[scribus] Using Scribus for a newsletter

[Joe Ward]

Hello. I'm Joe Ward, a retired newspaper reporter roped into serving as editor of a community newsletter for about 4,000 households. I've been putting this out by getting stories and ads together and sending them to a friendly neighborhood printer who has done most of the layout for me. Then she moved out of the neighborhood and on to better things.

I hope not to be editor of the newsletter forever. So I'm trying to get a system for putting it together established, so that each succeeding editor won't have to reinvent the wheel. Future editors will be students and retirees and similar folks, so Scribus seemed to me a good way to go.

So I'm learning Scribus, and Inkscape, and Gimp, and having a great time. I started too late, of course, and will soon face the deadline for my first issue of this new era. I have a printer willing to work with me, and I've been reading through the Scribus manual and trying different things.

I made myself a template for the front page with the masthead as I want it, guidelines set up to show me where to put text and picture frames and other elements that will go on the front page of every issue, and the margins I want set in place. I've made similar templates for the back page, which will have the mailing lable and bulk mail information, and for left and right inside pages. I made the front page a right page, and the back page a left page.

I'm reading more in the manual now, but I'm asking these questions just in case I don't find the answers in time. 

How do I put these pages togehter? If I have Page 1 set up, for example, how do I add a second, a third, etc., up to the last page?  I've tried making master pages without success -- it seems that each one I make wipes out the one I made before -- and it has occurred to me I wouldn't know how to use those, either.

Second, how can I paginate the newsletter so that it's ready for the printer? That is to say, so that the front and back pages are on the right and left sides of a sheet, and the second and second-from-last pages are on the other side. Then the third and third-from last on a sheet, fourth and fourth-from-last, and so fourth. The newsletter is to have 8.5 by 11-inch pages, and my plan is to output to .pdf for the printer.

I'm working in Windows Xp.

Thanks for any help. I'm sorry to ask so much in one email.

                                                                                 -Joe
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