[scribus] Long Document Preparation Workflows

[Gregory Pittman]

On 01/10/2010 04:11 AM, Aaron W. Hsu wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:12:01 -0500, Gregory Pittman 
> <gregp_ky at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> This is how Christoph and I (disclaimer: Christoph did the layout 
>> work) managed to make the PDF for our Scribus manual (400+ pages), so 
>> quite large projects are possible.
>
> Were you able to manage cross-references with another tool? How did 
> you keep consistent automatic styling with Character Styles?
>
> I wouldn't mind if I had to manage cross-references and the like 
> through other programs if that information could be updated easily in 
> the Scribus file. However, if I have to say, make another edition, and 
> the cross-references change, I may have to restyle the entire book 
> because I had to reimport my text, and I couldn't reimport the exact 
> same styles that I had (manual tweaking is lost). Is there a way to 
> fix this?
>
> Additionally, while importing from ODT works to some extent, it seems 
> to use the styling from ODT, and not from Scribus. I don't want the 
> writers to be in control of the style. I want them to feel comfortable 
> writing in Text editors and word processors, confident that when they 
> send it to me, and I import it, their style "classes" will stay the 
> same, but that I can alter the styling of these classes easily. This 
> doesn't seem possible, as a new import of text overwrites the styles 
> again.
>
> I guess, the thing that gets me is that DTP software should allow all 
> the content to be written elsewhere, and allow consistent styling to 
> be apply automatically to incoming text, ignoring the stylings that 
> may come in from a word processor. The text import works, but it fails 
> to understand character styles. If I could manage this, so that no 
> manual tweaking were required after my classes were set up in Scribus 
> and I reimported copy, I think I could manage easily enough to make 
> the appropriate cross-references and idnexes by managing them with 
> outside tools.
The arguments you make suggest that you would be better off having your 
contributors work with plain text files in a simple editor. OTOH, 
importing ODT styles does not prevent you from applying your own custom 
styles within Scribus. Importation of styles from ODT files is meant to 
be a convenience, but if it's not for you, work in some other way.

Greg