Hi Scribus experts,
I'm assessing Scribus for assembling long technical documents and I'd like some advice on the best approach. Scribus consistently appears along with FrameMaker in searches for the appropriate software. Given that I'm not in a position to be buying commercial software Scribus is the only option (other than keeping things the way they are).
I've been reading on this forum and have seen comments about Scribus not being good for long documents, along with discussion on limitations related to TOCs and indexing. These are critical items for me but I am open to finding workarounds.
I must say I've absolutely enjoyed learning Scribus and I
really want it to work for me. But I'd also like to know now if it isn't the right tool for the job.
Here's the situation:
Total pages: Over 1000
Documents: Over 20 with lengths ranging from 30 to 130 pages
Content: Text, images, equations, tables and cross-references
Updates: Around twice a year
Workflow: Microsoft Word for all editing, formatting and layout
We've done pretty well with Word; some of our clients even consider our material to be best in industry. However we're pushing it way past its limits. Once I was the only author, now we have around a dozen contributors. Once we only wrote in English, now we translate to a handful of languages. We also encounter problems with Word's proofing and referencing tools, and have version control headaches whenever we hand a fully formatted and laid out document to a translator.
The workflow I'd like to use is:
- Authors (or translators) collaborate on minimally formatted manuscripts in Word with Track Changes enabled. All text is tagged with the relevant style name.
- Finalized Word documents converted to LO Writer format, maintaining style names.
- LO document text is inserted into Scribus document template with matching predefined styles.
- Layout tweaked for flow.
Knowing Scribus's limitations, here are my questions:
Layout- Would it be possible to create TOC text in Word/Writer and then bookmark the relevant items in Scribus to obtain the page numbers? We use four heading levels and only first level text can go in its own frame. The remaining three levels are inline and need to flow with the text.
- What is the best way to add an equation? Is it via a render frame containing LaTeX code? Or as an image? (not keen on this option)
- We use small margin icons to highlight certain text passages. In Word we use "Move object with text" to keep them next to the relevant passages. Is there a way to do this in Scribus? Or is it easier to simply wait until the text is fully placed and then only position the icons as the last step?
- The documents contain many cross-references, although we only reference titles and not page numbers. Presumably the best thing to do here is simply use the text that comes from Word, without trying to recreate the references in Scribus?
Maintenance- What is the best way to update an existing document? Is it better to sparingly copy/paste changes from the manuscripts (which will be highlighted by Track Changes), or should I simply blast the original text and replace it all at once?
- What is the best way to create a translation? The length, and therefore flow, of the text will change significantly when we replace the text with the new language. Does anyone have any advice on how to avoid completely redoing the document? Or is redoing it the only practical way?
If you've read this far then congratulations.

This has turned out to be a much longer post than I'd expected and I thank you for getting through it. I like the potential that Scribus offers and I've already been working on redesigning our layout to make it clearer and more elegant. But I don't want to be left tearing my hair out by choosing the wrong tools.
I look forward to your suggestions.
Frank