Scribus: Best choice for my purpose?

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MarkEDixon

I'm new to Scribus, and understand that using it will involve a learning curve.  So, I am interested in opinions on whether the learning curve is worthwhile, given what I want to do.

I have a Word manuscript that, at the moment, totals 450+ pages in double-column format.  Word allows me to insert photos, but only to the width of column, so they have to be small.  I have a lot of larger photos and went to insert them into the document in half- and quarter-page sizes with the option for page bleeds and captions.  Hence, my search for an alternative to Word.  (If Scribus is a good choice for this, my first task will be figuring out how to paste/transfer all that text from Word to a Master Page.)

Despite all the photos, the final product will be text heavy.  In my head, it looks a lot like an old print dictionary.

Thoughts?

dezcat

I'm a bit further down the road than you, but sounds like the same road.

I've begun using Scribus again; 3rd time for me. I've picked up the Scribus way of doing things readily. There are things different from the more commercial products of course, but far, far more things are the same.

In case you're curious, I have 12 years' experience with QuarkXpress, and 15 with InDesign.

Scribus is a *very* worthy design tool.
writer, artist

GarryP

Welcome to the forum MarkEDixon.

It's been a while since I used Word but I'm fairly sure that it allows you to add images that can be any size, anywhere on the page. Maybe I'm wrong about this but can you explain why you think it can't? (LibreOffice Writer, which is an open source word processor, can do this just fine so if Word cannot do it then you might be better moving to LO from Word.)

If you moved from Word to Scribus you would get much better layout and typography functionality but you would also lose some functionality which you might need.

Some examples are:
* Table Of Contents - Scribus only has very basic TOC functions. If you need a "serious" TOC then you would have to create it manually.
* Indexes/Glossaries - Scribus has no index/glossary functionality. If you need these then, again, you would have to create them manually at the end of your process.
* Figure/Table Numbering - Scribus has no automatic table/figure numbering functionality. If you have a lot of tables/figures then this could be a problem.
* Captions - Scribus only has very basic captioning functionality.

(What I've said above pertains to Scribus 1.4.6, the current stable version. The developmental 1.5.x versions might be different but I would not recommend a beginner using them for a whole lot of reasons that I don't want to get into here.)

If you need any of the functionality I've mentioned above then it's probably best if you stick to using Word. However, if you don't need any of these, then if you can give a bit more detail about what you are trying to achieve - with what sort of functionality you need - then you might get an answer that's more specific to your circumstances.

Nermander

Quote from: MarkEDixon on July 11, 2017, 10:24:22 PM
Word allows me to insert photos, but only to the width of column, so they have to be small. 

Incorrect.

That only applies for images placed "in line with text". You can place images above or behind text, then they can be placed overlapping several colums, extending to margins and even extending outside the page.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-Word-Layout-Options-to-move-pictures-becff26a-d1b9-4b9d-80f8-7e214557ca9f

MarkEDixon

Thanks to everyone who replied.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I don't know how to place large photos in a two-column format, rather than that it can't be done.  I'll do some studying before I continue.