[Scribus] Big Project - Question/Comments

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Marshall,

Marshall Lake schrieb:
> I am currently working on a book-type project.  In the end I want to have 
> three digital versions ... one in plain text, one in HTML format, and the 
> third in PDF format.  I am nearing completion of the plain text version. 
> I have many images to include in the project which will not be part of the 
> plain text version but will be part of the HTML and PDF versions.
> 
> I have experience in HTML but I have never created anything in PDF format 
> before.  I have yet to use Scribus for a project but I have a little 
> experience in desktop publishing having worked with PageStream (I believe 
> it was called) on the Atari some 15 to 18 years ago.  :)
> 
> I was thinking that I would create the HTML version of the project next, 
> and then the PDF version using Scribus.  But it occurred to me that 
> possibly an HTML version can be automagically created from Scribus.  Is 
> this possible?  It seems to me that saving a project in HTML out of 
> Scribus would not be too difficult.  If it's not possible now, is it in 
> the works?
> 
> I'm open to any and all comments and/or suggestions concerning my project 
> and how to proceed.  (It's a big project ... the plain text version being 
> a little under 5 MB currently.)

A few comments and suggestions:

HTML export is planned for Scribus but not implemented yet. However, it 
might never be possible to use Scribus for some kind of "cross 
publishing" (print and web) as propagated by Adobe (InDesign) and Quark 
(XPress). As it seems, most Scribus developers and users seem to agree 
that both kinds of publishing are different and in many aspects opposite 
tasks (see: http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=1977).

Here is what I, personally, would recommend you to do. If your PDF 
doesn't need to get printed (colour printing), you can try 
OpenOffice.org. From there, you can export HTML as well as PDF.

Another possibility is to use LaTeX. I don't know if you are already 
familiar with it, but in case you are not, let me tell you that it is 
the state of the art in digital typesetting, despite of its age of more 
than twenty years! From LaTeX you can export to PDF and HTML. If you 
don't want to learn LaTeX, you should use LyX. It is kind of a graphical 
front end to LaTeX and has an excellent documentation that makes it easy 
for beginners to produce excellent output.

You wrote that your plain text file already has the size of 5 MB, so it 
looks like a mountain of text. Add images and you will have to run 
scribus on a mainframe or split your project into dozens of scribus 
files, at least in the current versions. So actually I think it boils 
down to either LaTeX or OpenOffice.org, and even then you will need 
quite a bit of RAM ... ;)

Cheers,

Christoph