wonder why the option is even there?

"Smooth line art" also has no impact (at least on straight horizontal/vertical lines) whereas in Adobe Reader it turns thin lines into gray pixels instead of pure black ones (creates the illusion of being thinner).

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:21 am

Hello Timur,
The Smooth line art function is for freehand and diagonal drawings alike:
Smoothing on:

Smoothing Off

: DMKB18July247.png (4.89 KiB) Viewed 3721 times

As for the Enhance Thin lines function,
It is actually a placeholder, currently this does nothing at all, and can be safely disregarded. It is present simply for future use.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:18 pm

Yes, Editor only seems to use smoothing on lines that are not straight horizontal or vertical. Adobe Reader applies smoothing to all lines, including straight ones.

On a side-note: Editor seems to paint non straight lines too thick, at least for 2 pt and smaller. This affects both lines drawn as comments and the lines used for the perimeter tool.

As for the Enhance Thin lines function being a placeholder. It seems to be a placeholder for when you want to disable the option, because currently Editor's output corresponds more to Adobe's output with the option being enabled in Adobe. I am also confused why a placeholder option with no function is included?

There are also still a bit of an inconsistency with thin lines. I have a document where thin lines form a rectangle/box. In Adobe without smoothing the horizontal and vertical lines form a perfect 90° corner up to 800% zoom, then the lines turn from 1 pixel to more and reveal that they don't form a perfect corner in that they don't fully line up to each other (pixel missing in the outer corner). In Editor they change back and forth between perfect corner and non-perfect corner at various zoom steps. Not a big deal, though.

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Tue Jul 17, 2018 10:39 pm

Hello Timur,

Timur Born wrote:Yes, Editor only seems to use smoothing on lines that are not straight horizontal or vertical.

That is somewhat correct, as monitors are laid out in a grid pattern smoothing is only noticeable when the object departs from the "Grid". If the object would partially pass through a pixel, that is when smoothing is noticeably applied, this emulates a line being smooth by tricking the human eye.

Evidently Adobe applies heavier smoothing that we do, giving lines a more "Flowy" appearance, while ours is slightly more rigid, resulting in a more "Clean cut" appearance for freehand lines.

Timur Born wrote:Editor seems to paint non straight lines too thick, at least for 2 pt and smaller. This affects both lines drawn as comments and the lines used for the perimeter tool.

I was unable to reproduce this, do you have a sample document, or are you able to send screenshots displaying the format tab and zoom level so that we can observe this?

Timur Born wrote:There are also still a bit of an inconsistency with thin lines. I have a document where thin lines form a rectangle/box. In Adobe without smoothing the horizontal and vertical lines form a perfect 90° corner up to 800% zoom, then the lines turn from 1 pixel to more and reveal that they don't form a perfect corner in that they don't fully line up to each other (pixel missing in the outer corner). In Editor they change back and forth between perfect corner and non-perfect corner at various zoom steps. Not a big deal, though.

Could I also ask to take a look at that document?

Thanks for the feedback and assistance timur!

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:16 am

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote:Evidently Adobe applies heavier smoothing that we do, giving lines a more "Flowy" appearance, while ours is slightly more rigid, resulting in a more "Clean cut" appearance for freehand lines.

Only on straight lines where Editor does no smoothing at all, while Adobe still applies the same grade of smoothing that is applied to curved lines.

Additionally Adobe applies smoothing to very thin lines (<1 pt) in a way that makes the lines appear thinner at low zoom levels. That is done by turning black 1pt pixels to gray, unless the "Enhance thin lines" option is enabled. This seems like the correct way of handling very thin lines and is the sole reason for the "Enhance thin lines" option to even exist (for when you don't want them smoothed to gray).

I was unable to reproduce this, do you have a sample document, or are you able to send screenshots displaying the format tab and zoom level so that we can observe this?

This becomes evident when you disable line smoothing. With smoothing enabled curved lines are smoothed (= thinned + gray pixels) to appear thinner, straight lines don't change. With smoothing disabled curved lines become too thick, because those smoothed gray pixels then are turned to full color ones instead of being empty.

Could I also ask to take a look at that document?

I append a sample document in the next post and here are several examples of what I wrote earlier. All examples are upscaled to 400% using nearest neighbor for easier observation. One exception is the example of thin lines smoothing in Acrobat at 100% zoom, which is upscaled to 800%.

Editor, (no) smoothing, 800%:

: thin_lines_ed_ns_800.png (539 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, no smoothing, 800%:

: thin_lines_ac_ns_800.png (541 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, smoothing, 800%:

: thin_lines_ac_sm_800.png (724 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, smoothing, 800%, different part of document:

: thin_lines_ac_sm_800_2.png (592 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Editor, (no) smoothing, 1200%:

: thin_lines_ed_ns_1200.png (1004 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, no smoothing, 1200%:

: thin_lines_ac_ns_1200.png (1.4 KiB) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, no smoothing, 1600%:

: thin_lines_ac_ns_1600.png (744 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, smoothing, 100%:

: thin_lines_ac_sm_100.png (493 Bytes) Viewed 3681 times

Editor, polygon 0 pt, (no) smoothing, 200%:

: thin_lines_ed_ns__pol_200.png (4.21 KiB) Viewed 3681 times

Acrobat, polygon 0 pt, no smoothing, 200%:

: thin_lines_ac_ns_pol_200.png (3.34 KiB) Viewed 3681 times

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:19 am

Here is the sample PDF file.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:51 am

I wonder why line smoothing does not use subpixel rendering, neither in Editor nor Acrobat? Maybe because it only works horizontally?

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:43 am

Hi All,

From build 326 we also have stroke adjust options in the Editor, and I can't see this being tried in the discussion above.
So please update to this build - and see if the rectangle rendered and prints fine (as it does for me):

And with stroke adjust turned on - there should not be any need to toggle line smoothing.

Regards,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 1:19 pm

All my examples were done in 326 with Stroke Adjust set to "Auto" (=On). Turning said option on/off mostly only affects the straight lines. So the option does not thin out the curved lines as it probably should.

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:23 pm

Hello Timur,

I assumed that the smoothing discussion spanned off as a workaround for the initial problem tuanccs reported, and the Stroke Adjust should resolve that completely.
As for the smoothing of lines - yes we are doing it differently than Adobe and for the moment I do not believe there are plans on reworking this engine - as most of the time the results are acceptable, and while there are differences at 800+% zoom - at 100% things look good.

Regards,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 4:15 pm

Again, Stroke Adjust does *not* properly adjust curved lines, only straight ones. This is independent of smoothing.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Tue Jul 24, 2018 7:37 am

Tracker Supp-Stefan wrote:at 100% things look good.

Unfortunately, no. All examples below at 100% (0 pt stroke size), notice how only straight lines are properly affected by "Adjust Stroke".

Curiously Editor *does* apply smoothing to straight lines, but only if Adjust Stroke is disabled and only as if "Enhance Thin Lines" was permanently enabled (Adjust Stroke "off" + smoothing looks similar to Acrobat's Enhance Thin Lines "on" + smoothing). Notice also how Adjust Stroke makes no practical difference to the curved/diagonal lines, regardless of smoothing.

Overall the current implementation seems to need more fine-tuning.

Adjust Stroke "off", no smoothing:

: as_off_100_ns.png (668 Bytes) Viewed 3605 times

Adjust Stroke "on", no smoothing:

: as_on_100_ns.png (657 Bytes) Viewed 3605 times

Adjust Stroke "off", smoothing:

: as_off_100_sm.png (1.49 KiB) Viewed 3605 times

Adjust Stroke "on", smoothing:

: as_on_100_sm.png (1.5 KiB) Viewed 3605 times

Acrobat, no smoothing:

: ac_100_ns.png (555 Bytes) Viewed 3605 times

Acrobat, smoothing:

: ac_100_sm.png (677 Bytes) Viewed 3605 times

Acrobat, Enhance Thin Lines, smoothing:

: ac_100_sm_etl.png (949 Bytes) Viewed 3605 times

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:02 am

Hello Timur,

Apologies for the delay in following up on this - but I needed to check this case with colleagues in the dev team.
This is what they have told me:
StrokeAdjust and line smoothing is two different things.
StrokeAdjust adjust lines and figures to match pixel grid (and yes, only horizontal and vertical lines are adjusted, adjusting other lines or curves has no sense). After adjusting horizontal/vertical lines may look stronger (they are aligned on grind, and even line width is aligned).
Line smoothing is completely different - in fact it turns on/of anti-aliasing for lines. And as I can see when line smoothing is off we draw those lines not 100% correct. E.g. the diagonal lines when smoothing is on an off show change in the color of all pixels touched by line. In the first case (smoothing is on) pixels are affected differently (antialiasing), but when smoothing is off we draw all of them as they are fully covered by line, so the line looks bolder.
So we do not draw lines with smoothing as good as Adobe

We will look at any possible ways to get this improved in the future though!

Regards,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:34 pm

Sorry, but I still disagree. Of course I know that Stroke Adjust and Smoothing are two different things, but their combination defines the final output result and smoothing currently is the only way to make Editor display thin lines somewhat properly, while Stroke Adjust behaves rather strange (see below).

Main problem: Editor displays lines without smoothing much too wide/fat. A 0 pt (zero!) line is turned to a 3 pt line in Editor! Smoothing then turns that far too thick 3 pt line to a 1 pt line + 1 pt of grayscale smoothing to each side, which looks somewhat correct again. Of course you cannot display less than 1 pt (other than turning it to gray like Acrobat), but you surely should not turn 0 - 2 pt lines to 3 pt instead.

After adjusting horizontal/vertical lines may look stronger (they are aligned on grind, and even line width is aligned).

This remark puzzles me. Please be so kind and take another look at all the examples I prepared for you, because they contradict what you just wrote. I will repeat this in steps in order of importance again:

1. Editor draws thin lines much too thick to begin with. This is the main problem!
2. Stroke Adjust changes only straight (horizontal/vertical) lines to be properly drawn as single pixels. As such it does the opposite of what I just quoted from you, but at least it fixes (only) part of the original problem.
3. Stroke Adjust does not adjust the width of diagonal lines. As such diagonal lines remain improperly thick regardless of the Stroke Adjust setting.
4. Smoothing makes Editor draw thin lines properly as 1 pixel lines, both straight and diagonal. If Stroke Adjust is combined with Smoothing then straight lines lose their smoothing, while diagonal lines keep their smoothing. This looks rather odd.
5. Acrobat not only does all of these steps better/correct, but also turns very thin lines (<1 pt) to gray when smoothing is enabled in order to give the illusion of less than 1 pt width. If a user does not want for this extra feature to happen then she can enable the "Enhance Thin Lines" features which is not offered in Editor (despite the option being present in Preferences).
6. As a bonus Acobrat's smoothing is able to display instances where two thin lines do not perfectly meet/overlap at lower zoom levels than Editor does.

Here is a crop of the 0 pt example, this time only showing the 45° diagonal part. I emphasize again: this is meant to be a 0 pt (zero!) line, not a 3 pt line. Make sure that you look at these examples at 100% (+100% DPI setting in Windows if you use a browser) or use an image viewer that zooms in using pixel doubling instead of filtered resampling (bilinear/bicubic)!

Acrobat, no smoothing:

: 0pt_ns_ac.png (235 Bytes) Viewed 3551 times

Editor, no smoothing, Stroke Adjust enabled or disabled does not matter:

: 0pt_ns_ed.png (251 Bytes) Viewed 3551 times

Editor, smoothing, Stroke Adjust enabled or disabled does not matter:

: 0pt_sm_ed.png (368 Bytes) Viewed 3551 times

Post by **TrackerSupp-Daniel** » Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:26 pm

Hello Timur,

Thank you for the feedback, and for compiling all this information into one, clear, concise post that clarifies and exemplifies the exact issues discussed previously. I have taken the entire content from this post and used it to create a bug report:
RT #4435: Thin lines, smoothing and stroke adjust improvements
We understand that this function is not yet perfect, and are still trying to improve it. We ask for you patience in that regard while we work through all the possibilities and methods this can be improved.

Regards,

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:46 am

What is the difference between using Stroke Adjust "Auto" and "On"? Seems to me that "Auto" and "On" are the same, in which case there should not be an "Auto" option at all.

Anyway, for the time being I advice against using Stroke Adjust unless where it solves a specific problem in your PDF as mentioned in this thread here. I also suggest that Editor does *not* enable it by default, because the lack of anti-aliasing on straight horizontal and vertical lines is detrimental to the perceived resolution of such lines.

PS: Best viewed outside of a browser at integer zoom levels (most browsers apply bilinear resampling even at 100%).

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:05 am

Hello Timur,

Thanks for the sample Images! I've added a comment to the ticket (RT #4435) which Daniel created earlier so that those are taken into account!
As for the Auto option - If I remember my chat with the devs on the subject correctly- this will almost always be equal to "On" - but there are some special cases that the Editor can detect, in which Auto will result in "Off".

Regards,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:34 am

Now that 327 is out, any news on this?

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:30 am

Hello Timur,

A developer is assigned to the task in ticket 4435, and a work item is created in our internal work flow system, but other than that I can't give you any specific updates. So this is something we will work on, but I do not have any estimates for times and what specifically will be done at the moment!

Cheers,
Stefan

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:58 am

It's a clear bug when lines thinner than 3 pt are rendered with 3 pixels, so a fix would be very welcome.

Post by **Tracker Supp-Stefan** » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:16 pm

Hi Timur,

We are working on this!

Cheers,
Stefan

Post by **Ivan - Tracker Software** » Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:52 am

Anyway, for the time being I advice against using Stroke Adjust unless where it solves a specific problem in your PDF as mentioned in this thread here. I also suggest that Editor does *not* enable it by default, because the lack of anti-aliasing on straight horizontal and vertical lines is detrimental to the perceived resolution of such lines.

Can you send us PDF file(s) used for this test?

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:30 am

Just use the Line tool in an empty document. Or use the sunstar from the test document in the following thread.

viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31457

You can see how stroke adjust (properly) changes the straight horizontal and vertical lines to 1 pixel width while all other lines are (improperly) at least 3 pixels strong. This is without anti-aliasing. If you enable anti-aliasing you will see how the straight lines are not anti-aliased unless you disable Stroke Adjust.

Timur Born · Post by **Timur Born** » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:44 am

I just realized that you meant the resolution test chart. It's the ISO 12233 chart, you can download a PDF version here:

https://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westi ... chart.html

Post by **Ivan - Tracker Software** » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:43 pm

Thanks for the chart.
In regards issues with rendering lines (especially thin lines) when aa is not enabled - I made some changes, and now it looks better but still far from perfect. I will not include those changes in build 327.1 we are going to release soon, because I still have to work on that a bit more.

Post by **Ivan - Tracker Software** » Thu Oct 11, 2018 11:21 pm

What is the difference between using Stroke Adjust "Auto" and "On"? Seems to me that "Auto" and "On" are the same, in which case there should not be an "Auto" option at all.

Anyway, for the time being I advice against using Stroke Adjust unless where it solves a specific problem in your PDF as mentioned in this thread here. I also suggest that Editor does *not* enable it by default, because the lack of anti-aliasing on straight horizontal and vertical lines is detrimental to the perceived resolution of such lines.

"Auto" and "On" are not the same.
Stroke adjust can be controlled by PDF content, and "Auto" means that we will take those control instructions into account. Unfortunately, it is possible (and it happens often) that stroke adjust option is not specified for the entire or part of page content, and in this case, it's value is implementation-defined. The Editor treats the unspecified state as "On".

"On" and "Off" values of that setting command the renderer to ignore content elements stroke adjust state, and force its "On" and "Off" respectively.

P.S. You can find it described in the Editor's help: https://help.tracker-software.com/pdfxe ... ay_ed.html