[Scribus] Setting linescreen when printing pdf file

[Craig Ringer]

On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 05:57, Wayne Maeda wrote:

> Is it possible to print out a pdf document (with text and graphics) in Windows 
> so that the graphics print out at 75 lpi while the text remains crisp and 
> dark black? I was under the assumption that it could be done. Most of the 
> newspapers that I deal with request their ads to be in pdf format. They must 
> be printing them out at a certain linescreen somehow someway. 

At my workplace (a newspaper) we prefer PDFs from clients. Our printer's
RIP is what makes the decisions on linescreen, etc, and it clearly
treats text and graphics differently. It's obvious when we've had to use
a TIFF instead, or when a client has supplied a PDF of an image of the
ad, because the text comes out with awful grainy edges due to the
linescreen.

Essentially, I'm pretty sure it's the RIP's job in a PDF workflow. 

> Unfortunately, the printer that I'm dealing with currently, does not take pdf 
> files. They want it camera ready.

Heh. There aren't even any (newspaper) printers in my STATE (Western
Australia) that accept camera ready jobs anymore. We were forced to go
all digital, kicking and screaming, because of this - and frankly I
would've liked to stay with our hybrid process until we could've moved
to InDesign. Now we're stuck with Quark 4 on MacOS 9 for the forseeable
future. (It should be pretty obvious why I'm interested in Scribus).

> Which means I have to take it to another 
> place to have it printed out at the specified linescreen. Except that this 
> other place does not have the software that sets the linescreen. End result: 
> I have this pdf document with no way to print it out properly. Hmm.

GhostScript appears to have some screen controls. '-dCOLORSCREEN=' and
'-dDITHERDPI' may have some potential. I'm unable to test if they do
what you need right now, I'm sorry, but you might want to look into
them. They're documented briefly in 'Use.html' in the gs docs.

--
Craig Ringer