[scribus] Scribus v. Glabels

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:56:04 +0200
Christoph Schäfer <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de> dijo:

>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.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I decided to try using both Scribus and Glabels. That is, I did the
layout in Scribus as a single page, 3.5 inches wide and 2 inches high
(standard US business card size). Glabels can import graphics so I
decided to export from Scribus as an image, then place the image in
Glabels.

It almost worked. Scribus refused to let me export as PNG because no
matter where I tried to export the file to Scribus informed me the
folder did not exist. (Bug in 1.3.7 on Fedora 11, x86_64?) So then I
exported as EPS, but Glabels can't do EPS. And finally I exported as
SVG, which Glabels happily placed. Unfortunately either the Scribus
export or the Glabels import converted the SVG to a lo-res bitmap,
including text. Printing to laser was bad.

There are probably other options to export from Scribus in some format
that preserves vector resolution of the Scribus file, yet can be
massaged into a high-res SVG or PNG to place in Glabels. But it's my
bedtime and I'm just experimenting anyway. And you're probably right -
just setting up the page in Scribus and duplicating the card so it
fills ten slots is probably simpler in the long run.

Thanks for the info about future development of templates. Usability
features like that are a real plus for Scribus.