[scribus] Using Scribus for novels and short stories

Mon Jan 10 18:00:00 CET 2011

On Sunday 09 January 2011 17:19:32 LORN MACINTYRE wrote:
> Dear Steve,
>
> Again, thank you for your help. Will I be able to perform design
> functions such as kerning to  print quality in Word XP before
> transferring the files into PDF format? Or should I bring the files
> into OpenOffice and edit them there?
>
> Regards,
> Lorn
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: S B <sbinsandiego at gmail.com>
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Sent: Sunday, 9 January, 2011 21:04:18
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Using Scribus for novels and short stories
>
> Lorn, I've not tried this with Word, but quite a bit depends on
> what pdf creator you are using.  Are you using adobe acrobat?  If
> so, that provides great control.  If not, it should be fairly
> simple using one of the "cheap," or "Free" products.  Open Office
> will also convert to PDF in its latest iteration, and Word '07 (and
> doubtless later) also saves to PDF.  If you can, I'd leave it in
> Word, and convert from there. If your novel doesn't include
> illustrations, it will probably be easier to do. I think that if
> you want to do this for free, you'll be happiest bringing it into
> Open Office and then converting from there.  You may wish to
> contact your printer and make sure that there are no differences he
> can't handle.  As far as the crop marks and embedded fonts,
> normally you can choose to embed the fonts when you save or convert
> (whichever), and the crop marks--I'm not sure; normally if I save
> and tell the program to retain crop marks, I can then see them on
> the page, in gray.  CMYK? "K" is black. Do you have anything BUT
> black?  If you have illustrations, you have a choice between CMYK
> and RGB, normally. You may want to search Microsoft's knowledge
> base, and your help files, to be certain you're doing this
> correctly. I'm happy to help in any other way I can, but I'm not
> certain I know enough to provide accurate information. Good luck.
> Steve B.
>
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 3:16 AM, LORN MACINTYRE <
>
> lorn.macintyre at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > Dear Steve,
> >
> > Thank you for this valuable advice. I have 20 chapters (240
> > pages) of text formatted with running headline and page number
> > footers, written in Word
> > XP. So how may I turn these into PDF files which can be
> > commercially printed,
> > with the printer's instructions thus: "one single file set up in
> > page order (excluding the cover or jacket, saved as single page
> > to view and not as double
> > page spreads., with fonts embedded, with crop marks selected so
> > we know where to
> > trim your text once it is printed. Minimu 10mm clear white space
> > on all sides.
> > Ensure that you are using CMYK workflow."
> >
> > Regards,
> > Lorn
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: S B <sbinsandiego at gmail.com>
> > To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> > Sent: Saturday, 8 January, 2011 23:11:04
> > Subject: Re: [scribus] Using Scribus for novels and short stories
> >
> > Lorn, I have not used Scribus for this purpose, but I used it for
> > preparing lessons for a class in church some time ago. It works
> > very very well for that.  This is a similar applications, because
> > the lessons I taught were each fairly short, but the aggregate
> > was fairly long.  I didn't use any sophisticated formatting, but
> > I did use lots of illustrations and drawings. It works well for
> > that. I can't give you guidance as to the processes, because I
> > actually WROTE the documents in Scribus rather than in a
> > word-processor.  I guess I wonder why you would use Scribus as
> > the formatter
> > and not just use the word processing program.  I know that many
> > novels have been created in Word or Open Office (and other word
> > processors), so it does interest me. I have a couple nonfiction
> > books I've been working on that I did in Word, and that worked
> > out quite well, and it was easy to do. Steve Bradley
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 8:33 AM, LORN MACINTYRE <
> >
> > lorn.macintyre at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > > I am endeavouring to use Scribus in order to edit a novel of 20
> > > chapters, importing the files from Microsoft Word via
> > > OpenOffice in order to
> >
> > preserve
> >
> > > the
> > > formatting. There seems to be little information on the web
> > > about this
> >
> > type
> >
> > > of
> > > project, so it would be good to hear from subscribers who have
> > > already
> >
> > done
> >
> > > this
> > > for a novel or short story collection, so that I can profit
> > > from their experience and perhaps eventually put together a
> > > step-by-step process
> >
> > which
> >
> > > will
> > > help other writers and save time and frustration with regard to
> > > font choices,
> > > kerning, etc.
> > >
> > >
> > > Thanks in anticipation,
> > > Scottie
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Although Scribus is not ideal for running heads etc. if it were my 
project (and I didn't want to use pdftex for some reason) I would 
start from the raw text in Scribus, setting up master pages left and 
right with running heads, page numbers, linked text frames on each 
page and so on. Then I would import raw text.

With proper typesetting you don't need to use kerning in body text. 
Scribus has that capability but there are more elegant and less 
tedious solutions.

I have examples of TeX, OO Writer and Scribus text for a novel here:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/compare.pdf
Unfortunately I don't have MSWord or InDesign so I can't add examples 
for those products. But you can run up your own sample in MSWord and 
compare it to the others. 
-- 
John Culleton
Create Book Covers with Scribus:
http://www.booklocker.com/p/books/4055.html
Typesetting and indexing http://wexfordpress.com
book sales http://wexfordpress.net
Free  barcode: http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/