[GLLUG] openoffice fonts and pdf size

Ashton Shortridge ashton at msu.edu
Sun Oct 3 12:43:42 EDT 2004


Hello all,

I use OpenOffice to generate class lectures and notes. A handy feature is of 
course the relatively painless export to pdf button. This enables me to 
quickly generate files to provide online to my students. Files are typically 
4 pages of text - never graphics, in-line anything... just text.

However, I have been surprised at the file size of these things. The OO text 
document is about 7.6 kb. The pdf file if I use Nimbus Roman #9 is 227 kb. I 
experimented with some other fonts and found a large range: Paladino is a 
whopping 299 KB, while Bitstream Vera Serif gives 41.5 KB. These are all 
standard serif fonts that come with OO 1.2.2.

I'm not even sure where to look to find out the two-sentence answer for this 
discrepancy. Is it OpenOffice? Is it the pdf conversion program? Is it the 
choice of font itself? Googling did not seem to help, probably because I'm 
not really sure what the problem even is.

I'm hoping for answers to two questions from the group:

1) What is the reason for the huge discrepancy in pdf file sizes?

2) Is there a nice free serif font that will not give me bloated, bandwidth 
wasting pdfs? I like nimbus roman a lot - it's clean looking and compact, but 
I can't justify serving a 4 page text file that's over a quarter of a meg.

Thanks in advance!

Ashton

-- 
Ashton Shortridge
Assistant Professor			ashton at msu.edu
Dept of Geography			http://www.msu.edu/~ashton
Michigan State University		(517) 432-3561


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