This isn’t exactly MySQL stuff.. but it relates in the sense that I am looking to move from our current workflow setup for MySQL Magazine to something that is (in order of importance):
Able to generate pdf output along with attendant hyperlinks,etc.
Able to effectively create a professional document with input from a number of authors
Open Source if it meets the above criteria
I have been more than a little unhappy with previous setups (we tried openoffice and now currently Word to Adobe distiller). After the six freaking hours I wasted on the last go around because columns where right justified and looked perfect in Word, but when distilled in pdf the output came out with random spacing (including INSIDE WORDS), I am ready to chunk this approach and try something new.
One of the authors kindly offered to work with me on getting a latex setup. While I am grateful for the offer, I am not sure about going that route. I know that it could do the work, but I am not really comfortable working in an a non- wysiwyg environment for these type of tasks.
In my research for alternatives to our current setup I came across Scribus. It has been around for quite some time, but I haven’t ever actually worked with before. Over the last few hours I setup Scribus and put together one of the articles from the last issue and ended up with a document that, on screen, looks almost identical to the published copy from a couple of days ago. This is the first time I used to the program so I spent a significant amount of time looking up how to do things. Overall it made sense and seems to do the job. I will have to wait until tomorrow to check the pdf output, but it is promising. Plus, authors can send in OpenOffice files and they can be imported without much trouble.
Anyone else use Scribus for anything significant? Your thoughts?
Other than Latex and Scribus is there anything else that would work as a opensource tool for this job? I am not sure docbook would even work with multi-column text, but it is going be fairly cumbersome to work with.
I have used Adobe Framemaker and while it would do the job is frightfully expensive and of course not open source.
Anyone have input on Scribus or other programs I might not have thought of?
I know from the scientific publisher schweizerbart.de/
that they use scribus for some parts of their publishing.
They also use LaTeX, but also Scribus and they are
happy about it.
I’ve used Scribus where I would normally use something like InDesign or its predecessor PageMaker. It uses some elements of Quark as well. It’s served me well in the past to create newsletters for friends and things like that.
I don’t know how good it’s pre-press colour seperations are stuff are, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be needing that. Overall it worked very well and at the time (2 years ago the last I used it) crashed minimally! If it works for you, I do not see what would be wrong with Scribus and certainly it supports an open source DTP product which I am strongly in favour of!
Cheers
Dups
LaTeX
Hi,
I accidentally ran across your site and was intrigued with your comments about Scribus, since I just installed it on two laptops. I was wondering if anyone knows of a detailed Scribus tutorial that I can follow in order to learn to use all of its features, since I’m an absolute “newbie” to desktop publishing. The ones I’ve downloaded and/or read online are ok, but they gloss over too many procedures in order to arrive at their targeted demonstrated feature, and I need to see all of the moves in between. I intend to use Scribus primarily to produce a newsletter and study tracts for a ministry. The Scribus team is supposed to be developing a manual, but I don’t think it’s ready yet, and I cannot afford any of the commercial publications.
Thanks, Bob
Robert,
I have had a good experience with Scribus so far. Unfortunately one of the shortcomings is that there is not a great deal of information out there about it.
Even so, I would set it up and start playing around with it … you might be surprised what you can do. The scribus wiki is the best place for starters.