[Scribus] frantic noobie questions

[PLinnell]

Hi,

On Wednesday 31 August 2005 12:36, J. MacPhail wrote:
> Hello, people.
>
> I'm attempting to lay out a 48-page magazine that was previously
> done in PageMaker.  Despite fairly extensive past experience with
> word processing and typesetting with plain TeX, I am new to DTP. 
> So I have a lot of questions.
>
> 1. Margins.  What confuses me is that the margin setting seem to be
> used in two different paradigms: for some people, the margins are a
> "rule" -- defining a clipping region outside of which nothing is
> printed; for others, the margins are a guideline, and the clipping
> region is the edge of the page.  My inclination would be to use
> margin settings as guidelines for the main body of the material, so
> I will have a headline above the margins.  Is this purely a matter
> of taste, or are there serious traps lurking here?
>
Margins, depending on how you set them up can be hard margins and can 
clip off content. What you need to do is setup guides which is what I 
think you are looking for.

> 2. Colour management implementation.  Our colour usage is
> simplistic, and it would certainly be desirable (thought not
> absolutely necessary) to send PDF/X-3 to our printer.  I've
> installed from
> debian.scribus.net the packages scribus-cvs_1.3.0-1_i386.deb and
> scribus-icc_0.1-1_all.deb, but it still is very unclear to me how
> to set up colour management.  Is it realistic to create a document
> without CMS, and then apply CMS so as to have PDF/X-3 output?  Does
> using CMS put much extra strain on the software, in terms of file
> sizes and so on?
>

First and foremost, make sure your printer can truly handle RGB and 
CMYK PDF/X-3. Scribus can generate fully compliant files, but unless 
your printer is prepared to support it, don't bother. 

Then, read *all* the docs and external linked howtos on color 
management if you have not used CMS before. Incorrect usage can make 
color issues worse. Color management is a complex affair.

See http://docs.scribus.net 

> 3. Tables.  I have lots of tables in which each row is just a
> single line of text entries.  The Scribus table support is not
> intuitively obvious to me, and I wish there were a mini-howto
> explaining all about it.  How do you format text so that it will be
> read into different array entries instead of the first box?  What
> happens if the desired table goes beyond a single page?  The table
> elements seem to be text boxes, so what happens if you want
> graphics?
>

Tables support is very basic and it is planned to do a complete 
overhaul in the 1.3.x devel series. I am writing a howto right now 
for table handling options. 

> 4. Getting at a PageMaker file.  Even though I have not used
> PageMaker, a mini-howto on migrating from PageMaker to Scribus
> would be very helpful to me in knowing what to ask from my
> predecessor. What software exists that can read a PageMaker file --
> for example, is there a gratis demo vesion or anything?
>

Pagemaker and (sometimes) Indesign 2.0+ can read them. 
See here: 
http://www.scribus.org.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=3#19

> 5. Standardized items.  Let's see if I have this right.  The
> scrapbook is for saving content.  The styles are used within the
> story editor for local text formatting, and it seems to be a matter
> of taste whether to use the story editor or something else such as
> the OpenOffice word processor -- like in programming with an
> integrated development environment, where using an external editor
> is reasonable. Templates are for the structure of a single page or
> a whole document. So I left confused about how to store the
> structure of just part of a page.  For example, if I develop some
> table format that I would like to reuse, what should I do?

You can save scrapbooks or as a separate page which can be saved and 
then imported. I recommend creating a seprate layer and then 
importing into that, to avoid contents being disturbed on the page.

I hope that helps,

Peter


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