[Scribus] Character-by-character placement in PDF

[Phil Hughes]

I brought this issue up before but there seemed to be "no concern". I
would like to re-raise it.

The issue is that plain text strings are put out in PostScript by a
series of move to commands. Thus, output of 100 characters can easily
end up with thousands of characters in the PDF. Besides this, it
means that the PDF reader will have to deal with placement of the
individual characters rather than just outputting a string.

The explanation for this is that there are cases where text must be
output like this. If you change kerning at a character level or if
characters change in color. No argument here. The ability to do this
is one of the reasons PDFs are so very flexible.

The issue, for me, is that most (probably meaning 99%) of the text I
want to output is nothing more than lines of text in a single color.
Specifically, I want to output the text of TUX Magazine soon and, if
all goes well, Linux Journal. Thus, one where the PDF must be emailed
or downloaded and the other where it is sent to a printer.

My feeling (helped along by talking to Mitch Frazier) is that it
doesn't seem like it would be that hard to offer an automatic choice.
That is, when Scribus is creating a PDF, if there are text
modifications the current method is used but, for ordinary text, a
more efficient output system would be used.

This post is really about who might also be concerned about this
apparant inefficiency and, beyond that, who might be interested in
helping with a solution. Concern, at this point, is more important
that help. If there is no concern than maybe I have missed
something--that is, maybe this isn't really a problem.
-- 
Phil Hughes, fyl at a42.com  Phone: 505-713-5675
Aptdo. Postal 0012, Esteli, Esteli, NICARAGUA