[SOLVED] Scribus File Not Opening Up Properly

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cdjr398

I do a neighborhood 12 page magazine using Scribus 1.6.2 to do layout. It works great except for one main problem.

The PDF generated by Scribus will not open properly in Adobe Acrobat Ver 2024.005.20400.

Another frustrating item is that the PDF reader I use most "Skim" does a great job of reading the PDF, no problem. My printer who has never heard of Scribus or Skim insists that the PDF file open in Adobe Acrobat.

Again the within Scribus everything looks fine. In the Adobe Acrobat PDF for some reason the cover comes out with a few other things but all other pages are blank.

Any help greatly appreciated,

a.l.e

it would probably help, if you could share a pdf file created by scribus and that does not open correctly in acrobat....

cdjr398

Funny thing, I was trying to compress the PDF file because it was too big. When I dragged the file to attach it, it opened in my Brave Browser. Surprisingly it looked not bad with only one small item and the bad page not coming through. This is much better than the file I attached below.

cdjr398

When I open up the original non-compressed file in Brave Browser the PDF opens perfectly with on deletions.

utnik

#4
hi cdjr398

how do you export your .pdf files?
when i open my files in acrobat reader and look at the file properties (ctrl + d), it says that the file was produced by 'scribus pdf library 1.6.3' or something like that. your file doesn't contain any information of the application.

if you could share the .sla file as well, i would export it here to see if things work different...

utnik

cdjr398

Thanks for your help. The people at my printer have to have a file that works with Adobe. They didn't even know about Scribus.

cdjr398

utnik, you asked about how I export..

AdmFubar

#7
A point of interest I caught right away. The elements on the last page appear to have come from an imported pdf. Is that the case for most of the document? Was a pdf imported into scribus to be used as a template?

Looked closely at other pages, and noticed that there are text elements that appear jpeg'ed.

Lots of weirdness in your file. Many of the text boxes are doubles. Grab one and move it, there is another identical/nearly identical one underneath it.
Using Scribus 1.5.8 & 1.6.2, openSUSE 15.5
Advanced hobbyist

cdjr398

I'm not sure if the last page was an imported PDF. It was a complicated page for me to produce so I would cut and paste instead of trying to reproduce it. It could been a PDF. As far as the text elements appearing as jpegs. The cover was done in Photoshop with text and image and then brought in as a jpeg. On page two there was a scanned image with text I brought in. There are weirdnesses, I had no background in Scribus or graphic design before being called on to do this project, which I've been doing for 3 years. On page one there were many double images. I'm just trying to get a PDF that can be read by Adobe Acrobat so my printer people will except it.
Thank you for your input, much appreciated.

Nermander

Does Acrobat not manage to open the file at all, or are there error messages? Or does the PDF just look weird in Acrobat?

cdjr398

The first example was from the Scribus file opened in Adobe Acrobat. It did have an error message " An error exists on this page (in was on the cover). Adobe Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person who created the PDF document to correct the problem." The cover page was created in Photoshop text & image. The second example is the same Scribus file opened in a PDF reader called Skim. It opened perfectly.

AdmFubar

Quote from: cdjr398 on February 05, 2025, 03:09:30 PMI'm not sure if the last page was an imported PDF. It was a complicated page for me to produce so I would cut and paste instead of trying to reproduce it. It could been a PDF. As far as the text elements appearing as jpegs. The cover was done in Photoshop with text and image and then brought in as a jpeg. On page two there was a scanned image with text I brought in. There are weirdnesses, I had no background in Scribus or graphic design before being called on to do this project, which I've been doing for 3 years. On page one there were many double images. I'm just trying to get a PDF that can be read by Adobe Acrobat so my printer people will except it.
Thank you for your input, much appreciated.
what were you cutting and pasting from?
Using Scribus 1.5.8 & 1.6.2, openSUSE 15.5
Advanced hobbyist

cdjr398

I had several versions that I had done in Scribus. I cut and pasted from there mostly. I was hoping not to have to start from scratch.

utnik

hi cdjr398

Quote from: cdjr398 on February 07, 2025, 04:53:19 AMI had several versions that I had done in Scribus. I cut and pasted from there mostly. I was hoping not to have to start from scratch.

when i had to clean your file, i would just do that: starting from scratch.
the structure of the file is unbelievably complex. the last page contains 54 text frames. i would either make it one or two. (as a side effect, texts on the same line would be exactly at the same height, not more or less near the same height...)
you didn't use paragraph styles and character styles. everything is set with direct formatting. this makes the file almost not editable.
i would place the page numbers on the master pages. then they would be at the same plage on every page. (if you really need this unusual pagination with odd numbers on the left page, you can define this in 'file' → 'document setup' → 'sections'.)

i tried to find the reason of this acrobat-reader-issue. but the complex structure of the file would make this harder than rebuilding the layout in a sane way.

if this was my file and my job to make it work, i would use the .pdf file on a background layer (maybe with 30% opacity) and rebuild the whole layout on top of it. maybe with one layer for the images and one for the rest, but not more... (after rebuilding you can just delete the background layer.)
i would do all the formatting with paragraph styles and character styles to keep it editable and clean.

i'm sorry, not to tell you an easier way. but it's a bit of a project for a first layout work in scribus. there is always some learning curve.

here you find a good scribus manual. it's not based on the newest version of the program, but the basics still work.
maybe you don't need to read the whole manual. on the left you find the themes you need. (i.e. styles)
the most important change between tis manual and the actual scribus versions ist the 'content properties' palette. in earlier versions the properties of content of a frame (image, text...) have been edited on a tab of the 'properties' palette of the frame. that's what the manual still suggests.
but if you know about the 'content properties' palette, this is not a big problem.

utnik

cdjr398

utnik, Thanks so much. I did get it to work finally but I'm not sure what the problem with Acrobat was. So now I have a PDF for the website and another for the printer that will work. Your advice about finding a good scribus manual is well taken. I have bumped into the limits of my knowledge, actually that probably happened a while ago.  Thanks again.