[scribus] Question from a complete newbie

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Þann þri 14.feb 2017 00:52, skrifaði Dave Brzeski & Jilly Paddock:
> Having looked at the price of InDesign & reeled in shock, I looked for an alternative. Scribus looks
> great. I already use Apache OpenOffice, so I'm used to Open Source software.
>
> What I'm looking to learn to do is format books for ebook & paperback editions. I don't really fancy
> doing it on the CreateSpace website & I definitely don't fancy their charges for doing it for you.
>
> I picked up a copy of the Scribus 1.3.5 Beginner's Guide by Cedric Geary and was a little worried
> when I read in the preface that Scribus was ideal for helping create business card, brochures,
> newsletters, magazines & catalogues, but books aren't mentioned. Is Scribus up to the task of laying
> out paperback books and are there any limitations I need to know about going in?

Most people I know use Sigil <https://sigil-ebook.com/> for formatting 
ebooks. The workflow would rather be to use AOO/LO for writing, 
proofreading and TOC, and then split ways; Scribus for printing layout 
and Sigil for ebook layout.

There have been discussions here on the list about ebook-scripts for 
Scribus, and if I recall correctly, some tentatives for scripts/extensions.

I've never had any problems with Scribus doing my 40-60 page books 
loaded with a bunch photos and graphics (i7 CPU + 32Gb RAM).
Some people on this list even prefer TeX (or variants thereof) for long 
non-illustrated books and use Scribus just for covers.

The only thing I could possibly complain about is when I have to publish 
a copy of my printed work on the web; a PDF from Scribus is huge, even 
when published 'for web/screen'. Fortunately there are scripts to 
correct that.
And a PDF from Scribus is not really searchable for text. In my 
understanding it's because each letter is treated separately, which 
gives tremendous control for layout, but creates all kinds of problems 
for exported text. Have not tested this lately, though.
Thus I prefer redoing approximate layout in LibreOffice and export that 
to PDF.
Otherwise, it's mostly about choosing the right tools for each task.

Good luck,
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