On Friday 20 July 2007 12:33, Steve Litt wrote: > Hi all, > > I've just heard about a program called Scribus, which supposedly is a page > layout program and not a wordprocessing program. The program's web page is > at http://www.scribus.net/. > > I'm not familiar with Scribus. Can someone tell me the differences between > LyX and Scribus? > Steve,
I've used Lyx for about five years, and Scribus for about one. Lyx is far more useful to me, but Scribus has its uses. Lyx takes care of the layout automatically; Scribus practically demands that you lay every page out individually (sketching the page layout on paper is recommended as the first step). Lyx is highly suited to writing text; Scribus is not recommended for writing text. Lyx adheres to accepted typesetting conventions; Scribus lets you mess things up completely. Lyx places figures and tables automatically; Scribus lets (makes) you put each one wherever you want it. Lyx has great support for crossreferencing and bibliographies; Scribus has none. Lyx is easy to learn; Scribus is not. Scribus allows you to put a graphic item exactly where you want it, and to overlay multiple graphic and text items with varying degrees of transparency; Lyx does not. Lyx is a lightweight program which runs happily on almost any computer; Scribus has brought my Athlon 64 X2 workstation with 2GB RAM to its knees. Scribus allows use of any font installed on your computer, and can scale and distort it any way you want; Lyx does not support this. Scribus has complex color management for text, graphics and lines; Lyx has limited color support. I've used Lyx for letters, reports, books, articles and presentations (with Powerdot) ranging from a single page of text to hundreds of pages with hundreds of figures. I've used Scribus only for a couple of poster papers, and found it an excellent tool for the job. I completed six posters 6ft x 3ft in about a week; each poster has about ten text boxes and about five pictures. I'd use Scribus for a brochure or poster without hesitation; it might also be best for a short newsletter. -- Les ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
