Quote:
Originally Posted by ratinox
I have a number of role-playing game rulebooks in print and PDF form, and Acrobat Reader makes occasional mistakes compared to the printed pages.
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Then it's absolutely not the same PDF as was used to print. I've been proofing PDFs on screen for over 20 years. They exactly matched the paper except in quality. Now with a 23″ 4K HDR screen I can nearly get the same quality.
Before PDF we had multipage TIF which does what you claim. But PDFs are better, because no decision about resolution of the text is needed. The text quality varies with the device resolution. The Raster solution (which can be used with PDFs) has the problem that either the chosen resolution is too poor or not as good as the display.
Eink started off at 150 dpi and 167 dpi. Now most mono are 300 dpi, except larger ones. Colour ink is 106 dpi to 150 dpi.
LCD screens vary from 72 dpi to 400 dpi in colour.
If the screen is too small you have the same issue with a raster image as with a PDF shrunk to fit; the text is unreadible. But if the screen is large enough to read the smallest text, then a PDF that's not a a raster scan (those exist) will always beat a raster scan because the text is stored as text, not images, and the the renderer uses the font in the PDF, which can have hints and also sub-pixel addressing or other font specific antialiasing can be used to suit the display resolution. If the screen is big enough it will display actual original page size. A raster scan can't work like that.
If your PDFs don't match the print material then they are pirate or not the same revision or not the same source.