Questions about converting TeX to PDF

[James Hubbard <jhubbard@mcs.uvawise.edu>]

Hello,

I have a question about using TeX and converting to PDF.  I've noticed that the 
current conversion to PDF doesn't render a nice looking and searchable pdf 
file.  It's rendering the text as a bitmap. I did some searching and tracked it 
down to the tag of \usepackage[]{fontenc}.

I changed it to \usepackage[]{times} on the stuff that I'm working.  The new 
pdf document is more readable, searchable and smaller.  The only changes that I 
noticed were a reduction in the number of pages and the math encodings are 
still bitmapped. Chapter 8 went from 27 pages to 25.  Also, the size went from 
262341 -> 165577 bytes

Is there a reason that bitmap fonts are still used?  The only one that I can 
think of is that not everyone has the scaleable times fonts. I am a beginner 
when it comes to using TeX so I don't know of any other implications.

I've put 2 pdf files of chapter 8 on my website so that you can see the difference.

http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~jhubbard/pdf_comp.html

James Hubbard