[Scribus] Scribus as a replacement for FrameMaker?

[Adam Stein]

I've been looking for an open source FrameMaker replacement (as my group is 
switching from Solaris to Linux, FrameMaker isn't available for Linux, and 
FrameMaker is the only commercial program I still use, now seemed like a good 
time to finally replace it with open source).

The three choices I see are OpenOffice, Kword, and Scribus.  I went thru the 
tutuorial to see how Scribus works.  It has a few things missing that I would 
need to be able to switch.  My note is to see if anybody knows the direction 
Scribus is taking so that I can see if this is a dead end or if I should keep my 
eye on development.

For what Scribus does, it seems like a pretty good program.  However, I'm not 
really making catalogs or magazines.  I make books describing the software I 
write (usually 100+ pages).  After using FrameMaker for 15 years, I'm spoiled by 
a DTP program instead of just using a word processor type of app.  The list of 
things missing from Scribus for me are below.  If Scribus isn't going the 
direction I need, that's fine.  If it can do something and I missed it, let me 
know.

1) Automatic text flow

Going thru the tutorial, you manually set up the flow from one text region to 
another.  I have manuals over 100 pages, don't think I want to manually set up 
links.  In FrameMaker, when text reaches the end of a text region, another one 
is created automatically on the next page.  There are ways to manually link text 
regions, but the default is to just keep going onto the next page.  This brings 
me to item #2

2) It seems that text regions created in the template are not usuable in the 
regular mode which means that not only do you have to manually link text 
regions, you also have to manually created them on each page as well.  Also not 
good when you have 100+ pages.

3) Book mode.  I did see a book item in the roadmap for v1.3.  I don't remember 
it giving specifics but I would need to generate table of contents, indices, 
list of figures, i.e. generate a list of a given type of marker.

Those three seem to be the biggies that I can think of.  Scribus does most 
everything else that I use (like importing images).  I'm sure I can figure out a 
way to do little things if the big stuff is there like importing C code examples 
(via Python scripts or something).

Thanks in advance for responding.

                                                Adam Stein
--
Adam Stein @ Xerox Corporation       Email: adam at scan.mc.xerox.com
                                            
Disclaimer: All views expressed             
here have been proved to be my own.  [http://www.csh.rit.edu/~adam/]