[scribus] Math formula problem in Scribus

["Sveinn í Felli (IMAP)"]

Hi John,

John Jason Jordan wrote:

> 
> I am currently working on a textbook which is at about 120 pages and
> will grow to 140 by the time it is done. There are over 300 formulas in
> it. Each formula is in a table, and most of the tables are in frames.
> Each formula must be tweaked several times, not to mention alterations
> after proofreading. Just as a rough guess, I would have to take the
> screenshot at least twice for each one on average. That's an awful lot
> of screenshots, not to mention the image quality issues.
> 
> I'm actually using OOo as the layout program for this project. I would
> love to use Scribus because of its many advantages for book layout. But
> all my books require extensive use of tables and formulas. 
> 
> I did just finish laying out the cover for this book in Scribus. At
> least that was a treat. 
> 
> I was only curious about the Latex formulas because I saw that as at
> the solution to at least one thing that I need before I can use Scribus
> for book layouts. I still need real tables, however. And I can't wait
> to move to Scribus because trying to use a word processor as a layout
> tool is a pain. Tables, frames, pictures, all suddenly jump all over
> the place on you. <Sigh>

I don't know much about Latex and even less about maths :)
But I had a similar layout problem some time ago, therefore
I did some tests using Scribus 1.3.5svn. The TEX Render
Frame in Scribus takes in pure latex formulas, to which you
can then apply styles and other formatting.

In short: you can export your formulas from OOWriter as
LaTex 2e (.tex) file, you can either open it directly in an
editor and search for your formula (enclosed between $'s),
or you can open this file in an WYSIWYG tex editor like LyX
and go to View source code and copy it there. In this case
its easy to copy either one formula at a time or many. You
also get rid of a bunch of OOformatting garbage.

Then you right click on your Scribus Tex frame and choose
"Edit Source" where you paste just the formula(s).

$\left[\begin{array}{ccccc}
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5\\
2 & 3 & 4 & 3 & 4\\
3 & 4 & 5 & 4 & 3\\
4 & 3 & 4 & 3 & 2\\
5 & 4 & 3 & 2 & 1\end{array}\right]$

There may be simpler ways of doing this, at least this works
nicely.

Just my thoughts.

Sveinn í Felli