[scribus] Starting with Scribus

Thu Jul 9 05:00:43 CEST 2009

Hi Alan,

It sounds as if you are in exactly the same position that I found myself about a year ago (except that I use LINUX rather than XP for just about everything EXCEPT for Video editing, where I resort to Windows XP and a commercial product, Pinnacle Studio.)

The biggest challenge for me, like you, was to "unlearn" all my old habits and to learn completely new terminology. All the ideas behind DeskTop Publishing constituted a major paradigm shift in my thinking and in the way work -- I still have a long way to go, but at least I am now producing a quarterly newsletter and have also produced a couple of booklets that look much better than what I used to produce with OpenOffice.

Murray

--- On Wed, 7/8/09, Blue Beehive <alan at bluebeehive.com> wrote:

From: Blue Beehive <alan at bluebeehive.com>
Subject: Re: [scrobus] Starting with Scribus
To: "Murray Strome" <wmstrome at yahoo.com>
Cc: scribus at lists.scribus.net
Received: Wednesday, July 8, 2009, 12:26 AM

Hi Murray

I have not produced anything in Scribus yet. When I get time spare I am
slowly working through the tutorial  and getting the feel of things
first. The village mag that I have promised to try to do is not due out
for a couple of months so I have a bit of time. All of this is still
being done on an XP (SP3) box, my Centos machine (another leaning
curve) is not up and running yet. OOo is therefore 3.0.1.

Styles are something that I have never fully explored and obviously
something that needs to be addressed. I have always formatted on the
fly. I suppose I can sum all of this up by saying that I am now
learning to do things properly, and unlearning many years of  'bodge it
and see'. It sounds a bit mad but I am actually enjoying it all. Just
which I could loose the day job and devote more time to it all.

Thanks again

Alan

Murray Strome wrote:

        Hi Alan,

        I have found that doing
the initial edit in OO first is easier. I am using a bit older version
(1.3.3.13svn), as it is the one currently in my Kubuntu 8.04 
repository. I have found that you CAN just import relatively simple OO
text documents, with their formats intact, by creating a text frame,
then right-clicking on it, select "Get Text", then browse to find your
OO document.  Scribus will then create a bunch of paragraph styles that
correspond closely to those in your OO document.  HOWEVER, I do not do
this routinely, as I prefer to have more control, which I achieve by
defining my own styles.  This is also important for me when I am
producing regular newsletters and I want them to look much the same.
Also, I receive contributions in all kinds of formats which are not
consistent at all.  Thus, after editing the document in OO (fixing
spelling and grammatical errors, improving the wording, etc.), I save
it as TEXT (.txt) and use "Get Text" from those files, setting the
particular styles I want for things like titles, contributors,
signatures, bulleted or numbered items, etc..

I have found that copying text from OO documents to be a pain.  If
there is only a piece of text, I usually copy it to a text editor, or
in Kubuntu to KNotes, and then copy it from there into the Scribus
Story Editor.  Trying to highlight then copying text directly from OO
does not work very reliably for me.

--------------------------------------------

"Blue Beehive" <alan at bluebeehive.com> wrote:

        Thank you for that info Murray.

I
found the tutorial after a helpful comment from John Culleton earlier
on and am working my way through it. As you say it is the new mindset
thing. After may years with MS (from 95 onwards) it is quite a bit of a
jump. And that is quite apart from the other jump into the world of DTP.

It
has seemed to me, and you obviously agree that it is best to write the
text in OOo first then import it. It doesn't appear that a cut and
paste will do - though I may be, and probably am, wrong.

Than
you for taking the time to reply. As you say there are lots of people
willing to give up their time to help others. Even that is a revelation
after the secular word of MS. I just wish I could use this list
properly.

Alan

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