[Scribus] PDF 'Export for web' option

[PLinnell]

On Wednesday 16 November 2005 19:33, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Arun Swarup wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I find that the PDFs created by Scribus are excellent, but bigger
> > than those produced by most other s/w ...  for e.g. it creates a
> > 200KB file instead of a 20KB file
> >
> >Maybe it's because i tend to use *too many* fonts & Scribus embeds
> >them all without subsetting (.... and when I try to subset them,
> > it converts text to outlines)
> >
> >I use Scribus 1.3.1 & Ghoscript 7
> >
> >However, if I do a re-conversion (of the PDF) into PDF, with the
> > font subsetting option set, it comes out just fine.
> >
> >Can we have an 'Export for web' option?
>
> Not yet. I think there are plans to improve some aspects of the PDF
> export, such as producing true font subsets and improving the image
> resampling. I say "I think" because both tasks are rather beyond me
> at present, and I'm not willing to put words into others' mouths.
>
> If you really want to crunch a PDF down, it's still hard to go past
> Acrobat Professional as a PDF post-processing tool. It'd be nice if
> Scribus could produce smaller PDFs from the word go, but size is a
> lesser concern than print reliability and quality at present. Tools
> (such as Acrobat Pro) that take a big PDF and crush it down are
> available, whereas tools to fix problems caused by trying to skimp
> on size are rare or entirely absent.
>
> In terms of free tools, perhaps multivalent has some PDF
> optimisation support - I haven't looked into it.
>
> --
> Craig Ringer
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> Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
> http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus

When addressing pdf optimization for web sites there are two issues:

1) Global size of the file. Which can partly be reduced by carefully 
choosing fonts and not using too many font faces. You can if space is 
really an issue *not* embed fonts and use only the 'base 14" fonts 
which all PDF readers should have. 

2) The second is the perceived download times when the PDF is visible 
in the viewer. Ghostscript has a utility, pdfopt,  which can 
'linearize' a PDF and allow a PDF reader to display the first page of 
the pdf , then subsequent pages to load in the background. This is 
very useful for longer documents. Note this tool does not shrink the 
PDF, but actually may increase the size as it undoes the non-linear 
way objects are stored in PDF.

One other issue which will help reducing PDF size is  when we add jpeg 
2000 support with PDF 1.5 export. This is already is on the 1.3.x 
roadmap. Ghostscript 8.5x supports more and more PDF 1.5 features 
with each new release.

I also agree with respect to Scribus, file size is less of an issue 
than print quality, though in my observation using the same kinds of 
text and images Scribus generates file which are comparable to other 
layout tools. E.g. 4-10 MB per A4/US letter page with mixed text and 
hi-resolution PSD or TIFF files. 

Cheers,
Peter