[scribus] pdf/x-1a in scribus

[John Culleton]

On Saturday, July 02, 2011 12:35:20 pm a.l.e wrote:
> hi john,
> 
> > I suggest that activating Color Management be the 
default
> > in future versions of Scribus 1.5.0.
> 
> i think that i understand the reasons why you suggest 
this (and those
> reasons are not that bad... :-), but i still let the user 
enable
> the color management through a conscious action.
> 
> imo, it does not do any good do just enable a random 
profile...
> (a standard profile, is just static randomness :-)
> 
> somehow i imagine the typical scribus user as somebody 
who is working
> on a laptop at different places and prints a few copies 
of his work on
> a laser printer at home or at the office.
> the monitor is not calibrated and no profile is available 
for the
> printer (and the images used are also from different 
sources and
> without an embedded profile).
> 
> in my eyes, in such a situation enabling the color 
management does not
> give any advantage.
> 
> on the other side, we have the ones who have a calibrated 
monitor, a
> controlled workspace and got the profiles for the 
printers they use.
> those folks will correctly setup their color 
management... and they may
> even be happy to get a notice that their producing a pdf 
without having
> enabled the color management! :-)
> 
> all in all: i think that the current situation is mostly 
ok (with the
> exception where the creation of a pdf is made harder just 
because the
> selected version expects color management to be 
activated... we really
> should warn and give a one click solution for such 
cases...)
> 
> just some thoughts...
> a.l.e
> voilà,

Well I do have a laser printer, in fact two of them, one BW 
with cheap cartridges and another CMYK with ridiculously 
expensive cartridges. But these animals are just means to 
an end. My real work is preparing pdf files for book 
interiors using TeX and pdf files for book covers using 
Scribus. 

Most book covers are prepared, either for my own use or the 
use of others, to be printed by LSI, the largest and 
fussiest of the digital printers in the USA. LSI has a path 
to Amazon whereby the author or publisher can give Amazon 
just a 20% discount. No one else has this deal. So we live 
or die by LSI's rules. One of those rules embodies the 
infamous requirement for X/1-a:2001, almost mandatory for 
CMYK covers on B/W books and absolutely required for books 
with color interiors.

Acrobat Distiller will provide this format, as will a 
shareware command line program. But in the world of Open 
Source to my knowledge only Scribus 1.5.0 will provide this 
PDF version. This by itself makes Scribus invaluable for 
those of us who run Open Source shops.

So if there could be a flag or a signal to let people know 
that they have to set up Color Management before thay can 
use either PDF X/a or PDF X/1-a formats that would be 
useful. Maybe just a line of text on the PDF export screen.

It can be a set and forget operation. One can set it up
with no document active and it is there for all future 
documents.

I know all this of course but I tend to forget things. 
After all my age is 39 x 2. 
-- 
John Culleton

"Death Wore Black" Police procedural: 
http://www.deathworeblack.com/

"Create Book Covers with Scribus"
http://booklocker.com/books/4055.html
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