[scribus] Compare.pdf (crossposted)

[John Culleton]

On Saturday 29 January 2011 15:59:47 Barry McKenna wrote:
> >>> John,
> >>>
> >>> It may be a particular Windows/Scribus/pdf issue with my
> >>> system/HP 1018 - or not, I don't know - but the Scribus
> >>> printed output looks distinctly different from the Tex and
> >>> Open Writer; the same as my Scribus (1.3.9) to pdf output
> >>> when I _don't_ "Embed PDF": The printed output looks a bit
> >>> jagged under a loop as when the font is converted to outlines.
> >>>
> >>> Barry
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> scribus mailing list
> >>> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> >>> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
> >>
> >> It is possible that I messed up. I'll check. But the issue I am
> >> addressing is the layout of the text, hyphenation, space between
> >> words and the like, and not the typeface as such.
> >
> > I blew those samples up in Acrobat Reader to 800% and the text
> > was perfectly smooth. No jaggies. Try AR instead of your loupe.
>
> John,
>
> It's not that important, but I'm not talking about screen
> pdf. My bottom line concern is how my book/output looks when
> printed and that's how I test. The Scribus page printed
> looks exactly like test pages that I print that look a bit
> jaggy and when I send the test pdfs to my local printer he
> tells me that Adobe Illustrator tells him that my font was
> not embedded and the text was converted to outlines.
>
> Again, perhaps it something particular to how my system
> interprets pdfs and how it converts sla to pdf.
>
> In my Acrobat Reader 9.4.1 the text looks just a little bit
> softer than most of the others.
>
> As for justification, on both the larger width and the short
> line, I see that Scribus comes in just a bit behind the Tex.
>
> Barry
>
> _______________________________________________
> scribus mailing list
> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus

I went over both my original pdf from Scribus and the finished booklet 
which is created with pdftex and imported pdf files.

It is possible that Illustrator is the problem. I can't imagine what 
work flow for a book interior would require Illustrator. The original 
pdf from Scribus and the copy imported into my compare.pdf both show 
the embedded fonts. Printed at 600 dpi on my old B/W Laser they show 
minimal roughness under a magnifying glass. Printed on my new color 
laser at 3600 Ret (whatever that means) I see no roughness.

But the product is the pdf. If I can see no roughness at maximum 
resolution in Acrobat Reader then there is no roughness inherent in 
the pdf. The pdf merely tells the printer to print this letter from 
this font at this size.  If however it is processed through other 
software that converts it to bitmap  then some roughness may appear. 

This happened with the original Masterson pages. He did not send me a 
pdf at 5.5 x8.5 but rather one at full page size. I had to trim it in 
Gimp and export it as png which is bitmapped.

-- 
John Culleton
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