[Scribus] exchange data between Quark, InDesign, etc

[Marvin Dickens]

On Thursday 28 April 2005 10:59 pm, Craig Ringer wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 21:08 -0400, Gregory Pittman wrote:
> > The faults here lie not with Scribus so much as
> > illustrating the problems associated with proprietary, closed data
> > formats.
>
> If you mean PDF, then (a) It's not closed, though it is proprietary, and
> (b) it being proprietary isn't the problem re editing.
>
> The problem is that what PDF is designed for is a final presentation
> format. It's not designed to be editable. It does its job *extremely*
> well, producing very accurate documents in many different viewers on
> many platforms, with few problems with fonts, etc etc. Part of how it
> manages this is by sacrificing editability.

To me,  PDF source looks like byte code with postscript roots. But, that's 
another story. Using Acrobat, it is possible to do ____very____ minor
editing:

re-typing text with the text-touchup tool
move text or graphics one line at a time (Try that with graphics. It will be 
more fun that you can stand - You won't do that but once)
change font face, size, color of text
delete graphics with the object select tool
insert text using Ctrl-click with the text-touchup tool

The source for the above is:

http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/seminars/acrobat/pdf-edit.html

In short editing is, for all practical purposes, worthless except for the most 
rudimentary and small changes. 

Quite frankly, one of the reasons the pervasiveness of PDF documents is
the fact that it's darn hard to change the content of a published work.
I have mixed emotions regarding editors that could have the ability
to massage a finished work. But, I also realize it's just a matter of time
before editors with varying degrees of this ability (And quality) emerge.
Plus, even then, good editing will depend on the user.

An editor with this ability would be a disassembler and fortunate
or not, disassembly is as much of an art as it is a science: The  
disassemblers on the market today flounder in the hands of an 
inexperienced and/or unintuitive users. *Much* more so than a 
traditional applications. I can't imagine a disassembler making
consistant good choices on it's own.


Best regards

Marvin Dickens