[scribus] Ghostscript

[John Culleton]

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011 10:36:52 am Louis Desjardins 
wrote:
> 2011/4/26 Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com>
> 
> > On 04/26/2011 03:21 AM, a.l.e wrote:
> >> hi
> >> 
> >>> First of all, you can ignore the message about not having
> >>> 
> >>>>>>> Ghostscript and use Scribus without any trouble. 
The only
> >>>>>>> thing is that you won't be able to create PDF files of 
your
> >>>>>>> documents. Since that's often important, it's worth 
getting
> >>>>>>> Ghostscript, but again, you can get to work in the 
meantime.
> >>>>>>> This isn't true, BTW. Ghostscript has nothing to do 
with
> >>>>>>> creating PDFs or even exporting as EPS.
> >>>>>>> I stand corrected.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> That depends very much on what the content of the 
document is. In
> >>>>>> some
> >>> 
> >>> cases that is true.
> >> 
> >> well, i know it may sound picky, but i prefert to fix this 
thread,
> >> before somebody picks it up from the archive and gets a 
wrong advice:
> >> 
> >> - ghostscript is not needed by scribus to create PDFs.
> >> 
> >> - you can work with scribus without having to install 
ghostscript.
> >> 
> >> - you only need ghostscript for some specific functions 
(print preview,
> >> ...) or to include specific type of content (loading a PDF or an 
EPS
> >> into an image frame, ...)
> >> 
> >> 
> >> so:
> >> 
> >> - it's correct that you probably can start working with 
scribus without
> >> installing ghostscript
> >> 
> >> - it's not correct that you need ghostscript to create PDFs
> >> 
> >> - it's correct that you need ghostscript to include some 
types of
> >> contents (into your documents or PDFs)
> >> 
> >>     -- when you are rasterizing a vector file into an image 
frame
> 
> Considering the confusion around Ghostscript would it be 
possible to modify
> the warning into something that would simply state that. 
Getting an error
> message on the first install of Scribus is not fun from the user
> perspective. It's not appealing, to say the least.
> 
> This question is often raised. While we cannot control all the 
parameters
> when someone installs Scribus, we could at least mention what 
is important
> and what is not. I know we could put it in a readme file but a bit 
more
> verbose warning could well solve the issue.
> 
> Louis
> 

When I write about Scribus (see below) I just state that Ghostscript 
needs to be installed first. Technically it doesn't but my little white 
lie makes the whole problem go away. 
-- 
John Culleton
Create Book Covers with Scribus:
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4055.html