[Scribus] PDF oddity?

Peter Linnell scribusdocs
Sun Sep 21 00:34:26 CEST 2003


On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 16:21, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
> I've announced the Welsh version (which isn't actually in CVS yet) on our 
> site:
> http://kyfieithu.dotmon.com/item.php?lg=en&item_id=70
> and there is also a translation there of the first part of the tutorial, 
> expanded a bit.
> 
> I also provide a link to the finished PDF, but while this displays beautifully 
> in KGhostscript, the shaded sidebar does not render properly in Acrobat - see 
> the attached png. 

Which version of Acro Reader ? If it is 4.05, I highly recommend
updating to 5.08.  4.05 was very buggy and had severe  problems
displaying colors correctly.


>  It does seem to come out properly in Acrobat on Windows 
> (although the fonts don't appear properly on that, presumably because the 
> version I have there is v3).  Is there any known reason for this display 
> issue?

The reason the fonts do not appear correctly is they are not embedded
and Acrobat Reader uses its own multi-master fonts to substitute for the
Ghostscript fonts. This will be the case on *any* version of Acro Reader
on any platform, unless you have installed them so Acrobat can use
them.  

Because the real postscript names of the Ghostscript fonts are
Nimbusxxxx, the internal Times, Helvetica or Arial and Chancery are not
used. Common problem and the only way to fix this is to embed the fonts.

To enable local fonts like the GS fonts to be used by Acro reader,  you
need to make two steps - which are not in the default setup of Acro
Reader:

1.
open usr/bin/acroread-5.0x/acroread script which launches acroreader  

define PSRESOURCEPATH=<font_location>::

2. in your home/.acroread/prefs file, there is a line

/avpUseLocalFonts [/b false]

set to 

/avpUseLocalFonts [/b true]

(I leave it at false, as I want to ensure fonts are embedded correctly
in PDF's. With Scribus this is not a problem, but other apps which
generate PDF are not so reliable at embedding fonts.)

The details are in page 11-13 of Acro Reader help.

IME, it is better to leave the defaults and embed the fonts, as it
ensure reliable display on any platform or version of Acro reader. 

Kghostscript and GS View both have access to the GS fonts, thus they
display the file as intended. 

See the screen shot: http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/images/gsvacro1.png

Hope this is clear enough and it helps. It is not a Scribus bug, but
demonstrates the different was PDF readers display files.

Peter





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