[scribus] Importing and printing .ps files

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:55:49 -0800 (PST)
Ole Madsen <philimorept at yahoo.com> dijo:

>I have a question regarding importing and printing .ps files.  In a
>newsletter, I am producing, I need a couple of tables, and I have
>found the easiest way to accomplish the task is to first generate the
>tables in OOcalc, then print to file.  This creates a .ps file that I
>can then insert into an image frame.  So far so good.  
>
>However, if I then want to print the .sla file, the table does not
>print, while everything else on the page prints fine. How come? What
>am I missing?
>
>Normally this is not a show stopper for me, because when I export the
>page to .pdf, everything prints fine, and in any event, the .pdf file
>is my final product.  Still, it would be nice to be able to print
>the .sla file.
>
>I don't know if this is related, but I am also having a problem when I
>try to import a .ps file via the file > import > get vector file
>route.  More often than not, this causes the program to hang.  Is
>there perhaps an issue with 1.3.5.1 in this area?
>
>I am using Mandriva 2010 Power Pack and 1.3.5.1.

I'm not sure I can help, but I can offer some observations.

You have discovered the same workaround for lack of tables in 1.3.5.1
that I discovered, namely, create the table in OOo and print to PS,
then import the PS as a vector file. In my case I created the table in
OOo Writer instead of Calc, but otherwise, my process was the same.

I never had Scribus hang on me, but I did encounter numerous errors in
the imported graphics. Most importantly, glyphs were displaced on the
line if the glyph was not in the Latin area.

I also discovered that Scribus ran slower and slower the more such PS
files I imported. Eventually I discovered that in a lot of cases I
could create the "table" using regular text frames. For example, I
could create a frame with multiple columns and flow the text up and
down to appear as a table. This worked especially well with align to
grid turned on. Fortunately. in my case I did not need borders on the
cells. Had I needed borders it would have been more effort to recreate
them with native Scribus lines.

For those cases where it was too much effort to create the table with a
native Scribus workaround, I found that I could eliminate a lot of
problems by replacing the vector images of text in the PS import with
small text frames containing the same text. It was time consuming, but
it made the document less complex and it was faster.

I pray that Scribus gets real tables soon. But i realize developer time
is limited and there are a lot of other needs on the table as well.