[Scribus] 2 questions

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Donnerstag, 27. M?rz 2008 18:09:59 schrieb John Culleton:
> On Thursday 20 March 2008 08:54:35 am Timothy Boyden wrote:
> > Yeah that is what I thought also. Any good commercial printer must
> > be using a software package that does automatic flattening of PDFs
> > in the Prepress stage of their workflow, I know it's set as one of
> > our traps. When we finally get around to installing Kodak Prinergy
> > 4, it will be using the Adobe PDF rendering engine and
> > transparencies will no longer be an issue.
> >
> > -Tim
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: scribus-bounces at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de
> > [mailto:scribus-bounces at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de] On Behalf Of Craig
> > Bradney
> > Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:34 AM
> > To: D. R. Evans
> > Subject: Re: [Scribus] 2 questions
> >
> > > I finally reached their "PDF expert" and chatted with him.
> > >
> > > So the real scoop is that problems are caused if you use
> > > transparency anywhere in a PDF.
> > >
> > > "OK so the issue there is that transparencies simply are not
> > > supported
> > >
> > > in
> >
> > a
> >
> > > high speed commercial digital print environment.
> > >
> > > they need to be resolved to the final pixel--ie flattened"
> > >
> > > So my experience is that if you make use of transparency
> > > anywhere, it
> >
> > might
> >
> > > or might not work with scribus "out of the box".
> > >
> > > Their first recommendation for Linux users is to use GIMP :-) but
> >
> > otherwise
> >
> > > if you use transparency anywhere then you MUST flatten the output
> > > if you want it to work reliably.
> > >
> > > (Incidentally, one of the other tech support people there also
> > > mentioned that one should use PDF 1.4 or earlier.)
> >
> > What sort of rubbish answer is that? If they are going to "support"
> > PDF 1.4, then they need to support transparencies.
> >
> > Ok, Scribus needs to get a flattener built in at some point,
> > (patent mine-field, btw), but they need to recheck their specs.
> > With PDF now at 1.7, I doubt 1.3 is going to be used "by default"
> > by most unknowing customers in the future.
> >
> > Craig
>
> LSI wants interiors with color to be built to the PDF X/1:2001
> standard which is about PDF 1.3 in antiquity.  It is alleged that
> they search for this tag line in the pdf.  They are by far the
> biggest digital printer in the US.
>
> Covers with LSI may be a different matter but transparencies like
> those used in the Freedom Yug tutorial may still cause problems.
>
> If there is no way to "flatten" a file in Scribus what would be the
> most useful external flattening program to use for a: Linux and 

Print to a PostScript file from AdobeReader and convert the PS file back to 
PDF.


> b: 
> MSWin?

Essentially the same, but you need to install a PostScript printer driver 
first.

HTH

Christoph