[Scribus] Josh new member question

[Craig Ringer]

joel edmondson wrote:
> Hi I have just subscribed to your mailing list. I have downloaded Scribus and have started using it. I must say that its a great program. Its just what I was looking for. Nvu while good for general  web layout is a little less intuitive for article layout and creative article layout.

That's because the web - in particular the CSS styling language - isn't
really made for pixel-perfect layout control. It's intended to let you
produce sites that adapt to a wide variety of viewing devices, with
different sizes, different user preferences for font size, etc. Recent
CSS provides more control over layout, but you're still going to suffer
quite a bit of pain to get some layouts to work, especially once you
account for browser differences.

Additionally, the standard is amazingly, glaringly lacking any sort of
support for columns or flowed text, something I am stunned at given that
the idea behind CSS is to let you separate layout & style from content.
This means that columns are painful on the web, especially if the
columns' contents are interrupted by something like an image (so the
text to image ratio changes with font size and you'd normally reflow....
but you can't).

You will continue to be frustrated if you try to force it into designs
like you'd produce for print. Columns you can work around, though all
the workarounds pretty much suck in my view... but it's also a good idea
to adjust your targets for the medium.

> I don't want to put it in as a pdf, nor as a gif or jpg.

Well, knocking out PDF eliminates about the best option you have.
There's been talk about an XHTML+CSS export facility for Scribus, but
nothing has come of it (there's much too much else to do) and personally
I have some serious doubts about how well it'd work and whether it's a
good idea.

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Craig Ringer