[scribus] issue with Scribus' justification (WAS: move pages to new doc)

[Jean Mielot]

On 20/01/2012 16:47, john Culleton wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:13:36 +0200
> Jean Mielot<j.mielot at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 20/01/2012 09:42, ale rimoldi wrote:
>>> hi hean
>>>
>>>> Still have a big issue with Scribus' justification - which is make
>>>> or break for me - but next week I'll experiment and see if I can
>>>> get it where I like it.
>>> what's the issue? i don't recall hearing you talking about it... :-)
>>>
>>> ciao
>>> a.l.e
>> Hi a.l.e
>>
>> This is a BIG issue for me.
>> I'm just on deadline today for the mag (ironically called The Big
>> Issue) After today I will get back to you with some screenshot
>> examples of where the justification issue lies - it really is a
>> problem for me. My editor wants me to go back to Indesign for this
>> reason - and I really don't want to :-(
>>
>> Anyways...will be an interesting discussion for sure.
> InDesign uses the TeX pragraph-at-a-time algorithms for
> justification. Unless and until Scribus adopts a similar approach
> then it will not have justification  equivalent to what TeX etc.
> has. There is a "Render" thingamabob in Scribus that allows
> access to TeX, specifically (and IMO unnecessarily) the LaTeX
> version thereof. But since the objective of the Scribus designers was to
> use the TeX mathematical layout capability the other good things
> like wide font selection were left out.
>
> I would be possible to lay out a paragraph or a page in TeX (e.g.
> luatex for greater font selection) and import the pdf to a
> Scribus page. But that means giving up on the other Scribus
> goodies like different colors for the outline and the fill,
> stretching or compressing the font and so on. And it means using
> two independent DTP programs to produce one product.
>
> I would suggest that if the InDesign programmers were able to
> work paragraph-at-a-time  justification into their product the
> Scribus mavens could do likewise. But it would be a significant
> effort. But without that capability, and microtypography etc.
> Scribus won't be a strong competitor for book work when compared
> to InDesign and TeX.
>
> Another area that has to be cleaned up before I would lay out a
> big book in Scribus, the sluggish response when the page count
> is large. And I lay out lots of books.
Indeed microtypography is what I'm talking about.
Doesn't Indesign use the Hz-program? Is that open source?