[scribus] Compare.pdf (crossposted)

[John Culleton]

On Monday 31 January 2011 13:24:46 Barry McKenna wrote:
> On 1/31/2011 9:57 AM, John Culleton wrote:
> > On Saturday 29 January 2011 15:59:47 Barry McKenna wrote:
> >>>>> John,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It may be a particular Windows/Scribus/pdf issue with my
> >>>>> system/HP 1018 - or not, I don't know - but the Scribus
> >>>>> printed output looks distinctly different from the Tex and
> >>>>> Open Writer; the same as my Scribus (1.3.9) to pdf output
> >>>>> when I _don't_ "Embed PDF": The printed output looks a bit
> >>>>> jagged under a loop as when the font is converted to
> >>>>> outlines.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Barry
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> scribus mailing list
> >>>>> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> >>>>> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
> >>>>
> >>>> It is possible that I messed up. I'll check. But the issue I
> >>>> am addressing is the layout of the text, hyphenation, space
> >>>> between words and the like, and not the typeface as such.
> >>>
> >>> I blew those samples up in Acrobat Reader to 800% and the text
> >>> was perfectly smooth. No jaggies. Try AR instead of your loupe.
> >>
> >> John,
> >>
> >> It's not that important, but I'm not talking about screen
> >> pdf. My bottom line concern is how my book/output looks when
> >> printed and that's how I test. The Scribus page printed
> >> looks exactly like test pages that I print that look a bit
> >> jaggy and when I send the test pdfs to my local printer he
> >> tells me that Adobe Illustrator tells him that my font was
> >> not embedded and the text was converted to outlines.
> >>
> >> Again, perhaps it something particular to how my system
> >> interprets pdfs and how it converts sla to pdf.
> >>
> >> In my Acrobat Reader 9.4.1 the text looks just a little bit
> >> softer than most of the others.
> >>
> >> As for justification, on both the larger width and the short
> >> line, I see that Scribus comes in just a bit behind the Tex.
> >>
> >> Barry
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> scribus mailing list
> >> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> >> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
> >
> > I went over both my original pdf from Scribus and the finished
> > booklet which is created with pdftex and imported pdf files.
> >
> > It is possible that Illustrator is the problem. I can't imagine
> > what work flow for a book interior would require Illustrator. The
> > original pdf from Scribus and the copy imported into my
> > compare.pdf both show the embedded fonts. Printed at 600 dpi on
> > my old B/W Laser they show minimal roughness under a magnifying
> > glass. Printed on my new color laser at 3600 Ret (whatever that
> > means) I see no roughness.
> >
> > But the product is the pdf. If I can see no roughness at maximum
> > resolution in Acrobat Reader then there is no roughness inherent
> > in the pdf. The pdf merely tells the printer to print this letter
> > from this font at this size.  If however it is processed through
> > other software that converts it to bitmap  then some roughness
> > may appear.
> >
> > This happened with the original Masterson pages. He did not send
> > me a pdf at 5.5 x8.5 but rather one at full page size. I had to
> > trim it in Gimp and export it as png which is bitmapped.
>
> John,
>
> My printer only opened the pdf in Adobe Illustrator to get
> more information about the file. He did nothing in terms of
> changing the file.
>
> And I agree that the output device used to print fonts which
> have been outlined can make a significant difference but
> still not be the essential factor.
>
> While the pdf with outlined fonts looked a bit rough with my
> 600dpi HP 1018, the same pdf printed and compared with a
> version that was not outlined - both on a Xerox Docucolor
> Postscript 3 600dpi device - looked almost exactly the same,
> in terms of the text. However, the one pixel lines in the
> pdf whose font had been outlined were still a bit broken up,
> but not as bad as that from my HP 1018, which is one of the
> most entry level lasers, but normally totally adequate for
> my day to day needs.
>
> Also, I can almost always see a slight difference - at 100%
> - from pdfs generated on my system when the fonts have been
> outlined in comparison to a version of the same original
> file when the fonts are embedded and not outlined.
>
> The essential point of this, as I see it, is that users
> should be aware that any pdfs which are produced with
> outlined fonts _may_ suffer from some loss of resolution,
> either in the text or in the graphics, especially if their
> graphics require _very fine lines_. And it may also be that
> for some users, the difference might not be significant.
> However, for my use, producing a book with many graphs with
> fine lines with text, it turned out to be a major factor for me.
>
> Barry
>
> _______________________________________________
> scribus mailing list
> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus

-- Very good. However outlined fonts did not enter into compare.pdf.  
An updated version with more samples put together by Pete Masterson 
is available here:

http://wexfordpress.com/tex/compare2.pdf

John Culleton
Create Book Covers with Scribus:
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