[Scribus] Character-by-character placement in PDF

[Craig Bradney]

On Wednesday 19 October 2005 22:32, Phil Hughes wrote:
> 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.

To take it to its most simplest point: Its a known issue. We might try to 
change it sooner, but I very much doubt that any work on this will even be 
attempted, or worthwhile, before our new styles and text system arrive.

Craig
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