[scribus] Dumb newbie question

[Sveinn í Felli]

Hi,

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:22:51 +1000 (EST)
> "Owen" <rcook at pcug.org.au> dijo:
> 
>>> On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:16:09 -0400
>>> Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> dijo:
>>>
>>>> Plan B might be to try 1.3.5svn, where you can use a TeX frame and
>>>> make
>>>> your formula there directly in Scribus.
>>> I am trying this out, but find the instructions hopelessly inadequate
>>> and confusing.
> 
>>> What I need to create is 
> 
>>> [ sometext           ]
>>> [ some more text ]
>>> [ yet more text     ]
>>>
>>> Sometimes my stacks have only one item, sometimes as many as seven. I
>>> need the brackets to scale.
>>>
>>> If there is someone here familiar with math syntax in Latex, could you
>>> give me the syntax to create the above? Once I have the correct syntax
>>> for one formula I'm sure I can change it for additional formulas.
> 
>> If you have latex installed, (there is a fair bit of it!) put the
>> following in a text editor and save it as say test.tex  (Thats  T E X
>> not txt)
>>
>> --------------------------------------
>> \documentclass{article}
>>
>> \begin{document}
>>
>> \[
>> \left[
>> \begin {array}{c}
>> \textit{one little line\hspace{20 pt}    }\\
>> \noalign{\medskip}
>> \textit{two a very big line}\\
>> \noalign{\medskip}
>> \textit{three\hspace{60 pt}}
>>
>> \end {array}
>> \right]
>> \]
>>
>> \end{document}
>> ---------------------------------------
>>
>> Then say # latex test.tex
>> then do  # xdvi test.dvi
>> and then # dvips test.dvi
>>
>> then try importing the test.ps into your Scribus
>>
>> If you have 1.3.5, after hitting the TeX icon, edit source and drop in
>> everything after \begin{document} and \end{document}
>>
>> I am no expert on Latex, and there is a newsgroup that is pretty
>> active in helping, see comp.text.tex  As I think the above code is
>> crap, you might want to ask them to codify it correctly
> 
> Thanks, but it didn't work.
> 
> First, I created a new Scribus document in 1.3.5. I clicked on the TEX
> icon and created a frame. I right clicked on it, deleted the sample
> text and entered everything after \begin{document} and before \end
> {document}, but it just gave me an error.
> 
> So then I saved your whole code as test.tex using Gedit. Then from a
> command line I tried "latex test.tex," but the terminal informed me
> that I didn't have Latex installed. (Duh!) The terminal helpfully told
> me the apt-get command to install it, so I did. Then I tried it again,
> but it started Latex in the terminal and I didn't know what to do with
> it. I closed and restarted Scribus, then opened a new document, and
> tried the TEX icon again, but still get error messages.
> 
> I tried comp.text.tex but got the Atlanta error. I tried googling on
> latex mailing lists, but there are too many and I couldn't figure out
> which one I need.
> 
> I don't have time to learn Latex, I'm afraid. I need a GUI to do my
> layouts. I think the TEX frame thing for Scribus is way overkill for my
> needs. Buggy as it is, I'll just continue to do it in OOo.

There are some GUI programs for LaTex, I've fiddled with
Texmaker in Linux: <http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/>
Don't know if it can create your formula, you could make a
dummy tex document as described above, open it in Texmaker
and see what you get.

Good luck

Sveinn í Felli