Software (GPL 2 or higher)

Before LCD subpixel rendering became common on X11, I wrote this small tool to improve the screen resolution of postscript documents viewed using gv. Nowadays, it is obsolete.

It works by intercepting gv's internal call to Ghostscript, which is written to a bitmap file instead. Then, the gv window on the screen is drawn by a small program which reads the previous bitmap and creates the subpixel rendered version. The end-effect is seamless, and looks like gv has improved resolution, at only a small cost in speed.

subpixelgs-0.7.tar.gz (MD5)

subpixelgs is a hack which lets programs such as gv, Ghostview or GSView transparently display Postscript and PDF files using subpixel rendering on UNIX systems. On LCD screens, this can provide a 2-3 fold increase in resolution, which can make some documents easier to read. Quality varies somewhat depending upon the document being displayed, and the chosen parameter matrix.
The program comes bundled with a simple visual tuning tool (screenshot) to aid in the choice of the matrix.
Currently, the following limitations apply: the program is slow, and it renders indiscriminately pictures and text. Moreover, the default rendering matrix is suboptimal.
However, you will want to use subpixelgs if: you prefer the gv interface over Acrobat Reader, you want to tinker with subpixel filtering code yourself (written in C), or you just like to not heed other people's warnings.