[scribus] Fonts in PDF for Blurb

Šarūnas sarunas at mailbox.org
Fri Dec 6 15:36:23 UTC 2019


Hello,

My first post here. Sincere thanks for Scribus developers for creating it!

I have used Scribus on Linux for several years to create and
successfully print magazines (photos and text) with Blurb's
print-on-demand service. (I have also used their other tool Booksmart
for many years before.) Despite warning on Blurb's upload webpage
regarding possible issues with Scribus embedding fonts, there were never
any preflight errors or incorrect printout.

However, I have just received my first Blurb book I made with Scribus NG
(1.5.5). This time all font characters printed as rectangles… The fonts
(LinuxLibertine, TrueType) were embedded, not subsetted, as usual.
Scribus own preflight for PDF/X-3 was happy.

After contacting Blurb support, they converted my uploaded PDFs,
“outlining” fonts. I downloaded the files and while inspecting them, I
can see that fonts are still listed as embedded, but now subsetted and
Type-1C instead of Truetype. Here is an explanation from Blurb
specialist, when I asked, what actually was done:

(lawyer => layer):
> What I did with your file is outline the fonts using the tool called
> Pitstop, and then I distilled it in Adobe Distiller. In this way your
> file is converted into one single lawyer instead of several lawyers
> with non embedded fonts.

I haven't yet received reprinted book, but I wonder if anyone here might
have any insight on what might be going on with fonts and/or layers in PDF?

P.S. I'm aware of Scribus's option to outline fonts when exporting PDF.
I tried that and the resulting PDF doesn't use any fonts as a result,
which is expected. Haven't received the printout yet either.

Thanks for any advice,
-- 
Šarūnas Burdulis
math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas

· https://useplaintext.email ·


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