[scribus] Scribus and DTP classes

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 05 Dec 2010 02:18:01 +0000
Gerard Cunningham <gerard at faduda.net> dijo:

>It's not just DTP/printing. There are an awful lot of people out there
>writing, who have no idea how to write. I'm a freelance journalist, and
>as more traditional work dries up, I've been considering giving
>tutorials/seminars on things that seem basic to me, but exotic to
>others. Basic public relations skills like how to write a press
>release, aimed at community group PROs; DTP for groups producing small
>magazines & leaflets, even the basics of putting a news story together.

If my idea goes anywhere, one of the first tasks is to define what is
to be included and what is not. In my presentation I decided to discuss
some basics of DTP before getting into Scribus because I thought it
would be difficult to explain what a feature of Scribus does if the
user doesn't know why it is needed. Maybe we need three courses: Intro
to DTP, Features of Scribus, and How to Write. Or even four, because
I'd also like to introduce people to concepts of good typography, e.g.,
setting "am" and "pm" in small caps. But even one subject is a massive
undertaking. Perhaps we should focus only on Scribus, at least at the
beginning. 

>There's definitely a market for it, and more than enough people in need
>of instruction to go round.

One reason people don't take classes and learn how to do things better
is because they're too cheap or broke to pay for it. I thought that my
online school should be free, as in free and open source. But another
reason people don't take classes is because they are lazy. And the most
important reason people don't take classes is because they think they
already know everything they need to know about the subject.