Customer Reviews

Scribus 1.3.5 Beginner's Guide

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I am currently working my way through this book. This is a very good explanation of the workings of Scribus, which is a very good open-source, multi-platform desktop publishing program. This is the type of program open-source is all about. It's effective at it's task, well supported by the community, and is free. The fact that it runs on Linux was my first selling point, and being able to use it on Windows and Mac certainly will attract a larger audience.

This book is a thorough primer on the workings of the program, and is required if you want to quickly pick up the usage, which is very different from word processors or the like. The author leads you through many informative examples of how to create a very professional document. There are many illustrations which are helpful, and an extensive table of contents and a nine page index.

The main sections of the book can be summarized as: getting started, first layout, master pages, using text, formatting text, complex content, advanced frames and shapes, importing images, color management, printing and customizing the creation process. Each is important and is covered in detail, so after going through the book you will be able, if you have any creative energy, to create a very nice looking flyer, brochure, handout, booklet or multi-page document which is press ready in PDF format. I have had a couple of printed documents come out very well when exported to pdf and taken to a local print shop (fed-ex). Of course, projects can be printed locally, but it seems the results are better when exported to pdf, then printed using Adobe or some such pdf viewer.

Overall, as one who is new to Scribus, I have found this book virtually indispensable, both as a primer and a reference. Many advanced DTP features which are covered are over my head, but seem well covered.

It should be pointed out that since it applies to version 1.3.5, it is applicable to the newest released versions of Scribus, currently 1.4. There have been recent changes since 1.3.3 which are covered in this book.

I do heartily recommend this book to beginning Scribus users. It helps make Scribus much more friendly. My one caveat is the translation, which, although very readable and usable, is sometimes awkward. A second edition might want to take time to correct some of the more obvious stumbles, but don't let this deter you.

Imagine, a program that specialises to just doing layout?! At first this might seem overkill; too much of an [unnecessary?] niche perhaps. Yet the book persuasively shows that there is a need for, at least, free software that focuses on layout and does it well.

Gemy forthrightly points out at the start of the book what the functional perimeter of Scribus is. Specifically, you should use a dedicated word processor like Microsoft Office/Word, or OpenOffice Writer, to actually write and spell check any text that you want to put into a PDF document that will have multiple pages and graphics on those pages. Scribus does not attempt to impinge on this text ability. Also, if you need to have photos in those graphics, and you need to do touching up or other enhancements, then use Photoshop or some other equivalent package. And if you need to draw an image, consider using Adobe Illustrator or something similar. It is the integration of drawn images, photos and text into a cohesive layout that is Scribus' remit.

That being said, Scribus can certainly handle many low level useful manipulations that are also handled by those other packages. For example, kerning, which is the altering of white space between letters, can be manipulated explicitly under Scribus. This is useful for the hopefully rare occasions when you need to optimise the appearance of some text under display. Likewise, Scribus can access all the fonts defined under the operating system. Attention has been paid to transparent font management, which eases the explicit burden on you.

The questions ['pop quiz'] at the end of most chapters is a little different from the typical Packt book. It is as though Gemy is trying to imitate an actual 'teaching' text that is used to accompany some college computing class. Not a bad idea. But the questions seem too short and simple. They don't really challenge the reader much, except in the most cursory sense. Better perhaps might have been to have more questions and a gradation of difficulty, to give a serious reader something solid to tackle.