[Scribus] Scribus for newspaper

[Eric Fesler]

Hi Louis,

thanks for the reply. See my comment below.

On Tuesday 05 September 2006 13:24, Louis Desjardins wrote:

> Hi Eric and welcome to Scribus!
>
> I understand that if the scrapbook doen't handle properly linked text
> frames, this should be investigated in the bug tracker and if not
> already identified as a bug, it should be, imo. Please browse the
> archive and file a bug if necessary in bugs.scribus.net (you have to
> register first and login).

I filed the bug.

>
> In the mean time, did you try multicolumns text frames? (Shape Tab in
> Properties Palette) This should avoid partly the use of linked text
> frames in most newspaper layouts. Keep in mind you can set frames to
> runaround content so you can use a large frame with many columns and
> add other frames on top. Your main story will flow around these
> elements, pics, captions, etc.
>

That's great. I must admit I didn't try the multicolumns.

> However, if you think you should link together the different elements
> on the page, I can only advise it might rapidly prove to be not as
> efficient as you might think, the more you work and the more you edit
> your text. One example: the preset text frame for your title might be
> too small to accomodate one particular title. If the text frames are
> linked together, the title is going to affect *all* the linked
> frames... You don't want that to happen.

That's just what I want to happen. Daily newspaper are somehow structured. If 
you look in detail, you will find that in fact there is a limited number of 
article models. It's just to avoid that the journalist writes a news with a 
title as big (or even bigger) than the body. Of course sometimes, for 
specific news, you need to have the flexibility (specially on the first page) 
but for most of the content, the structure is important for the readability 
of the newspaper. Don't forget, all the journalist are not designers.

Unisys's Hermes publishing tool solves that by having a library of news model. 
For example, a 3 columns news with a single line title accross the 3 columns, 
the same model but with a 2 lines title, ... The journalist select the one 
that suits him and if he has some trouble with the size, usually he has to 
review its title to fit it with the model. I know it could sounds restrictive 
in a way but it keeps the newspaper easy to read.

So my goal, is to be able to do the same with Scribus.

>
> HTH
>
> Louis
>