[Scribus] Scribus v. Tex

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004, Gregory Pittman wrote:

> I use Tex quite a bit, and for the things that it does well, it does them
> extremely well.  Page control and placement of objects on a page can be
> quite a chore -- trial and error and trial and error and...  I have
> incorporated some EPS graphics, and while it's doable, it ain't easy.  As
> soon as you want to make the jump to color, Scribus just leaves it in the
> dust.

  TeX is the back-end typesetting program written by Donald Knuth a long
time ago. LaTeX is the macro system that makes writing with TeX easier. LyX
is a GUI front-end to LaTeX that makes the process easier still. A
typesetting program is for writing text-based documents: books, articles,
reports, theses, etc.

  Scribus is a page layout application designed for heavy graphic and
frame-oriented use. The technical name is a 'page layout language' versus
TeX's 'typesetting program'. Different tools for different uses.

  You'll not see many books using color and complex page layouts. However,
for the purpose intended -- typesetting text-heavy documents -- nothing
comes even close to LaTeX. I'm using it to write my book (complete with
extensive graphic and tables) and could not imagine using a word processor
for the task.

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>