[scribus] Some thoughts from a daily user

[PeterS]

Hi J,

I love your Scribus reports, thanks a lot for taking the time to write them.
If I was a Scribus developer, I would be extremely motivated by your mails!
They are even motivating for a Scribus beginner like me.
Big Issue -- Great Job!

Cheers
Peter


> Hi all
> 
> Been a while since I've been on the list.
> 
> I just finished my third Big Issue designed completely in Scribus.
> 
> My second issue is viewable here:
> http://www.bigissue.org.za/issue-192/issue-192 - for anyone who might care.
> The contrast/saturation of the flipbook is not quite accurate - Still
> getting to grips with Imagemagick's nuances.
> I will be adding this new issue on Thursday.
> 
> I essentially work with Scribus on a daily basis - it's my job - and I
> cannot emphasise again how mature
> and brilliant this program is.
> 
> Coming from Indesign/Photoshop and switching to Gimp/Scribus was a tad
> daunting, but I believe I have
> completely proven to myself that the open source design tools are exactly
> where they should be
> and not a poor man's adobe - but a brilliant alternative. Well done all
> involved again!
> 
> I have been meaning to put together a list of grievances and ideas, but
> just can't find the time,
> but as a daily user my wishlist could be summarised as this:
> 
> 1. More intuitive microtypography
> 
> This was one of my first issues on the mailing list, but a.l.e pointed out
> that "perfect" typography is achievable
> by just playing around with some advanced settings.
> 
> I can vouch that that is more or less true, but there is room for
> improvement - haven't checked out 1.5 yet -
> wil see how it's progressing there.
> 
> 
> 2. Shrink textframe to text - or baseline.
> 
> This is also one I've mentioned before. Making a little block with
> perfectly horizontal and verticallly centred text
> is not possible - which means an additional block is required behind the
> text to simulate this.
> 
> If textframes can end on the baseline and allow descenders to extend, one
> can perhaps work in a padding model -
> like the current columns & text distances, but better.
> 
> Try and achieve THIS label with 2 textframes - impossible:
> http://www.bigissue.org.za/misc/scribus/label.jpg
> 
> I have tried the adjust to content python scripts - and they're good, but I
> could never get the vertical one to work.
> 
> 
> 3. Soft Dropshadows
> 
> Need I say more.
> 
> 
> 4. PDF's are too big
> 
> My 48 page magazine exported with 300dpi and quite a few embeded fonts
> currently weighs in at 317MB!
> The Indesign ones never ended up more than 150MB - I'm not using
> excessively more images so I'm not sure
> where the bulk comes from.
> 
> This might seem trivial, but we upload the magazine to a Kodak Insite
> system and on a slow 60kb/s connection
> on deadline this is tedious.
> 
> Where could the bulk be coming from? Any ideas how we can reduce this?
> 
> 
> 5. Colour picking without having to save or name the colour.
> 
> Often I want text to match a clour scheme in a picture - picking the colour
> of course works, but I don't think it's
> really neccesarry to always save a picked colour in the pallette if it's
> only being used one. Indesign is a good example
> of how a temporary colour can be applied.
> 
> 
> 6. A more incremential zoom would be nice.
> It seems one is sometimes choosing between CLOSE and FAR - a gradual 1%
> mousewheel zoom would be great!
> 
> 7. Selecting text over multiple columns.
> If I want to select specific text in a paragraph that spans multiple
> columns - I have to resize the subsequent column to
> bring the text into the first and select it - annoying.
> 
> These are just things that were annoying me in this last issue and would
> make my life easier. There ARE other things
> as well. Some of them are bugs and some of them I'm sure are scriptable -
> must just find time to investigate.
> 
> 
> My top annoying bugs at the moment:
> 
> Firstly for such a complex and powerful program it's incredibly stable I
> have to say. In Indesign I ended up with at lease a
> crash every few days - I have not experienced any Scribus crashes :-)
> (except once when exporting jpegs, but using imagemagick now)
> 
> 1. Applying master to page makes canvas jump to the pasteboard on the left
> - this is very frustrating little bug and happens often.
> I think there is a bug report for that.
> 
> 2. Selected text properties not always accurate.
> This one is quite big, but I realised that selecting the text from left ro
> right gives the correct details.
> 
> 3. Color pallete for text sometimes fills entire screen
> As you can see I'm nitpicking now - minor annoyance this one.
> 
> 
> I work in the streetpaper industry - there are about 120 around the world.
> It is my aim to get all these papers
> and magazines to use Scribus. I have some thoughts on achieving this,
> perhaps with the help of the
> Scribus community, but that's another e-mail alltogether.
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> J