[scribus] Adobe Reader 8 and Scribus.

[Julian Robbins]

> You cannot normally open a PDF for editing in Scribus. That said its
> > > possible to import a PDF, but your mileage may vary. Anyway its not a
> > > very good way to try it.
>   
> > Just to precise : You can import PDF in an image frame. I did it once
> > when I had to include a PDF from a 3rd party. You cannot edit it. If
> > you set the image frame to be equal to the size of the page, the
> > results are OK (but not excellent). Another thing, you can import only
> > one page; If your PDF is several pages long, you have to split it with
> > a tool.
>   
>
> I just tried Inkscape .46 as recommended by Julian Robbins. Indeed, it
> has a very nice PDF import feature, and the text is editable, too. Not
> perfectly editable - you can select a maximum of one line at a time,
> but at least you can make minor changes if you wish. It can import only
> one page at a time, although you have your choice of pages, so you
> could import all the pages of a multipage PDF if you have the patience
> to do so.
>
> I selected a line of text, then copied and pasted into Scribus, but the
> paste option in Scribus was grayed out. I guess the only way to get the
> PDF from Inkscape into Scribus is to save as an EPS or something from
> Inkscape.
>   
Yes. Inkscape does a nice job, with only a few very minor issues. Pretty 
useful really.
I would save into svg from Inkscape (which is its own native format 
anyway, so its pretty compliant to the stds, and then in Scribus, do 
Import -SVG.

> Interestingly, Inkscape is open source, so whatever code they are using
> to perform the PDF import must be available to Scribus developers,
> right?
Well it would be kind a nice to have this functionality, but yes I 
imagine the code could be quite difficult to implement. I know that the 
Inkscape devs and the scribus devs talk pretty frequently anyway and 
share code.

It works via the sk1 project code, a vector editor in its own right. You 
can now even import Coreldraw files and Adobe Illustrator files into 
Inkscape, and again export as SVG, and import into Scribus. But not 
using Windows Inkscape ... see below ..

According to the inkscape notes; 
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v14Draft/html/File-Import.html 
you can import from the following. Note the refs to vers 0.46 which has 
much of the new goodies.

File types supported (a '*' indicates the author (not me, the originator 
) has not tested the file import):

    *

      /Changed for v0.46./

      .ai (Adobe Illustrator) Opens version 9.0 and later files (based
      on PDF). See PDF entry below. Older versions (based on PostScript)
      can be opened by selecting the PostScript or EPS file type from
      the drop-down menu. On Linux, one can use the *|file|* command to
      check the version.

    *

      .ai.svg (Adobe Illustrator /SVG
      <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v14Draft/html/Glossary.html#svg>/)
      Strips the input of everything in Adobe Illustrator /Name Spaces
      <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v14Draft/html/Glossary.html#name_spaces>/,
      leaving the file as pure /SVG
      <http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL_v14Draft/html/Glossary.html#svg>/.


    *

      /New in v0.46./

      .cdr (CoralDraw) Works only on Linux at the moment. Requires
      UniConverter
      <http://www.sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor>
      to be installed. Text objects not converted. File versions 7 to X4
      supported by UniConverter 1.1.1.

      Note: Fedora Users: The executable |uniconv| was renamed to
      |uniconvertor| to avoid a naming conflict. You can change
      |/usr/bin/uniconvertor| to |/usr/bin/uniconv| (if you don't
      already have a binary with that name) or you can edit the files
      |cdr_input.inx| and |cdr2svg.sh| in the
      |share/inkscape/extensions| directory.

    *

      .dia (Dia) Requires Dia <http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/> to be
      installed.

    *

      .dxf (AutoCAD) Requires |dxf2svg|
      <http://dxf2svg.sourceforge.net/> to be installed.

    *

      .ico (Windows icon)

    *

      /New in v0.46./

      .pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format) Supported natively through
      the /poppler <http://poppler.freedesktop.org/>/ library. Also
      supports .ai (Adobe Illustrator) version 9.0 and later files. A
      dialog will appear in which one can specify which page of a
      multipage file should be imported as well as a clip region.
      /Gradient meshes/ are converted to groups of small tiles. Text is
      imported with manual kerning. To make editing easier, manual
      kerning can be removed via the Text → Remove Manual Kerns command.

    *

      .sk (Sketch/Skencil) Requires Skencil
      <http://www.nongnu.org/skencil/> to be installed. Special shape
      information (e.g. rectangles) is not preserved.

    *

      /Updated in v0.46 (new method that works)./

      .wmf (Windows Meta File) Requires UniConverter
      <http://www.sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor>
      to be installed.

      Note: Fedora Users: The executable |uniconv| was renamed to
      |uniconvertor| to avoid a naming conflict. You can change
      |/usr/bin/uniconvertor| to |/usr/bin/uniconv| (if you don't
      already have a binary with that name) or you can edit the files
      |wmf_input.inx| and |cdr2svg.sh| in the
      |share/inkscape/extensions| directory.

    *

      /New in v0.46./

      .xaml (Microsoft Application eXtensible Markup Language).*

I've edited the file to remove the obvious ones, but you can see 
Inkscape could be a really useful way to import files that you cant 
(yet) import directly into Scribus.

Hope its useful for someone.

-- 

Julian Robbins