[scribus-dev] Casual PDF output

[a.l.e]

hi hiroshi,

> I tried Scribus PDF export using Japanese fonts, and found that
> Scribus converts all the text using such fonts to outline data.
> The output becomes unsearchable PDF ( and quality degrade because
> hinting information is lost ).
> 
> I also found cairo+pango correctly handles the case - the attached
> sample code works fine.
> It does OTF subsetting/embedding with Adobe-Identity-UCS encoding and
> generates searchable PDF.
> 
> As Scribus uses cairo for rendering ( and Windows printing ? ), I
> thought it would be relatively straightforward to implement cairo PDF
> generation ( for example, when "pdf" is specified as "Alternative
> printer command" ).
> 
> So, I would like to know:
> 
> 1. if you have plan to incorporate OTF subsetting in 1.5 release
> 2. if such a hack is possible
> 3. where I should look first if above is possible.

i don't think that currently using cairo+pango as the default pdf engine
is an option for scribus. as far as i know, too many features supported
by scribus are not supported by cairo+pango.

on the other hand, a better OTF handling is one of the goals of the
scribus team. but there seems to be lot of work to be done!

and one last thoughts: you could try to hack into scribus and see if it
is possible to give a choice to the users between its internal PDF
engine and cairo+pango. that way users could choose which engine they
want to use and get the best out of scribus!
... no idea if this is doable, though!

have a nice day!
a.l.e