Thicker lines on staff when I created pdf file of the score

After inputting a few notes on a score with Dorico latest version (version 3.5.10.1045 (Jul 27 2020) ), when I went to Print and generated a pdf file of my score, I noticed on the pdf file thicker lines of the staff on various areas of my score.
I will have to print the score next week to see if it also translates by thicker lines of the staff when the score has been printed?

Has any of you noticed this phenomenon in Dorico when you create a pdf file of your score? And did it translate also by thicker lines of the staff when the score was printed?

Thanks for your feedback on this matter.

See the attached jpg file that is simply a printscreen output of my original pdf file.

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What happens when you actually print a copy to paper? This actually looks to me like poor rendering on the screen.

It looks like you might be using Adobe Reader DC to view the PDF. Inexplicably, recent versions of Adobe Reader tend to render PDFs on-screen in a terribly inconsistent way; it’s probably to do with the way it tries to render lines that don’t fall exactly on pixel boundaries. This is a problem that is essentially impossible to solve when rendering straight lines of arbitrary thickness on screen on a display with a fixed pixel density. Sooner or later you will need to draw a line that needs to finish halfway through a row of pixels, and what you do under those circumstances is up to the rendering software (and to the operating system, to some extent).

You can, however, rest assured that it is impossible for Dorico to output different staff lines on the same page at different thicknesses. (I could go into some technical details about how I can be certain that it is impossible, but I won’t.) If you view your PDF in another application, or if you print it, you will find that the staff lines are definitely of the same thickness.

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Hello Daniel,

You are right, I use Adobe Acrobat Reader DC to view my pdf files. As long as it does not print the staff lines thicker than they are displayed on the pdf file, that will be fine.

It is kind of surprising that the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is not doing its job properly that is it is showing thicker lines on the staff when it should not.

Thanks for your feedback. Next week, I will confirm what you say, that the printing will show the staff lines of the same thickness as opposed to what surprisingly Adobe Acrobat Reader DC shows.

Keep doing the great job that you have been doing with Dorico, the more I use it, the more I like it :slight_smile:

Daniel, can you give a recommendation, which PDF viewer works best (or at least better) with Dorcio on Windows?

I think in general Microsoft Edge does a decent job, but I’m not an expert since I only use Windows when absolutely necessary (which, fortunately for me, is not often).

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If you just want a no-frills PDF reader, my favourite on Windows is Sumatra PDF. Free PDF Reader - Sumatra PDF

Note, you probably want to change the default background color of the opening screen in the configuration options. Unless the default has been changed since I first installed it years ago, it’s a lurid shade of yellow. But aside from that, it just works.

I think Adobe Reader has mutated into “bait-and-switch for Adobe Pro” rather than being useful in itself.

Hi Daniel.
I tried opening the PDF exported from Dorico on Microsoft Edge and it does look better than on Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020. However, apparently I don’t have such issues with Adobe Acrobat when opening a PDF made from Finale. Is this an issue in “communication” (or whatever it is the technical term) between Dorico and Acrobat?
For example, in the image below, the barlines on the second system goes a bit over the staff lines, but that doesn’t happen with the first system.

Also, when I change the zoom on Adobe Acrobate, those differences may change. For example, I put more zoom, and now, it is the first system that have the barline issues.

This all comes down to drawing inaccuracies in Adobe Reader. The PDF data exported by Dorico is exactly as it should be. I recommend you use another PDF viewer.

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I recommend Foxit Reader, which is free. It can also do annotations, form-filling, and bookmark editing.

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