Writing a Novel in chunks.

[Sculptorguy]

Is it possible to write a book in segments (i.e. separate files) then stitch them together once finished. Scribus isn't coping with 56 pages and a lot of images (average 3 per page). It always crashes when I click on 'preview mode' Black boxes appear and allsorts..it really doesnt behave itself.

[RodneyLee]

You can merge PDF's, Scribus can handle the Book if your computer can.

[Sculptorguy]

Thanks. Its my PC then. I'll do the PDF thing.

[bobbiescap]

Maybe have a look at LyX?

[jack_cat]

The answer that I have come up with is to make every chapter a separate Scribus file, and keep the chapters
under fifty pages. Because my stuff is also very graphics-heavy, Scribus cludges down with larger files.

So, I have a subfolder in the book folder that receives each chapter as a pdf. Then I use a pdf tool to
assemble the separate chapters. There is no master file. Fortunately it is very easy to start each
chapter in its Scribus file with its own page number sequence as necessary.

A good PDF tool is helpful, there are lots out there. The main thing is to be able to assemble the
separated PDFs end to end, but it is also very nice to have the capacity to extract and combine
individual pages and page ranges.

I keep a folder for the book and separate sub-folders for the graphics and miscellaneous collected snips etc
for each chapter, and I have gone back and forth about whether to keep the scribus files in the subfolders
but right now I keep the scribus files all together in the main folder. It gets a little bit sloppy when I have multiple
versions and their auto-save files. This is where the fact that Scribus files cannot be moved (but must be opened
and re-saved) is a pain. This is not a deal-breaker though.

jack