Scribus Forums

Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: thofsaw on August 23, 2016, 09:19:48 AM

Poll
Question: Do you use Scribus for business purposes?
Option 1: Yes votes: 5
Option 2: No votes: 2
Title: Business User Survey
Post by: thofsaw on August 23, 2016, 09:19:48 AM
I'm conducting some research into how Scribus is used.  Please vote!

If you answered "Yes", I'd love to ask some further questions about your use of Scribus and it's impact on your business.  Please either respond to me directly on this forum, or submit a contact request form here: https://patchpitch.com/contact (https://patchpitch.com/contact)
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: a.l.e on August 23, 2016, 10:47:24 AM
hi

can you please disclose who you are, what you are doing with the data, and which data you want to collect?

the link seems to be legit, but i'd like to warn our users to be careful when disclosing data on the internets (and not to disclose personal data, names, addresses, clients to an anonymous person).
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: thofsaw on August 23, 2016, 12:31:09 PM
Sure, no problem.  My name is Paul Phillips, founder of PatchPitch.com.  This website aims to help improve the FOSS ecosystem, and as part of that I'm reaching out to users of a variety of different projects (Scribus in this case, obviously) for the purposes of market research.  Any data I collect will be used for this purpose only and any email addresses I collect will not be passed onto any third parties.
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: solaero on August 23, 2016, 10:34:13 PM
I do a quarterly newsletter for the company where I work. I don't control the content, just the presentation.
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: thofsaw on August 24, 2016, 05:01:22 AM
Thanks Solaero,  Anything that could improve your user experience with Scribus?  Examples could be training, support, missing features annoying bugs...
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: mnawij on August 26, 2016, 01:45:33 AM
I have designed business cards, letterhead, envelopes, forms, posters, booklets, brochures for my printing business with Scribus. To be honest I only use it about 15-20% of the design work probably because I am much more knowledgeable in the Adobe apps since I have been using them since the early 90s.  Though the more proficient I seem to get with Scribus, the more I have been using it lately.  My biggest complaint would be that the bottom edges of the text boxes cannot be moved up to the bottom edge of the type in the boxes.  Next would be tables, though in 1.5 they seem to be coming along, not as great as InDesign, but usable.  A wish would be that true black/white bitmaps would import and export as bitmap and not as greyscale available with transparent background instead of the white square background (though this could just be a lack of knowledge on my part).  Another wish would be to be able to apply 'spot color monotones and duotones' to greyscale or bitmap images since I print a lot with pantone colors.

Regards,

mnawij
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: thofsaw on August 26, 2016, 09:51:51 AM
Thanks mnawij!

Sounds like you try to use Scribus at least in part, but for the other 80-85%, you swap to InDesign?  What's the reason you persevere with Scribus instead of becoming a sole Adobe shop?

Regarding the improvements you've highlighted - if someone were to offer you a solution in exchange for payment would you be interested, or would you just swap to Adobe?  If so, how much would you be willing to pay?  What are you paying for Adobe?

What about support - would you be willing to subscribe to a support service to help with those features you're unfamiliar with (such as your bitmap example - assuming of course that it was just a question of which button to click)?  And if so, how much?

Thanks again,
Paul.
Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: mnawij on August 27, 2016, 04:45:02 AM
I have been an Adobe shop since the early 90s and for design work I use Illustrator for 70%, Photoshop and InDesign about 15% each (this is the breakdown of the Adobe usage outside of Scribus).  Economics is the reason I am trying to learn and see if I can replace Adobe with OpenSource apps, I really do not want to have to pay for the hostage service (subscription model) of Adobe.  It is just a matter of time for learning the apps which I do not have much of running a business to figure out the various apps.  I picked Scribus and Gimp to start with and hopefully next year I can get to Inkscape...

I am not sure about payment as I have never done such and would not know how much the services/coding would be worth.  If I had to pay the equivalent of a year of Adobe for it probably not, so less than $600.  Adobe is $59.99 per month.

No I would not pay for support, the forums here have phenomenal help, and I have also purchased a couple of Scribus books and downloaded a few more free tutorials from the web.  Between all of these I have always found the answer to my questions.  What I would be willing to pay for is a high quality video tutorial lessons such as those found on lynda.com

Regards,

mnawij

Title: Re: Business User Survey
Post by: thofsaw on August 30, 2016, 03:03:23 AM
Thanks for your input, mnawij!