[scribus] a new ebook

[a.l.e]

hi jan,
> On 11 June 2012 15:03, Gregory Pittman<gpittman at iglou.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 06/11/2012 08:25 AM, Peter Nermander wrote:
>>>> It's called single source methodology :) Typeset once, read everywhere.
>>> Isn't that what DocBook and SGML would do 5-10 years ago?
>>>
>>> Since Scribus is a page layout software I can not see why Scribus
>>> would be the right tool to adopt the layout for different forms of
>>> media...
>>>
>> I think an argument for this could go something like this...
>>
>> Since Scribus requires the most precise positioning, sizing, and so on
>> of an arrangement of text, images, and graphics, it would make some
>> sense to start with Scribus, then, depending on other sorts of output,
>> there would be some rules for loosening up the precise placement of
>> objects, based on the type of format or device that the end product is
>> intended for.
>>
>> For example, there is no sense in trying to very carefully arrange the
>> elements for an ebook, since you can't predict the various settings that
>> the reader will have on his device.
>>
>> If you started with an ebook, then wanted to convert to a nice layout
>> such as Scribus can create, there are so many parameters to consider
>> that this could not be some kind of automated process.
>>
> Somehow I get the feeling that scribus shouldn't be the starting point for
> some kind of content workflow (which creating ebooks is part of), but the
> endpoint. Meaning it is certainly a good idea to connect scribus to some
> kind of content repository and if ebooks can be produced from that
> repository that would be great too.
>
> The problem with ebooks is that – as far as I can tell from looking at my
> kindle – there is virtually no design involved. What you can do is set the
> image size, but that is also problematic because you don't really know
> anything about the device the ebook is displayed on. So what producing an
> ebook boils down to is writing syntactically and semantically html/xml and
> finding sensible defaults for the embedding of images and other media.
>
> Personally I believe that the publishing experience and creativity of the
> scribus community would be better focused on thinking about the
> infrastructure around scribus and not trying to use scribus as the central
> piece of infrastructure.
>

you're right!

still, there are people who prefer do the proofreading and the 
formatting in scribus. for those people it's interesting to export their 
work from scribus, instead of redoing the same work again for an epub or 
other publication forms.

btw, keeping external text resources up to date, is much harder then 
doing a one time export at the end of your work in scribus...
but if somebody has a solution for it, he just to program and publish 
it! :-)

ciao
a.l.e