On Saturday 23 March 2002 01:19, sda wrote: > > Ghostscript doesn't create the best PDF's, [for publishing], remember > `portable document format' is a creation of Adobe - they own it. So > obviously the postscript level three systems that Adobe licenses work best > for Acrobat files. Additonally modern prepress systems RIP's [raster image > processing] usually do some rather neat things with PDF's. Remember > we're talking about print publishing, so that PDF has to colour separate > and trap, also, in the real world, changes often come after the fact. How > many people here know how to edit a PDF or a postcript file, on another > box but their own? If you've attempted such, you'd quickly realize that > font's are a problem when using different systems. I might not have the > same font that the author used. A properly made PDF file is excellent > for publishing, as the fonts are embedded. One can't say the same about > postcript files and they are difficult to pre-flight [check for errors > prior to publishing].
That makes sense. AFAIK, it's possible to embed PDF fonts when converting from LaTeX. Not sure how well it works, though - I only use PDF files for the web, and quickkly it's a minefield: pslatex fonts work fine, many others will produce nice documents, but only for the 1% of web users who have Ghostscript. So presumably what is needed for Linux/LaTeX users is a better way to produce PDF directly, rather than the usual dvi->ps->pdf route. pdftex has its advocates, but it's still beta, and thin on features at the moment. > In terms of accepting just .ps files - you have to remember that this > file must work with the publisher pre-press systems. Unless one has a > "history" with the publisher, they generally don't accept .ps files as > most people don't know the specs required for the publishers systems. If > you do it the standard way, one submits the job in Quark, FrameMaker, > whatever and the publisher creates the postscript according to their > specs. Again changes are often made after the fact to documents. Who > wants to be responsible for altering a clients .ps? Not me and other's > in the industry feel the same way. Heh, that's one reason why I'd prefer to submit as .ps! > Also I'm surprised that people are mentioning word processors in this > thread. Word processors aren't used in professional publishing - no > typesetter would be caught using such and they don't play well with > pre-press systems. TeX used to be the standard, but when the modern page > layout apps came along, like Quark, FrameMaker, the use of LaTeX and TeX > quickly fell by the wayside. The output was considered too unreliable > and doing changes in a busy workflow was awkward to say the least. No > one that has used LaTeX in the past and now uses the very sophisticated > layout apps, would ever wish LaTeX on their worst enemy. It has it's > uses, but not in the modern publishing environment. Unfortunately these > layout apps haven't been ported to Linux. That'll never happen until > font foundries are better supported and companies like Adobe are > convinced they can make $ from Linux users. Sorry to here that LaTeX has lost popularity outside academia - of all the formats I've looked at, it seems the best, if only because it converts well to other formats. I find the situation pretty confusing at the moment - I mean one publisher I submitted a manuscript to asked for .rtf ! There again, there's a difference between publishers (who are going to mess about with your manuscript considerably) and printers, who presumably only want to tweak thinks visually a bit. I don't think Adobe (or any software house) will ever be convinced they can make $ out of Linux (hardware firms have woken up to the potential, but that's a qualitativey different situation). However, we will probably see Linux apps which can produce Quark or FrameMaker-compatible documents soon -- after all, KWord is modelled on FrameMaker, I think (possibly one reason why I'm not terribly keen on it - I just can't think in terms of frames). Robin
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