[Scribus] PDF/PS import?

[Craig Ringer]

On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 10:16, Nik wrote:

> I would like to be able to use PDF as an exchange format, so I could receive a 
> document in PDF, import it and modify it, and produce a new PDF as a result.

Unfortunately, what it comes down to is that Scribus just doesn't
support that. PDF, as a format, really isn't designed for it - the only
program I can think of that can really modify PDF is Adobe Acrobat, and
even it can't do that much without the PitStop plugin.

Of course, "It's hard" has provably never stopped the Scribus guys, but
I haven't heard anybody talking about anything like this planned anytime
soon. I wouldn't be surprised if such a feature, if implemented, worked
like PS/EPS import rather than like opening a document.

> My attempts at importing PDF or Postscript have resulted in either Scribus 
> hanging, or completing immediately with no apparent change. The menu shows 
> only EPS/PS, but I wondered if PDF might also be supported by this option?

When importing PS/EPS, a recent GhostScript is absolutely critical. I
very strongly recommend getting gs 8.16 or 8.3x from
http://www.ghostscript.com/ . 

See
http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=dtptoolbox&page=toolbox7
for a bit more information on this.

You'll also find that PS or EPS documents that are imported are imported
without bitmap images, and with text rendered as vector graphics. It's
not really overly  conducive to exporting a document, editing it
somewhere else, and importing it again.

> I have tried postscript created by OpenOffice, kGhostView, and Scribus.

I've had good results from OO.o PS, Scribus PS, QuarkXPress EPS files
(and trust me, that's saying something), Acrobat EPS made from PDF
files, and PS created by an app called Pongrass. I still run into the
odd one that gives me trouble, and am collecting a set to send to Franz
as tests, but mostly they 'just work' within the limitations of the
importer.

Depending on what you need to do, you may have better results using EPS
or PDF in graphics frames using 'get picture'. The downside is that
they're rasterised when exported to PDF. You can work around this by
converting any PDFs to EPSs, and making a PostScript file from Scribus
that you then distill with Acrobat Distiller or ps2pdf.

--
Craig Ringer