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cyberlizard

It seems my PC is getting a little trigger happy.  Presently I have InDesign CS6 and Scribus 1.5.4, however recently I have been testing the beta version of Affinity Publisher.  I cannot help but think the Scribus development team take a leaf from their book (no pun intended given we are discussing DTP).  They have gone from initial release beta to what is essentially a release candidate in around two years with an interface that Scribus can only hope to aspire for.  I have said it before but the Scribus UI needs a serious revamp inline with the IndigoDock suggestions that have been made ad-nauseum by myself and others.

Come on development team, it's time to push those updates before Affinity take over.

a.l.e

i don't know how to reply to this.
but i will try.

if i look at the list of features in https://github.com/nitramr/scribus-indigo/wiki i would say that:

- most panels are now dockable
- i've made a patch for having frame and content properties and it will probably be merged soon
- i've also submitted a patch for keeping the section open that will probably be merged soon
- we have now a dark theme (on top of the light theme... somebody has created the icons, i've made the patch for having it integrated in scribus and jean has pulled it in.)
- hdpi support is there.

the big thing missing from the list is the high configurability per drag and drop, but i'm more and more convinced that it's not something i would like to use (some of the reasons for it can be read here: https://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2019/04/users-want-control-is-a-shrug.html )

if you don't agree on that, please write down your thoughts...


what i would like to see in scribus ASAP are the panel layout improvements:

- a concept for the resources managements (colors creation and use).
- a big re-layout of the palettes that improves the access to the features and compacts their view.

if you wonder how you can help to get there, write down your skills and i can help you with founding tasks that you can do for scribus.

scribus is not a company, and not much will happen if people don't commit and do the hard work (and, really, i regret how things have gone with martin -- the indigo author -- and i'm working hard to avoid that this will happen again! or at least that it won't happen too often anymore...).

so, what are you doing next?

ciao
a.l.e

DenVinces

Is Scribus suitable for a beginner?

dragonfly

I believe that an app such as Scribus is "suitable for a beginner" if assisted by automation tools to "drive" the UI. Rather like macros. The small tool I use is Actiona (Linux and Windows).

Remember also that SLA can be viewed in XML editor .. and so XML parsed by say Python. However editing XML (SLA) seems to be frowned upon  by the old hands since the underlying rules might change in future versions.

Look also at plugin scripts such as ScribusGenerator to customise documents from variables - in an Excel spreadsheet. Thus you can dynamically create documents.

http://berteh.github.io/ScribusGenerator/

Or you can just read the forum and documents like any other app.

Joop

Quote from: CanyDome on December 23, 2022, 02:57:10 PM
IHowever, in my opinion, the biggest drawback of this program is that it lacks the "spell check" option, which is one of the basic requirements for any word processing program.
Scribus is NOT a word processing program, it just do layout. If you have imported text in a text frame then you can edit this text with Ctrl-T (I'm Dutch and all menu's are in Dutch, so I don't know exactly how its called in English in the program which might differ from  translation Dutch to English). In the popped up story-editor you have the option Shift+F7 for spelling.

Joop

Quote from: DenVinces on December 22, 2022, 10:47:06 AM
Is Scribus suitable for a beginner?
I'm a beginner, so yes. But you have to make up your mind with what do I want and what do I want to make. So you start with a  pencil, a notebook and a ruler (sorry old fashioned, but works). Your going to make notes about examples of what you want to make. Note down page size, left margin, right margin, top margin, bottom margin, one column or two? space between the two columns. Like that, those  are asked by the program in the setup. Next try and keep on trying, every time a little different with a different order how to put the things. And keep on trying, don't give up, all first lessons are hard.

Nermander

Quote from: Joop on December 23, 2022, 06:58:15 PM
I'm a beginner, so yes. But you have to make up your mind with what do I want and what do I want to make. So you start with a  pencil, a notebook and a ruler (sorry old fashioned, but works). Your going to make notes about examples of what you want to make. Note down page size, left margin, right margin, top margin, bottom margin, one column or two? space between the two columns. Like that, those  are asked by the program in the setup. Next try and keep on trying, every time a little different with a different order how to put the things. And keep on trying, don't give up, all first lessons are hard.

I just wanted to say this is one of the best posts from a beginner I have seen in the forum. I wish more people who started using Scribus would understand that Scribus is just a tool, you also need to use your brain a bit to get good results.

PatJr

dunno if this fits,
Ventura Publisher was the granddaddy
imho still unmatched, if anything it was a little to perfect