[Scribus] LWN.net about Scribus

[Craig Ringer]

>>BTW: Feature Request: Direct Import OpenOffice.org files. Should be just
>>a simple matter of creating a parser for their XML and saving into
>>Scribus' XML. I'd do it myself, but I have trouble getting "Hello
>>World!" programs to compile.
> 
> OOo import/export is being looked at.

OMG. How's this for a horrible - but nonetheless extremely useful - 
capability then?

Customer sends 'read-for-print' ad... which turns out to be an MS Word 
document. *sigh*. NOBODY can read the specified formats list, it seems....

Open it up in OO.o - a few aspects of the layout may now be a little off 
but it should be 90% - 95% ok. Save as OO.o writer format. Open in 
Scribus. A little more layout jitter ocurrs, but that's OK - we fix the 
layout issues caused by the loading/saving, and output to PDF. *woohoo*

A terrifying number of the POST's customers will do an ad in Word 
because 'everybody accepts word documents' (not for page layout they 
don't!) or because they thought they had acrobat and could create a PDF 
'somehow'. Acrobat Reader != Acrobat. Most of them get the offer to 
re-set their ad for the ridiculously low price of AU$50 using their 
supplied one as an example, but it'd be nice to be able to say 'we CAN 
print that, but we don't guarantee reproduction - want us to re-set it 
at AU$100 (our normal price) or try printing it anyway?'

OO.o 1.1's save-as-pdf would be handy here, but in the end OO.o tends to 
shake up complex word docs a little too much to just open and 
save-as-pdf - they need fixing first. I'm damnned if I'll use a word 
processor for layout work - hence the interest in Scribus handling OO.o 
docs.

Craig Ringer