[Scribus] Laidout (was Imposition Tools and PDFEditor Application)

[Tom Lechner]

Craig Ringer wrote:
> Tom Lechner wrote:
>> I use Laidout to lay out my cartoon books and spherical photos! > >  
>> I've made 2 40 page booklet imposed books of cartoons (imported 7M  
>> tiffs) with it. Its very rough and questionable gui doesn't phase >  
>> me, but then I wrote Laidout, so I might be biased.
> 
> I know the feeling.
> 
> I was curious about your choice of GUI toolkit. Why such an unusual
> toolkit?

Well, when I started, I barely knew anything about programming, let  
alone programming guis on linux, so I figured I could learn just as  
much by rolling my own utilities and windowing library as learning an  
established one. I mean, how hard could it be, right? Well, it's turned  
out to be a lengthy challenge! Also, at the time, a cursory survey of  
of existing gui libraries seemed to indicate they had a lot of stuff I  
had no use for, or controls that were too inefficient or limited in  
what they could do (for reference, I'm a long time fan of Blender and  
Vim). Having at the time really no confidence in my programming skills,  
contributing to existing projects just did not enter my mind.

Still, though, writing a gui from scratch does allow quite a lot of  
freedom. If windowing library sucks for some reason, one can simply  
radically alter it, without having to worry about breaking  
compatibility for other people's projects (yet!).

Tom
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http://www.tomlechner.com
http://www.laidout.org