The Guardian's website Sudoku

[dorayme]

Wold someone please tell the Guardian webmaster how to fix the
infuriating fault of displaying the Sudoku at eg:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/05/1
7/GdnSudoku329_060527.indd.pdf

They know about it but don't know what can be done. It prints
with the proper grid apparently (not tried this) but the inner
lines fail to show. I expect they can't be bothered to make a
proper table of it with borders in html and choose the PDf and
don't know how to fix the display. I get the same problem
downloading the PDF to my Adobe Acrobat Reader... ah hang on, it
opens fine in Mac Preview... So it seems it is a prob with
particular software... ho hum... Mac at least has easy fix...
(discovered during course of this note to you lot... btw, anyone
do Sudoku?)

 

[Jim Higson]

Wold someone please tell the Guardian webmaster how to fix the
infuriating fault of displaying the Sudoku at eg:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/05/17/GdnSudoku329_060527.indd.pdf

( I removed line wrap from the URL)

They know about it but don't know what can be done. It prints
with the proper grid apparently (not tried this) but the inner
lines fail to show. I expect they can't be bothered to make a
proper table of it with borders in html and choose the PDf and
don't know how to fix the display. I get the same problem
downloading the PDF to my Adobe Acrobat Reader... ah hang on, it
opens fine in Mac Preview... So it seems it is a prob with
particular software... ho hum... Mac at least has easy fix...
(discovered during course of this note to you lot... btw, anyone
do Sudoku?)

No Acrobat here (only use FOSS software), but it displays fine in KPDF
(which uses the Poppler renderer), but you have to zoom in really close to
see the fine lines. I have a 1600x1200 monitor and you have to zoom right
in until it fills the screen.

Probably the problem is the lack of anti-aliased rendering, combined with
lines too thin to occupy an entire pixel's width at normal levels of zoom.
If they want to fix it they should just use thicker lines.

Or, better still, just use a HTML table and let the browser worry about how
thick the lines should be.

 

[Jim Higson]

No Acrobat here (only use FOSS software), but it displays fine in KPDF
(which uses the Poppler renderer)

Forgot to mention, newer versions of Poppler use the Cairo graphics backend,
which supports anti-aliasing for everything, so all that zooming might not
be necessary.

There might be a Windows/Mac program that uses this renderer, I haven't
looked.

Some links:
http://www.archivesat.com/Poppler_PDF_rendering_library/
http://cairographics.org/

 

[Toby Inkster]

anyone do Sudoku?

does anyone not?!

 

[dorayme]

Probably the problem is the lack of anti-aliased rendering, combined with
lines too thin to occupy an entire pixel's width at normal levels of zoom.
If they want to fix it they should just use thicker lines.

By downloading the pdf instead and opening in the Acrobat Reader,
one needs to zoom a real lot! Opening the pdf in Preview, a sort
of all purpose Mac X app, the problem did not show up at all, the
lines clear at even quite tiny size (1.5" x 1.5"). So I am not
sure you are right or you are and Preview is very clever (not
that I am a big fan of this software, sure scores here though)

 

[Martin Jay]

does anyone not?!

LOL. I lost interest in it ages ago.

I used to like Tsunami puzzles, which are a bit like a paper version of
Windows Minesweeper. Of course searching Google for an example brings
up lots of unrelated links.

 

[dorayme]

Forgot to mention, newer versions of Poppler use the Cairo graphics backend,
which supports anti-aliasing for everything, so all that zooming might not
be necessary.

There might be a Windows/Mac program that uses this renderer, I haven't
looked.

Some links:
http://www.archivesat.com/Poppler_PDF_rendering_library/
http://cairographics.org/

Sorry, Jim, I may have misjudged your diagnoses. Perhaps you are
right? Acrobat does not handle this anti-aliasing (if it is that)
and Preview does.

I know a few things about Cairo. My dad used to work there and a
fellow with a barrow and an organ used to come by every week with
a monkey turning the handle and we used to throw down piastas
from the balcony...

About monkeys and organs, this is exactly how I have been feeling
handling floats for a new site I am building this week, I am the
chimp and the tune is not what I want to hear yet... back to the
grind...

 

[dorayme]

does anyone not?!

.... it is idiotically addictive. Why, hell, I even know someone
who especially gets the normally-not-worth-it-less-than-hard ones
for doing in one complete session on the dunny...

 

[Toby Inkster]

... it is idiotically addictive.

I really like the 16x16 hexadecimal ones. I've seen 25x25 too, but have
yet to try it.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Probably the problem is the lack of anti-aliased rendering, combined with
lines too thin to occupy an entire pixel's width at normal levels of zoom.
If they want to fix it they should just use thicker lines.

Tested it here. Acroread doesn't like it until you zoom in to 200%.
Ghostscript renders it fine, even zoomed out to 33%. GNOME PDF (based on
Xpdf) renders fine too. I'd imagine it would look fine printed though
(even with Acroread).

 

[Jim Higson]

Sorry, Jim, I may have misjudged your diagnoses. Perhaps you are
right? Acrobat does not handle this anti-aliasing (if it is that)
and Preview does.

Yeah, if a line is too thin to cover the width of an entire pixel,
antialiasing is the answer. It's basically the same as rendering it at a
larger size, and then scaling down with interpolation.

I know a few things about Cairo. My dad used to work there and a
fellow with a barrow and an organ used to come by every week with
a monkey turning the handle and we used to throw down piastas
from the balcony...

On a very slightly more related topic, Cairo is being used as the graphics
end of Gecko 1.9. This IMO is very good news for quite a few reasons.

 

[dorayme]

Yeah, if a line is too thin to cover the width of an entire pixel,
antialiasing is the answer. It's basically the same as rendering it at a
larger size, and then scaling down with interpolation.

Yes, this sounds like what is going on. The Guardian either does
not know about this or are not prepared to give advice...
(perhaps they have commercial reasons not to badmouth Adobe?)

They are aware of the problem. And cheerfully note that the
problem is not evident in printing. I rarely print them. I use
the spare blank side of old A4's that have been printed with a
nice big grid and jot the numbers down with a pencil. It is not
hard to guess the lines...

 

[Jim Higson]

Yes, this sounds like what is going on. The Guardian either does
not know about this or are not prepared to give advice...
(perhaps they have commercial reasons not to badmouth Adobe?)

Well, antialiasing wouldn't be needed if they just made their lines a little
thicker so they fill a whole pixel at sensible levels of zoom! I'm sure
this is *easily* within their powers.

I suppose this being the Guardian though, they're more interested in the
look on the printed page. Can I really be the only person who prefers the
less colourfull, non-design award winning old broadsheet over the fancy
new "Berliner" format? When newspapers come on electronic paper I hope
there's some equivalent thing to overriding their CSS.