On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 11:17:45 -0600 Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 09:43:12 +0800 csj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 22:45:39 -0600 > > Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 17:39:26 -0600 Kent West <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > wrote: [snip] > > > > So what would you recommend as a DTP program in Linux? > > > > > > There's one in Freshmeat. Don't know how good it is, though. > > > > I suppose you're referring to this: > > > > http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/about.html > > > > The description looks promising: "Scribus is a Layout program for > > Linux®, similar to Adobe® PageMaker?, QuarkXPress? or Adobe® InDesign?, > > except that it is published under the GNU GPL." [snip] > That's the one... My first impression of Scribus: QuarkXpress for LInux. All text goes in frames, rather than text blocks. (The diffrence between these two layout models? In the "frame" way of desktop publishing, frames are created before text is "placed" on the page. In the PageMaker way, text blocks are created on the fly without the need to create a frame beforehand.) Unless you're typographically fussy, Scribus appears ready to do your church or your kid's primary school newsletter. It can already do multi-column/page layouts, shaped text (practical application: you want to put a cartoon "balloon" on your ex-BF/GF's scanned photo), and rotated text and graphics (more accurately: slanted text/graphics) I say "appears" because I haven't yet tried to print anything from it. I don't know yet how crash-proof or -prone Scribus is. But its feature set is a pleasant surprise (and I had done print DTP for more than a decade). Its light dependencies (QT rather than KDE) means it can fit neatly even in a Gnome-ish environment, unlike the other contender, KWord (which aspires to be the FrameMaker of the free software world.) This is one app that the GPL world needs rather than the next greatest groupware suite (mail + the kitchen sink ;-) or web drowser. BTW Scribus is also available as a Debian package in sid.
