[scribus] Scribus!

[Murray Strome]

--- On Thu, 8/14/08, Mr. Beast <mrbeast at shaw.ca> wrote:
From: Mr. Beast <mrbeast at shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus!
To: "Scribus User Mailing List" <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008, 11:06 AM

I tend to agree with this post. I only publish 12 - 20 pages, but it's a 
few hundred copies every 2 months. Ease of use is essential to me. I 
worked with page maker for a decade and it did the few things I needed 
simply and dependably. I've played a bit with MS Publisher and it did 
the job too. However, all the windows software went when I switched to 
Linux. A large part of that conversion to Linux was based on my 
expectations of Scribus.

My own conversion to Scribus makes a good example of my point. I'm a 
little surprised at how awkward imposing the pages is turning out to be. 
That's a lot of time I could be spending elsewhere. In my opinion in 
order for Scribus to differentiate itself as a professional DTP and not 
just another light weight office graphics package, Scribus has to be 
able to easily handle large multi page documents (such as books and 
magazines) intended for professional printing. So far all the 
information I have read on printing 2 up double sided has been geared 
toward home printers. The notion that a professional will be printing 
thousands of copies of a multi page documents on their home printer is 
just painful to read.

I don't mean this as denigrating to the good work that has been done so 
far. I intend to continue learning and working with Scribus. But I also 
recognize that I am a minority. Most print shops just roll their eyes 
when I mention Scribus or Linux, and that's assuming they even recognize 
the names. I've already gotten my fair share of blank looks from 
photocopy clerks. Which in my mind raises the question of who actually 
uses DTP programs?

It's one thing to own DTP software. It's quite another to use it. And 
another thing still to use DTP professionally. At the same time it is 
the professional users who are an obvious group who will be 
professionally interested in trying and adopting the best DTP software. 
Professional printing is definitely a large part of the market for print 
shops. So speaking purely as a Scribus newbie, meeting the professional 
requirements of DTP is essential to gaining respect and popularity as a 
DTP program.

Cheers,
B

Frank Swygert wrote:
> I can easily agree with your first three points. But what makes you 
> think "Scribus is gaining significant market share."? The number
of 
> downloads? That's people looking at, or "checking out", not 
> necessarily USING Scribus, and IS NOT a valid indicator of market 
> share gain. There's no way to tell how many people actually use 
> Scribus, and I suspect that most use it for a rare project and not as 
> an every day or on-going project (such as my quarterly magazine that's

> been published for 11 years now using PM). Price and ease of use is 
> why programs like Serif's PagePlus and Microsoft's Publisher are 
> popular (though I'd rate P+ well above MSP in power/value/usability!).

> InDesign was cumbersome and hard for me, a seasoned DTP user, to work 
> with, and why I didn't even consider it. I must admit being biased 
> to/spoiled by the PageMaker interface, but it seems a lot more 
> intuitive and logical. Quark and Scribus use a similar interface, 
> shouldn't take long to learn Scribus. If the software is hard to use 
> though, it takes up too much of the publisher's time. I need something

> I can easily and quickly work with! I don't use a lot of fancy 
> features, just basics really, so I expect Scribus to be a viable 
> alternative for my DTP needs. Will just take some time to learn the 
> differences in menus and commands. I've had the opportunity to play 
> with Quark a bit, and it's pretty much the same way -- a comfortably 
> familiar look and feel, but the commands and menu structure are a bit 
> different in some cases. Quark supposedly handles large page formats, 
> like newspapers, better than PM, PM supposedly handles large page 
> count books better than Quark. Ease of use is essential -- that's my 
> main point! The easier Scribus is to use, the more popular it will be, 
> and the more market share it has the potential to capture. Market 
> Share isn't really the correct term since it's OSS, but I know
what is 
> meant.

_______________________________________________
I am completely unfamiliar with other DTP programs, and a novice with Scribus.  I certainly agree with the comment that one should be able to easily set up documents to be "2 up double sided" without having to go through the contortions of doing this after-the-fact.

However, I am a bit confused about the concern about whether or not print shops know anything about Scribus (or any other DTP software for that matter).  I just assumed that anything I would want printed would be provided to the print shop in PDF format. Is there a reason for doing it any differently?

Murray





      
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