[Scribus] first post

[Bart Alberti]

My experience with DTP is that my friends in service bureaux use it of
course. I put out text documents with footnotes endnotes and tables. I used
to use MikTeX in Windows but since a few years ago I migrated to Linux I use
plain brute force Latex. There is lyx which I don't really like and now kile
which looks very, very good.
It seems to me that for Scribus to succeed (it already HAS done so!) as a
DTP it must:
1:  handle smoothly text flow. Although one is not to use DTP as a word
processor (i,e, write in it originally) many will do so. Also there is
always the fix up and add on, substantial. If the text flow is sluggish, it
will not do. Also: smooth text box linking. Columns. Run-around.  All must
be  in place stuff.
2. corollary: text placement must be solid. Quark can do tenths and I think
thousandths of a point.
3. Quark has "extension" vendors who do things like "flight check" "nudging"
and "super step and replace" etc. That is an industry in itself. Is Scribus
to be open to a host of third-party improvers? It is open source so the
answer is "yes"
4. Import formats: rtf, OO, doc ( wp? forget it! It was a good program!),
qxd, pdf, Abi

Remember Quark went from 3 to 4 to 5 and we hear now to 6 and it took an
average of at least a YEAR for each point upgrade and there were many tenth
point fixes and occasional corruptions.

Bart Alberti
bart at solozone.com