[Scribus] Time to defend your use of libPDF

[Craig Ringer]

Andreas Vox wrote:
>> But I thought Scribus were always saying that their PDF was fully
>> standards compliant??  What errors in the font widths? Could this be 
>> why
>> my Arial Font 'l' apear on screen like fat 'l's but print OK?

You will see this from other tools as well. I run into that exact issue 
when working with PDFs that've been generated by Distiller from 
PostScript created by some apps. Frankly, it just doesn't matter much - 
it'll proof fine on paper, print fine, and the issue goes away when you 
zoom in. Annoying, yes, but no more than that.

This is just an issue you get used to dealing with in pre-press, and 
it's one without a good solution as Andreas noted.

> We might implement an option for "nice" PDF some time, but right now 
> that hasn't any priority for us.

To elaborate, it's worth noting that to an extent "nice" PDF and 
press-ready PDF are requirements in conflict. A good example of this is 
the way that Scribus converts all OpenType fonts to outlines on export, 
to work around issues with older RIPs.

--
Craig Ringer