Font issues with Blurb and Scribus

[AdmFubar]

I will never understand why people use TT fonts for print.

Because that is all they have.

[dmk]

Do you still have the PDF you have sent to Blurb?

Thanks for the interest. Yes, though not right now. The project is split into two PDF's, content and cover. The content PDF is a large file as it is a 40 page photo book but only has text on the final page shown above. I could create a new pdf with just the last page for simplicity, though obviously this won't then be the exact file blurb received.

[Aleks100]

https://fontlibrary.org/font/liberation-sans-unofficial-opentype-cff-version

FontForge sources of newer versions are here

https://github.com/liberationfonts/liberation-fonts/tree/main/src

I have zero experience with FontForge - I worked mostly in FontLab.

[a.l.e]

The problem of many online print shops is that -- for understandable reasons -- they don't want to spend a lot of time with the clients, discussing about the jobs to be printed (or having being printed).

They try to reduce the variables they need to take into account and, as an example, as soon as they see that the PDF has been created with Scribus, they will just say that it's not supported and they have already had issues with its PDFs.

Of course they also have had issues with PDF produced by InDesign. And they will have their lot excuses ready also for those jobs.
Only if they don't find any simple reason why they can blame the client, they will look into it, find the issue, and reprint the PDF without the errors.
But that takes time and costs money, so they try to avoid to admit it...

Now, what can we the people of Scribus do?

Not much, since we don't even get the information why the job failed.
We only see that the font has not been printed correctly.

If you can share the PDF in the bug tracker.
Mark it as private, if you don't want it to be world readable (then only the devs will see it).

Maybe somebody can find the issue and:

• tell you what you did wrong, or
• fix the issue in Scribus

You will not be able to upload the PDF to the bug tracker directly, but you will need to share it in something like Google drive (please mark it as: everybody with the link can see it) and put the link in the ticket.

[dmk]

Thanks

You will not be able to upload the PDF to the bug tracker directly, but you will need to share it in something like Google drive (please mark it as: everybody with the link can see it) and put the link in the ticket.

I'll try and do that. I assume you mean http://bugs.scribus.net/. I don't have google drive, but I think I have dropbox. I'll have to re learn how to use it though

[a.l.e]

Yes, the bug tracker is https://bugs.scribus.net .

And Google drive was just an example. Any file sharing platform will do!

[MrB]

We suspect its the outdated version of Scribus. 1.6.1. We believe this issue may have been addressed in 1.6.4. We're up to 1.6.6 and about to release 1.6.7

[a.l.e]

I think that what MrB is referring to is:

Avoid custom font encodings when embedding TTF fonts in PDFs.

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/1.6.4_Release

[dmk]

Thanks

We suspect its the outdated version of Scribus. 1.6.1.

I did notice those issues,
Scribus issue's
Scribus issue's.
I'm not a frequent scribus user and still on ubuntu 24lts (laziness plus waiting for Wayland to mature) so hence I just had the default 1.6.1, probably .deb install for simplicties sake.
If this might be the same issue, I don't want to create unnecessary duplication / work but I'm happy to send the PDF if it will help the developers.
It may take a day or two because as is often the case, one solution causes finds another problem and I'm currently locked out of my Dropbox having screwed up the login. 

In summary,

• the work around for pre 1.6.4 scribus would be to outline all fonts
• the solution may be update to 1.6.4 or greater.

Edit
Thanks a.l.e you got in as I was typing my windbag essay.

[dmk]

Actually, thinking about it. If I had subset all fonts, would they have all encoded:

• TrueType(CID)
• Encoding: Identity-H
• Embeded subset

and potentially avoided the issue?