[scribus] Is Scribus of No Practical Use to Engineers, Scientists and Mathematicians?

[Professor Rodney Coates]

Hi Owen,

At the moment I use RagTime (a German Page layout program) which is  
somewhat idosyncratic at times, quite complex and does not have quite  
such an appealing Graphics User Interface as Scribus.

I use Pages '09 (Apples iWork suite) for general word processing. I  
use Illustrator and Photoshop extensively, for the production of  
scientific graphics. All these applications allow me to use (and have  
so done for decades, in previous incarnations) Symbol font and Zapf  
Dingbats. I cannot comprehend why Scribus allows me to have both these  
fonts on its font list, but that they just do not work at all. I could  
sort of understand if Scribus did not use them so did not show them.

Also, with respect to the fonts list, it is really nice to have DTP  
and allied software present you with a list of "just those fonts" you  
normally use. Then (as with Illustrator, for example) you don't have  
to scroll through the entire several hundred (or whatever it is) to  
reach the one you want, when you make font changes in a document.  
Scribus allows this but, annoyingly - at least as far as I can see -  
there is no way you can "deselect all" then select the half-dozen you  
would ever work with. So I spent quite a while happily setting up my  
preferences before discovering that two fonts of the half-dozen, for  
the first time ever, just would not work.

Incidentally, I am of the view that there has hardly been a  
significant true innovation in all the "upgrades" of Illustrator and  
Photoshop that I have owned and paid for over at least two decades. If  
I could find an OpenSource equivalent to these applications I would  
change today. It is a project (finding them) that I am currently  
engaged on. This is why I am so saddened with the Scribus situation.  
It looks and feels really great but it just don't cut the mustard.

Finally: No, I do not have LaTex. I have known about it for some  
fifteen years. My French engineering friends swore by it, but it  
always seemed too complex for my purposes. Instead, I used MathType  
which either had to be bought or was bundled into AppleScript. I shall  
go and see what I can find in the way of LaTex software now.

Many thanks

Rodney




On 23 Aug 2009, at 11:34, Owen wrote:

>
>
>> The Symbol font will not display; Zapf Dingbats will not display;
>> Render Frame will not work (). Latex/Tex is not working/ 
>> available ....
>>
>> I am a technical author. I need to set Greek symbols within lines of
>> ordinary text. I need to set mathematical formulae.
>
>
>
> If latex/TeX is not available, why?
>
> Do you have latex etc installed
>
> can you produce documents in Latex?
>
> If you have latex, I suggest you use that for the time being. it also
> has the advantage of making footnotes and reference list.
>
> Do your fonts display in Open office or whatever document editor you
> are using?
>
>
> -- 
>
>
>
> Owen
>
>
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Professor Rodney Coates, Ph.D., FIEEE
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rcoates at seiche.com
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