Problem with text frames

Previous topic - Next topic

esjai

I am very new to Scribus, so I am guessing I've missed something, but I have an issue with the right hand side of all my text frames cutting off. Images are fine, it's just the text frames. They appear fine when looking at them in Scribus, but not when printed to either a printer or pdf. I've attached a print screen of Scribus as well as one of the pdf output. I have search both Google and the forum, but I can't find a fix.
Thank you for any help! I appreciate it.

PS: I love Scribus. Thank you for such a wonderful free software.

[attachment deleted by admin]

utnik

hi esjai

direct printing from scribus may or may not work. i wouldn't recommend it!
how did you generate your .pdf file? the correct way is to export it via 'file' → 'export' → 'save as pdf'.

utnik

GarryP

Just to add a little to what utnik said, printing to a PDF is not the same as exporting to a PDF.

When you print to a PDF - via Scribus' Print function - that's no different than printing to a page except that the output goes to a PDF rather than a physical page. That might sound odd - or obvious - but it's not the same as exporting to a PDF. The print function is not the same as the export function. They work differently.

Printing to a PDF creates the PDF by using a printer driver to take the data from the print function and pushing it to a file rather than a physical printer. What you end up with is, basically, just a graphical image of the document rather than a real PDF. Printing to a PDF will not preserve layers, or bookmarks, or fields, or scripts, or anything like that. Think of the print function as - at best - just creating a photocopy of the document rather than the all-singing all-dancing document itself. On the other hand, exporting to a PDF creates a PDF the "proper" way with all of the features intact.

Many people have reported that the print function doesn't work properly - and quite a few have recommended that it is removed. The export function should always be used to produce output from Scribus whether the resultant PDF is to be physically printed or not. At the very least it can be used as a final proof before printing.

esjai

You guys are the best. That fixed the problem exactly. The worst part is that I have a degree in computers (even though it's almost 13 years old) and I still never thought of that. I guess I'm too used to programs that only have a print option, not an export.

Thank you !!

GarryP

You're welcome.

Don't feel too bad about not knowing about the Export function.

The whole point of Scribus is that it creates PDFs, either for printing or on-screen viewing. That's what it was created for. So why that function is relegated to a sub-menu while the much-less-used - and proven to be fallible - Print feature is more prominent in the File menu is a mystery to me.

Removing the Print feature has been discussed more than once, in this forum and elsewhere. It has also been suggested that the "Export to PDF" is moved from the sub-menu into the main File menu and renamed as something like "Publish to PDF". That seems perfectly sensible to me.

The Print feature, as it currently stands:
* is confusing for new users;
* doesn't create PDFs properly;
* has been proven not to work reliably;
* doesn't really give the user anything that other features do much better;
* makes Scribus look bad, because of the above issues;
* is extra code that needs to be maintained, so more work for the developers.

...and yet it persists. A strange situation indeed.

Anyway, I'm glad you've managed to get sorted and you can start creating PDFs and finding out all the great things you can do with Scribus.
It really is a good piece of software, even if some of the design choices are a little strange.