[Scribus] Big Project - Question/Comments

[Gregory Pittman]

Craig Ringer wrote:

>>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 personally think that no matter what tool you use, it's going to be 
>very difficult to do a page layout and expect an app to be able to 
>export it to civilized HTML. HTML that works (in sufficiently CSS 
>compliant browsers), probably, and even looks good. But not HTML that's 
>accessible, well structured, friendly to the user, readable, works well 
>on a variety of display sizes and resolutions, and so on.
>
I'm with Craig -- it seems you're going at this quite intently. The big 
advantage you have is starting out in plain text.
Even if you don't intend to send this project to a professional printer, 
you may want to do this in the future, in which case it's worth focusing 
on a high-quality PDF that you can generate from Scribus, with attention 
to CMYK output and so on.

There are so many differences in how an HTML document is displayed and 
read that regardless you will want to do a lot of tweaking -- breaking 
up into smaller pieces, downgrading the resolution of images, and in 
fact you may not include some images that end up in the PDF. 
So I would suggest finishing your plain text, then use Scribus to 
incorporate the images and generate the PDF (mind the learning curve - 
it's worth it). After you have the PDF, then you can view it and decide 
how to best translate what you see into what you want the HTML to look 
like and how it should be broken up. Then go back to your plain text to 
generate the HTML (from oowriter if you will).

Greg