Scribus cannot seem to import target file

[nijineko]

Given that Scribus supports master documents, it is somewhat surprising to me that it cannot import master documents from other software. Is there now way to easily import a set of documents from the master document?

Is Scribus also unable to read basic formatting on import, such as columns, sections, tables, and headings? I would have thought that a desktop publishing software with a long history such as Scribus would be able to handle basic formatting of all the other major competitors as well as the various popular office software.

Finally, what is the import size limit for Scribus? I need to import around 1600 pages with basic columns, sections, over a thousand tables, and headings so that I can update and improve the very basic layout with the power of Scribus. What would be the best method to accomplish this?

[a.l.e]

1600 pages and thousands of tables in one scribus document?

i'm really not sure that scribus is the right tool for this.

you will for sure need to split your work in multiple (many!) files and combine the resulting pdfs.

but combining scribus document is (sadly) not as good as it could be, either (still better than working on 1600 pages document, though).

concerning the specific topics:

- importing from other file formats should somehow work (but is rather a new thing and not feature complete; in the past other software producers are being said to have actively hindered scribus from supporting their file format)
- master pages in scribus (background of the page) are rather different than in other tools: not easy to import them.
- headers (depending on what you mean by it) are still missing (and will probably only be doable after the references have been reworked)
- tables are not comfortable to work with in scribus, but they should be mostly feature complete (even if they might be somehow buggy) and importing should be possible. providing examples of tables that do not import correctly might help the importers to improve...
- if the feature are the same, importing of columns and sections should be possible. if it is not, please provide (simple) sample documents and help improving it.

i hope that, knowing all this, will help you decide if scribus is the right tool for you and for which tasks it is meaningful to use it.
and that you maybe can contribute some sample document that will help scribus to improve.

[nijineko]

I thank you for your comprehensive reply!

Hmmm, it is good to know these details, much appreciated.

Actively hindering other software, so lame.

Too bad tables are uncomfortable... some of the tables in the document are multiple pages long. 8.5" x 11" pages at that.

The document in question is freely available as a pdf, as it has already been published electronically, if there is interest I can provide a link.

Once I noticed that LibreOffice master documents were not visible in Scribus, I came over here to ask for guidance before I actually tried importing the individual sections.

The end goal is to see if I can prepare the document for print. I see that Scribus can open pdfs... I shall try that and see what happens.


***Edit: The document comes in two parts, I tried opening the smaller pdf, and it seems to have paralyzed Scribus, that or it is taking a really long time to process....

[nijineko]

Around 16 hours later and Scribus is only at 66% of opening that pdf....

Looks like I'll have to try the individual chapter odt files as the next possible option instead.

[AdmFubar]

Lets have the link.. would be interesting to see this pdf and pick it apart.

[nijineko]

Here is the link to the publisher page [link removed]. Since the PDF is PWYW (Pay What You Want), the price can be set to 0.00 in order to download a copy for free. That is currently the only place where it can be downloaded from. I'm pretty sure it requires a site account, however, sorry about that.

The PDF that I was attempting to open with Scribus is the "Player's Combined Guide to the 3rd Edition System Reference Document".


(Disclosure: I am the publisher, and the provided link contains an affiliate ID, which has no effect unless you actually spend money on something from that site, which is in no way required nor requested.)

[AdmFubar]

Looked over the the site.. didnt get the file, as i'm not thrilled about signing up..however; i'm wondering about the  watermarking the document has. This might be the issue. As the water marking can enforce drm and that might be why it isnt getting opened by scribus. Have you tried opening in pdf reader? and what are the results?

[a.l.e]

scribus currently does not support importing full layouts from libreoffice.

going through pdf is a creative way to get a layout into scribus, but you will lose most of the formatting information (direct formatting might be kept but styles and other "meta" information cannot survive the conversion to pdf)

the idea behind a workflow using libreoffice and scribus together (and generally using word processing and layout tools in combination), is to prepare the text in writer and then import it into text frames.

now, if you want to try things out, -- and only use scribus to prepare for print -- you can for sure try to go through PDFs. but i would try it first on a few pages... then you won't need to wait for long hours.
and remember that scribus document should not be much longer than 100 pages. (how many page you can manage depends on the resource available on your computer)

[nijineko]

Looked over the the site.. didnt get the file, as i'm not thrilled about signing up..however; i'm wondering about the  watermarking the document has. This might be the issue. As the water marking can enforce drm and that might be why it isnt getting opened by scribus. Have you tried opening in pdf reader? and what are the results?

The version I attempted to open with Scribus was the raw pdf file I created from LibreOffice, not the finished watermarked version on the DriveThruRPG site. Sorry about the site, I'm trying to get it in print format here, but that is proving more challenging that I realized. And e-book versions are not seemingly possible due to the large number of tables, not without some time and labor intensive creative shenanigans.

scribus currently does not support importing full layouts from libreoffice.

going through pdf is a creative way to get a layout into scribus, but you will lose most of the formatting information (direct formatting might be kept but styles and other "meta" information cannot survive the conversion to pdf)

the idea behind a workflow using libreoffice and scribus together (and generally using word processing and layout tools in combination), is to prepare the text in writer and then import it into text frames.

now, if you want to try things out, -- and only use scribus to prepare for print -- you can for sure try to go through PDFs. but i would try it first on a few pages... then you won't need to wait for long hours.
and remember that scribus document should not be much longer than 100 pages. (how many page you can manage depends on the resource available on your computer)

I can try the base odt files in Scribus... however it has been laid out such in the odt files to prevent paragraphs and tables from being split across pages, so there are a lot of inserted page breaks - might be problematic. It also has interwoven sections of single column and double column interspersed throughout to accommodate the many large tables endemic to the type of document it is.

Next, even the smallest is over 400 pages, while the larger is over 1000. Not sure how I would logically make all of this work. 8GB of RAM does not sound like enough, especially on a windows machine, since windows is such a resource hog no matter which version it seems.

Finally, is there a way to have Scribus paste-and-autofill the text frames plus spill over onto as many new pages/text frames as are needed? If so, I could give that a try and see if I can convert whatever isn't a large table to a double column frame after the fact.

[a.l.e]

may i ask you, why do you want to get through scribus?

what are you missing in the pdf created by libreoffice?

[Nermander]

I can try the base odt files in Scribus... however it has been laid out such in the odt files to prevent paragraphs and tables from being split across pages, so there are a lot of inserted page breaks - might be problematic.

Not to be picky, but adding manual page breaks is usually not the best way to handle things like like that. But maybe Libreoffice does not have all the necessary functions.

In MS Word there is at least a paragraph property to not split a paragraph over a page break, there is a paragraph property to "keep with next" (so if you use that on a few paragraphs, they will all end up on the same page as the paragraph after them).

I almost never add a manual page break in MS Word, because there is even a "page break before" option for paragraphs. A manually inserted page break essentially becomes a character and can cause a lot of issues when you try to move things around.

[nijineko]

may i ask you, why do you want to get through scribus?

what are you missing in the pdf created by libreoffice?

I am wanting to get it into a file format that is recognized by publishers. Scribus is one potential option.

I can try the base odt files in Scribus... however it has been laid out such in the odt files to prevent paragraphs and tables from being split across pages, so there are a lot of inserted page breaks - might be problematic.

Not to be picky, but adding manual page breaks is usually not the best way to handle things like like that. But maybe Libreoffice does not have all the necessary functions.

In MS Word there is at least a paragraph property to not split a paragraph over a page break, there is a paragraph property to "keep with next" (so if you use that on a few paragraphs, they will all end up on the same page as the paragraph after them).

I almost never add a manual page break in MS Word, because there is even a "page break before" option for paragraphs. A manually inserted page break essentially becomes a character and can cause a lot of issues when you try to move things around.

Yeah, I probably have my settings incorrect because LibreOffice does have paragraph widow/orphan controls.

[Nermander]

I am wanting to get it into a file format that is recognized by publishers. Scribus is one potential option.

What publishers are rejecting the PDF created from Libreoffice? And for what reason?

Importing a PDF to Scribus and the re-exporting to a PDF seems to not a very good workaround.