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akhannaby

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Is letterspacing in Latex too tight?

In Latex - particularly amsbook, words like subsection appear to have their letters squashed together on the screen.  In subsection, the s and c are actually touching.
Does this effect happen when the pdf file is printed?
(I do not have a good printer available to test it.)
Is there a global commans that will increase letter-spacing slightly?
s and c in sc are not touching here!
Keith
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robthewolf
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what are you using to compile your pdf
and what viewer are you using to view it?
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akhannaby

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So far, I'm working only in .dvi
Would you expect the resulting pdf output file to be different from the dvi output on screen?
Environment is MikTeX
Perhaps I'm expecting too much at this stage.
Keith
I am not 100% that this will be the solution but try using pdfLaTex.
I remember that when I was compiling DVIs and converting to latex I lost some formatting.  It looked much better when I compiled direct to Latex.
http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
start here and see how you get on.
rob
The trouble is... I have loads of figures that are .eps files and they all need converting to pdf before I could compile to pdf.
I thought someone might know from experience, what happens at the various stages.
Certainly at the dvi stage, the output is awful.
Keith
I think there is an eps2pdf program that will convert to PDF  you can the run a script to convert all your files.
it should print out ok with pdfLatex even though the dvi output appears messy from my experience with other packages, i have never used amsbook though
if you are able to create it with pdfLatex then you should be able to view it in a pdf viewer.  Then you can see whether it looks better than the dvi.  
I have also never used amsbook, so i think this is as far as I can get you.
rob & goofy
Thanks for your thoughts.
I will create a minimum size Latex file without figures, and change to pdf.
That should at least settle the argument as to whether things change for the better.
Will do that later today and get back to you.
Keith
Good luck
I have now checked out a .pdf output of the .tex file.
It is an exact replica as far as I can tell (which I suppose it should be).
The problem is exacerbated by the Times Roman font in which the serifs appear to spread the letters.
Everywhere I look, it seems that one is frowned upon if one tampers with the font layout.
But it seems tight to me.
keith
Rob and Goofy
The worst of all is "We".
The "e" is tucked under the W slant.
Is that letter spacing or kerning?
Keith
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robthewolf
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Fair admission that the problem is slightly outside of experience.