[scribus] Scribus v. Glabels

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Freitag, 25. Juni 2010 05:31:42 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> Thanks to a recent thread I discovered Glabels. If you're curious, the
> html version of the manual is here:
>
> http://library.gnome.org/users/glabels/2.2/glabels.html
>
> For some time I have been thinking about creating some business cards
> for myself. Avery labels (very popular in the US) has a "label" to
> create business cards, although I would print to a full color laser
> that I have which will print on heavy stock, then just trim the labels
> out. A package of Avery's business card "labels" is very expensive. The
> only advantage is that the sheet is microperfed so you don't need to
> have a precision paper cutter.
>
> The cool thing about Glabels is that you design the label in a design
> window and when you print it populates the whole Avery page with the
> label design. It also appears to have data merge capabilities, although
> that was not of interest to me.
>
> The uncool thing about Glabels is that it totally lacks text formatting
> ability. Scribus has spoiled me. I want to adjust kerning, tracking,
> point size down to hundredths of a point, and so on. Glabels can set
> any font you have installed, but only in whole-point increments, and
> there is no possibility to adjust kerning, tracking, or any of the
> other features we Scribus users take for granted.
>
> So I am wondering if Scribus could do templates for Avery labels, at
> least some like the business card template. Even if it was just a
> single sheet with margins and guides set for the borders of the
> standard business card one could design the card in one of the labels,
> then group and copy and paste to the other labels. Or maybe the
> grouping and copying and pasting could be scripted.

There is work underway to create a scripted "wizard" that uses the tremendous 
amount of label templates shipped with OpenOffice.org (not just Avery, but 
also others, like Pelikan). Also, we have a professional designer working on 
some visually appealing business card templates for us. I hope we can add at 
least some of these templates to 1.4.

For the time being, using a ruler to figure out the dimensions and the 
coordinates of labels/business cards on a piece of pre-perforated paper may 
help a lot. Simply place a single card/label in the upper left of a page at 
the correct coordinates, then use the new Item > Multiple Duplicate > By Rows 
& Columns feature in 1.3.7.

HTH,

Christoph