[Scribus] illustrated essays - how to

[Dr. Werner Popken]

>> Unfortunately, I see problems with automatically letting text flow
>> around pictures

> Can you be more specific?

If I understood correctly, I would have to place the image in an image
frame first and then put a text frame right next to it and then put a
text frame beneath both and then let the text flow from the first
frame into the second frame and so on, which seems to be way too
tedious to be practical for 150 page book.

I have published a number of books on Lulu, but these are catalogs
with some text only essays. I took the data from a database and wrote
a PHP program using fpdf to produce the whole catalog with the push of
a button, choosing the appropriate SQL-statement for each type. The
text only pages are easy, the image pages just have a full-size image
plus technical data, and the introduction page shows a portray photo
with some text, the text flowing around this photo, and this design
had to be built with fpdf pretty much the way I sketched above, so I
decided that this is not the way to go for the book of essays on art.

I prepared a text only book with this method as well, but I didn't
like it at all typographically. This wasn't what I would like to see
when opening a book. I was very much impressed by the handling of text
with LaTex, but didn't like the built-in fonts; eventually I would
have learned how to use different fonts. The style would most probably
be very conservative, though. In Scribus, it should be very easy to
produce a modern impression.

For the moment, these are all private investigations, so I wouldn't
invest too much time and money. I'm very impressed with the printing
quality of Lulu, by the way. The biggest catalog I made has 667 pages;
the 8.5x11" hardcover is thread stitched, two-thirds of the pictures
were perfect, the rest had to be slightly corrected. I added 34 more
pages of text, the PDF file had 260 MB or so. The second printing has
been shipped two days ago and I expect it to be without flaw.