[scribus-dev] GSoC project status: PDF/X export

[Pierre Marchand]

Vous avez écrit :
> As for PDF/X-1a, since this format enforces blind exchange where all
> colors need to be in DeviceCMYK, I have decided to let users export to
> PDF/X-1a only if the Color Management is turned *off* in the
> document's setting as opposed to it to be turned on in exporting PDF/
> X3. 

Bad. Having unmanaged (generic in fact) color transformation is not exactly 
the first step of a controlled printing process.

> 1. Width information for glyphs is inconsistent: it is required that
> the glyph widths in the font dictionary and the glyph widths in the
> embedded font are consistent.

As we don’t use widths at all atm, I’ll be curious to investigate this part. 
Might be the occasion to finally use TJ operators :)

> 2.  Wrong encoding for non-symbolic TrueType font: it is required that
> non-symbolic TrueType fonts use MacRomanEncoding or WinAnsiEncoding
> without any differences. The output I got from Scribus uses
> Differences dictionary extensively for encoding which causes this
> issue, I guess.

Here I must say I lack knowledge about PDF/X-4. I see a major rewrite of font 
embedding if the work has to be done on the font side -- which is what I 
understand has to be done if you want to fit in only 2 encoding schemes.

>
> My guess would be these are just some of the possible issues since
> there can be many more restrictions in the font usage in PDF/X-4 and
> without getting my hand on the full PDF/X-4 spec, fully supporting PDF/
> X-4 export would be quite a challenge. I have tried to google around
> for some more details on PDF/X-4 but no luck so far. Hope you guys
> could help.

Yes, we’re a bit too short on PDF/X-4 documentation to pretend we can support 
it actually. I’ll drop a line on PoDoFo mailing list to know if someone has 
more info.
In the meantime, the work on X/1-a should go on. But really I don’t think its 
a good idea to do implicit color transformation in this case.

bon courage


-- 
Pierre Marchand
http://www.oep-h.com