[scribus] To Outline Or Not To Outline?

[Mike Sleger]

Thanks for the replies.  I've managed to get the OpenType fonts to embed with PDF 1.4 and it looks great on screen (much better than outlining on Windows Scribus 1.3.8).  This initial document is four pages, but other documents in the project will be significantly larger (200-300 pages).  (This will eventually introduce another problem later on, as Scribus supposedly has a problem with large documents, which is ridiculous.  Document size should have NO IMPACT on application stability, provided there is enough memory.)  The plan was to have a digital version for viewing on my iPad, and a printed copy for that old-fashioned tangible large-scale viewing (a sheet of paper is larger than the iPad screen).  It is to be printed at a service, as data goes all the way to the edge of the page and such cannot be printed on a desktop printer (at least as far as I know - mine can't do it and it's a pretty fancy printer).

I'm curious now, if the font contains all the hinting and character information and it's included within the PDF, why would outlines print any better than the original text?  Why wouldn't it print just the same (or better) than outlines if using the original font for the output?  As John indicated, converting all the glyphs into vectors would result in a massive PDF for documents with lots of text, which is what my documents are - two columns of text on each page with several inset images also including overlaid text.  Unless there's a very compelling reason to outline for printing, I'm partial to embedding.

On Jul 28, 2011, at 1:31 AM, Hirwen HARENDAL wrote:

> 
> Hi
> 
>> I've completed my first Scribus document on OS X and went to save it as PDF but none of the fonts will embed. 
> There are six fonts in the document from two font families, Eurostile Condensed and Helvetica Neue Condensed, 
> all of which are OpenType PS fonts. Research on Google reveals that PDF 1.4 cannot embed OpenType fonts but 
> PDF 1.6 can, with outlining generally recommended for preserving the look of the text and not needing the full font 
> file(s) included in the PDF. If that's the case, then why ever embed fonts? I'm curious what a professional printing 
> service (and experienced Scribus users) prefers when it comes to fonts and PDF output. All comments are welcome, 
> and I'll take everything into consideration when doing the final export. Thanks.
> 
> ** depending more for what the document is :
> - for web or reading on screen=> fonts embedded
> - for printer or professional edition => outlines
> 
> Regards
> 
> Hirwen HARENDAL 		 	   		  
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