[Scribus] pdf resolution issue

[Craig Ringer]

On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 07:02, Sunil Joshi wrote:

> I have created two pdf pages "page2.pdf" and "page7.pdf" which are then 
> laid out on a separate page to create a spread (labeled 
> insidespread1.pdf).  When I view the separate pdf pages in Acrobat, the 
> text resolution is perfect.  Its also perfect when I print these two 
> pages on the 600 dpi laser printer (Brother 5070N).  However, when I 
> view the insidespread1.pdf document in acrobat, the text resolution 
> appears to be lower, and text does not print cleanly on the same 
> printer.

Scribus currently rasterises PDFs placed on the pages when it outputs a
new PDF. As a result, instead of drawing instructions your document
contains images, making it both larger and lower quality. 

Direct embedding of PDF in PDF is not currently supported - my
understanding is that it's quite hard, too. I'm not aware of _anything_
else that can do it, in fact. Acrobat can insert pages from one PDF into
another, but I don't think even Acrobat 6 Pro can place one PDF onto a
region of another PDF.

I believe one commonly suggested workaround for what you are presently
trying to do is to import the Scribus pages instead and arrange them.

For PostScript output it is also possible to export the pages as EPS
files, as they will be included verbatim in the new PS file (this does
not apply to PDF input or output). In fact, it's possible to export a
PostScript document containing the two EPSs then use ps2pdf from
GhostScript to make a perfectly good PDF. Do get a recent version of
GhostScript if you're going to do this, though.

Another option is to simply export the PDF at a higher resolution,
though this will make it even larger. It'll also take longer and use
more memory.

--
Craig Ringer