[Scribus] design and visual perception

[Gregory Pittman]

Dr. Werner Popken wrote:
>> http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Avoiding_Design_Problems
>>     
>
> Excellent!
>
> Except: On my monitor (1024x768), the "Photo Montage Example" creates
> a very unwanted effect.
>
> It looks like an ugly automatic html-rearrangement at first, seen very
> often (i.e. in Wikipedia, spiegel.de-printiing version), but you seem
> to have used a table (didn't bother to look at the source, but must
> be). Anyway, a horizontal scroll bar is introduced, the whole design
> intention (to show good design) is lost.
>
>   
I agree -- this is what happens when you're making these with a hi-res 
monitor and you've got a lot of real estate to work with. I've already 
checked this on my laptop today, noticed the problems, and fixed. Wikis 
are a bit tricky sometimes to get what you want. I like tables for their 
ability to place things with some precision. There are settings to 
control the overall width of the table, but they don't work with images 
in the cells arranged in the original way. I tried scaling down the 
images, but things were getting mushy, so I rearranged the layout so 
that the width indicator would kick in. I'll probably play with making 
smaller images in the first place.
> The idea probably is to not be boring by adjusting all pictures to the
> left, switching from left to right instead. But this is just a bad
> habit and shallow thinking. You want the eye to compare three versions
> which are not presented under equal conditions in the first place.
> It's a difference if you put a picture left or right. The same
> reasoning applies to the table example, for that matter.
>   
I'm pretty satisfied with the table example, even looking at it with my 
laptop. I wanted to have the tables large enough so that it would be 
clear that the legibility issues relate to the lines problem. They're 
images taken from a screengrab in Scribus, because I wanted it to 
closely resemble what might be done with Scribus, not an HTML table. 
AFAIK, it's hard to tweak line thicknesses and colors in HTML.
In the end, I'm hoping that people will see for themselves in Scribus, 
in a final PDF, what this is all about.

Greg