Scribus SVG Q and A § Document Index § Hyphenation - Type Hints
PDF Exporting from Scribus
Overview Scribus PDF Export Features
The power and versaility with the PDF Export featues in Scribus is in my opinion one of its best features. The platform neutral nature of PDF enables Scribus users to overcome a number of potential barriers to Linux and DTP. Scribus can reliably export high quailty, "press-ready" PDF including advanced PDF 1.4 features, ISO compliant PDF/X-3 and now with color managed PDF, thanks to littlecms. If that is all Scribus could do, that alone would make Scribus a great application. The bonus is all the easy to use versatilty like creating presentations á la Powerpoint or creating web-enabled PDF interactive forms which can be used with electronic document exchange, the ability to use javascript to control elements within the PDF and other user friendly touches like annotations, bookmarks and optionally document security if needed. While PDF in one sense is a proprietary standard, it is also widely available on most every computing platform. It is also extemely well documented. The upcoming 1.5 draft reference manual is mere 1100 pages. The PDF abilities in Scribus enables for re-purposing a document. One document can be produced for printing, web download or for presentation like Star Office Impress or MS Power point. That this is a future trend in publishing is indicated by the same strategy in Adobe's InDesign 2.0 and the new PDF capabilities in Quark Xpress 6 and Illustrator 10. In electronic publishing and pre-press production, both have seen many enhancements to PDF, which often overcome the limitations of HTML and tradtional postscript, respectively.
Scribus 1.0 has extended PDF creation features. This sixth generation driver has new features and export capabilities including:
- The ability to create high resolution "press-ready" PDF/X-3 compliant PDF's. More info is here: PDF/X-3 Creation with Scribus and > Scribus and Pre-Press Consideration.
- Completely embedding fonts. When exporting for print and when the embed fonts option is enabled, Scribus embeds the entire font. It is this authors opinion this is a more reliable choice than sub-setting, if you desire an exact reproduction of your layout including the fonts and text spacing chosen to layout your document. This option eliminates one troublesome issue with other publishing platforms - font substitution when outputting postscript for PDF.
- Interactive PDF Form Creation - enabling users to easily create interactive PDF form generation, a first for Linux. Scribus, as far as I know, is the only other application besides the full Acrobat suite which has interactive form creation. There is a tutorial within an interactive PDF: Javascript and PDF.
Presentation Effects - This will allow you to layout a series of pages which can be both printed and presented using Adobe Acrobat Reader or Similar in full screen. These effects include variations on fade, wipes,blinds and others.
Down-sampling of high resolution images within the PDF. EPS images can also be optionally reduced. This allows you to create two or three versions of the same document; one for web download,one for desktop printing and one for commercial reproduction.
Annotations - Annotations are non-printing notes which are displayed as an icon which open a mouse in Acrobat Reader or similar. This allow you for example to include definitions for a technical term in a PDF file.
Thumbnails - the PDF exporter can created thumbnails of your pages which can be displayed within Acrobat Reader or similar.
Bookmarks - Allows you to create a simplified version of an index, which can allow a user to go directly to a section of a PDF file in the viewer
PDF Form Generation This allows the creation of interactive forms with formulas and list lookups among others. There is also a javascript editor from which you can import javascripts into your document. To add this capability:
Select then right clicking on a Text Frame
Convert the it to a PDF-Annotation by choosing "Is PDF-Annotation"
Then, right click the Text Frame again and then choose "Annotation Properties" from the context menu.
From here there is a number of choices to create interactive form within a PDF including:
Buttons, Javascript capable buttons, Formulas, Rollovers, Text Fields, Number Fields, Tool Tips etc. Here: Here: http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?WebPageID=338 is a great link for developing server side interactive forms with a Unix toolkit.
**Your best results will be with the newest version of Acrobat Reader 5.0.7 for Linux. The program author and I have discovered Linux version is missing some functionality with the javascript capabilities of Version 4.05 and 5.0.7 on Linux. Some of these bugs are not present in Acrobat Reader 5.0.5 on the Mac or Windows 98SE / Windows 2000. Within the/scribus/samples/folder is scribusforms.sla.gz, which is the introduction of the new features by an interactive PDF. Also included are some some sample Scribus documents which also demonstrate the new PDF features. Opening the survey.pdf file will demo some of the presentation effects. To view the introductory PDF, open Acrobat Reader, then navigate to:
../scribus/samples/scribusforms.sla.gzHere are three links to the reference documentation for javascript and interactive form creation with PDF:
http://devedge.netscape.com/central/javascript/
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/pdfs/tn/5186AcroJS.pdf
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technotes/acrobatpdf.html
Aside from interactive PDF creation, for a given document, there are basically 4 paths to follow in creating your PDF:
Web down load - Screen Reading -Interactive Forms - the recommended settings are down-sample all images to 72dpi, do not embed fonts. To ensure a reasonably close layout, choose "Base 14 fonts" fonts which are typically included with all versions of Acrobat Reader and have similar substitutions with Ghostscript: This would include your basic variations of Courier, Helvetica, Times (Nimbus), Symbol and Zapf Dingbat, which are all similar on most PC platforms.
Print Optimized - This would mean targeting the PDF for printing on an office laser jet or ink jet. Recommended settings: down-sample all images to 300 dpi, embed fonts and keep your page margins with enough tolerance for margin limits on desktop and common office laser printers (approx. 6/10 the of and inch or 15 cm.)
Press Optimized - Clear all down sampling or compression of images where image quality is of utmost importance. All images brought into to Scribus as placed images should be a minimum or 200 dpi and preferably 300 dpi or more for photos or TIFFS. Line art or vector graphics converted to an EPS in a program like Illustrator should have a minimum of 800 dpi for best results. This is the recommended method if you are creating PDF/X-3 compliant PDF's.
Presentation effects - the recommended settings are down-sample all images to 72, 96 or 120 dpi, depending on the resolution of the display screen. Embed all fonts and landscape page layouts will give you maximum image area on the screen if you plan on using a display projector.
What are the results? The author has created training manuals for client with colors and fonts embedded which display and print perfectly on Windows PC's, Mac and Linux using versions 4 and 5 of Adobe Acrobat Reader and GSView 4.4. All future documentation for Scribus will be in PDF form, created solely by Scribus.
Scribus SVG Q and A § Document Index § Hyphenation - Type Hints