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I've been using Lyx recently, and I've been noticing that the produced pdfs scroll very slowly in Preview, particularly on pages with a lot of text, but it is still noticeable otherwise, even on very small documents. This does not appear to happen when viewing other pdf files, even those I believe may have been produced using tex. My gut feeling is that it is something to do with my choice of Computer Modern as my font which is not a Mac OS system font.

Anyone seen this before or have any ideas?

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How does the text look? Is it anti-aliased? – Mark S. Everitt Dec 11 '11 at 2:46
Can you select the text? If you zoom in, does the text look smooth or grainy? – Mark S. Everitt Dec 11 '11 at 2:53
AA is on, it seems, but when I zoom in it doesn't look it- the text looks smooth until I zoom in to a certain level. Zooming is excruciatingly slow. – Magnus Dec 11 '11 at 2:54
Text is selectable, but the selection looks like what you get when you select the text on those old OCRd papers – Magnus Dec 11 '11 at 2:56
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Install the whole MacTeX; with BasicTeX you don't get outline fonts for T1 encoded Computer Modern fonts (actually European Modern). Or switch to Latin Modern fonts (\usepackage{lmodern}); but installing MacTeX is better anyway: you don't have to worry about missing packages. – egreg Dec 11 '11 at 14:01
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The problem seems to be in the fact that you use T1 font encoding for output and that they are rendered as bitmap fonts which print decently (usually they are produced for a 600 dpi printer), but slow down PDF viewers.

Install the whole MacTeX, as with BasicTeX you don't get outline fonts for T1 encoded Computer Modern fonts (actually European Modern).

You might switch to Latin Modern fonts: \usepackage{lmodern} would be the command for LaTeX, adapt it to LyX.

However, installing MacTeX is better anyway: you don't have to worry about missing packages. It installs also TeX Live Utility, with which updating TeX Live is quite easy.

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I have the TeX Live Utility installed, which packages do I need? I don't want the full MacTeX if I can avoid it, as this is a Macbook Air I'm using and I want to save space – Magnus Dec 11 '11 at 16:16
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@jaffachief The package to install is cm-super – egreg Dec 11 '11 at 16:28
cm-super fixed it, thanks – Magnus Dec 11 '11 at 17:50

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