PDF is missing text

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flamingpanties

I have a DTP background (Quark Xpress and Pagemaker), yet I'm spending 2 whole freaking days with Scribus trying to produce a 5-page document. The way this thing works is clear as mud.

Yesterday, I finally got the text to flow around the picture, and today I finally got a hyperlink onto the page (I think). Now when I produce a pdf document all I see is the jpg.

So next crisis: how do I get the text to show up in the pdf?

GarryP

Would it be possible for you to upload the .sla file you're having trouble with?
Or, if that's not possible because of privacy issues etc., a version with lorem ipsum text (or some other substitute) that exhibits the same problem.

flamingpanties

Thank you, but I'd rather not post my document here. The text appears to be a "background" layer, and the jpg is the red layer. I could spend another weekend trying to figure out how to move the background layer to the front.

When I remove the jpg red layer and preview the print, the page is empty.

GarryP

What I think might have happened is that the layer your text is on has been set to "not print" somehow. You can find this in the "Layers" window (from the "Windows" menu).

One of the columns is for "print or not print" (the printer icon). If your "Background" layer hasn't got the icon in this column checked you won't get the text (or anything else on that layer) in the PDF (or showing in the Preview mode). If this is the case just check the appropriate icon and you should be up and running.

(Reordering the layers is easy by the way, just open the "Layers" window and use the Up and Down arrows to reorder them.)

flamingpanties

Thanks, I got that one straightened out. Now a new problem is the poor quality pdf output. I'm using Arial, with fixed line spacing.

Isn't it awful? I can't send out pdfs that looking that.

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GarryP

That does look pretty awful unfortunately. I'm not sure what's gone wrong there; it looks like it's been faxed.
I've never had the same problem myself, PDFs have always come out looking fine.
But saying that doesn't help you does it? Hmm.
I'm not at my normal computer just now so I don't have Scribus in front of me but I'll have a think overnight and see if anything comes to mind.
You could try checking (and probably already have) the options in the PDF export window to see if a setting has been made for some kind of low resolution output or compression.
It doesn't sound like a font problem but you never know; do you get the same problem with other fonts?
Have you tried creating a brand new separate document, putting some sample text in a text frame, then creating a PDF from that? Do you get the same problem?
That might tell you whether it's an issue with the document or something with your overall Scribus settings.
I'm sure someone else will probably know exactly what's wrong (and it's probably a simple fix) but if you've had no luck by tomorrow I'll try and have a look sometime in the afternoon (UK time).
I'm sorry I can't be of any further help tonight, I really need to get some sleep.

a.l.e

@flamingpanties: you're probably not exporting to pdf but printing to pdf... or you're not including the font into the pdf.

from what i'm reading here:
a/ you should go through the tutorial and learn some scribus basics (with a bit of luck it's shown in the help you can call with F1)
b/ it may be useful to read more details about your problems than "your program is crap"...

sharing the .sla (or a dummy .sla showing the problem) and the resulting pdf may really help us have a clue of what is going on on your side!

ciao
a.l.e

flamingpanties

What I did was to make up a new document and the problem corrected itself. It could have been a layering problem or font problem, who knows? Scribus has a very unintuitive interface and pretty hair-raising for a newbie.

I worked out other problems. The pdf quality problem came from saving the document as Adobe 5 and not 6.

I was finally able to add an html hyperlink by clicking the icon with the shoes. (LOL, not sure if serious.)

Thank you to all who chimed in to help.

a.l.e

flamingpanties, scribus is free and open source software... this means that as soon as you downloaded it, it also your software!

you can change it!

by producing code, but also by telling us how to improve it.

or by producing a nicer icon for the pdf link.

or by helping us writing a good introduction for people coming from xpress or pagemaker

finally, sadly, scribus has not been created with newbies in mind but for people who want to send flawless PDF to their printer.

currently, we are trying hard to make it more and more friendly for experienced users, too... one day we will also try to make it good for newbies!

your help is welcome...

ciao
a.l.e

flamingpanties

Quote from: a.l.e on July 16, 2012, 05:29:50 PM
flamingpanties, scribus is free and open source software... this means that as soon as you downloaded it, it also your software!

you can change it!

by producing code, but also by telling us how to improve it.

or by producing a nicer icon for the pdf link.

or by helping us writing a good introduction for people coming from xpress or pagemaker

finally, sadly, scribus has not been created with newbies in mind but for people who want to send flawless PDF to their printer.

currently, we are trying hard to make it more and more friendly for experienced users, too... one day we will also try to make it good for newbies!

your help is welcome...

ciao
a.l.e

Cool, a.l.e. So here's an idea: instead of a pair of shoes icon for outbound link markups, how about a simple large "W" for www?

utnik

Quote from: flamingpanties on July 23, 2012, 03:13:38 AM...how about a simple large "W" for www?

...or does it stand for ms word?

utnik

a.l.e

[://] ?

but:
a/ since ff and chrome aren't showing the http:// part of the link it may become hard to get
b/w... with a blue underline?
c/ ?

flamingpanties, you can browse a bit around, have a look at other programs and make a proposal (i mean: uploading an actual image at the correct size :-)

ciao
a.l.e