[Scribus] best conversion path from CorelDraw11 -> Scribus

[PLinnell]

On Monday 21 February 2005 17:03, Tariq Rashid wrote:
> hi,
>
> its that ols chestnut of a question that's best answered by through
> experience.
>
> I'm creating my original designs (logos, page decoration, page
> elements) in CorelDraw 11 (updates will all current updates, sp1,
> sp2, svg filter).
>

> I can export from CorelDraw into various formats such as eps and
> svg.
>
> However - I have limited success in importing the results into
> scribus. EPS works fine - except the imported colours are visibly
> deviated from the Corel colours (corel->png preserves the colours).
> Also the imported EPS seems to converted to bitmap? this sounds
> strange but if you zoom in on the final scribus->pdf pdf file
> you'll see the pixels. some images have a low pixel resolution.

Stop, why do you need to embed images in the EPS ? What image feature 
can't be done in Scribus or GIMP or PS ?

You can import Corel EPS vectors as vectors into Scribus. Don't draw a 
frame and import. Start Scribus without a doc open and File > Import 
EPS. That will bring in all vectors as vectors scalable automatically 
grouped.

Colors could be in CMYK ?
>
> other problems with eps include mangled text. exporting from corel
> with "text to curves" does help but if i move the image about the
> scribus page the reuslting characters get mangled.
>
> so i tried svg. disaster! invisible components. no colors. one
> black component! yuk!
>
> so i tried an intermediary ... inkscape... import eps to
> inkscape... export as svg... this improves the situation vut the
> colours are wrong again!
>
>
Better, try CD SVG > Inkscape SVG. Inkscape's EPS importer is not 
anywhere the level of Scribus' and even their devels will say so.

You can test SVG conformance with Batik from xml.apache.org or 
installing as a package.


> Does anyone have a good "process" for moving vector images from
> Corel to Scribus with minimal damage!
>
> Crazy - i experenced the same issues back in the days of windows
> 3.1 and the apps that were around then .. wmf, dxf ..
>
> someone suggested using the inkscape "export as plain svg" - i
> didn't notice the option - is tis likely?

It helps make  Inkscape SVG > Scribus SVG work better at times.
>
> by the way - congratulations on an excellent product - Scribus is a
> joy to use! and fills on the gaps that kept me using windows....
> inkscape is coming along very well too! soon i won't need to use
> Corel!
>
Thanks. Hopefully, you are using Inkscape 0.41, not the distro 
package...It has many new features and enhancements.

> i use scribus from mandrake 10.1 official - which i guess pulls in
> the littlecms as a dependency?
>
> tariq
> _______________________________________________

Some thoughts immediately:

You can dramatically improve EPS import with installing a parallel 
Ghostscript. See: 
http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=dtptoolbox&page=toolbox7

Mdk 10.1 has GS 7.07 - quite old. You cannot blame Mandrake there, 
CUPS integration was not available for newer GS until recently. To 
note is Mandrake's print maintainer, Till Kammpeter has been a big 
help in moving this forward.

EPS Import
Back save to V.7 or V.8

The EPS exporter in CD11 has some settings you might need to fiddle 
with the get the best results. 

You can test EPS export from CD via GSview and AFPL Ghostscript 8.50 
(both freely avaialble for windows). If it does not look decent in 
GSview, then there might be EPS export issues.

SVG Importing into Scribus

I reccommend no type or text in SVG *unless* all fonts are converted 
to outlines. The reasoning is IMO the weakest part of the SVG spec is 
fonts. It is very difficult to interpret the SVG CSS2 style font 
system into postscript model that Scribus uses. One major reason: 
font naming conventions are somewhat different.

For a more in depth explaination: 
http://levien.com/svg/shame.html 

I would note Raph created libart and also is the current Ghostscript 
maintainer.

My guess is you _do_ have a bit of experience with DTP. The old school 
way of do everything in an drawing app and lob it into $DTP app needs 
a bit of rethink when DTP apps like Scribus and other new DTP apps  
_do_ have powerful vector tools.

Scribus, IMO, has a pretty decent way of manipulating type converted 
to outlines. I asked a pro designer to critique them and he said 
'different, but powerful'. 

One thing about moving to Linux from the Mac/Windows/Novell world is 
it teaches you the concept of the one tool for one job. After dealing 
with broken/buggy/incompatible EPS files - usually close to deadline, 
I find the newer way of Pure Vector (Inkscape) + Images (GIMP) > 
Scribus   > PDF eliminates much pain. You can follow the same 
workflow with proprietary apps, if your prepared to 'Think 
Differently' :-)

If after all that, you have problems, submit bugs with files attached. 
If it is an Inkscape issue, we can work with them to resolve this.

Cheers,

Peter