How To Start A Book Smoothly & Easily

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Taco Truck

Hello,

I have a personal website with about 300 pages that I want to convert into a book using Scribus.

Despite choosing a template and creating the necessary blank pages, the text and photos will not copy/paste into the Scribus document.

Can you give me step by step guidance please?

Thank you

Nermander

It seems as if you haven't learned how Scribus works.

In Scribus everything needs to be placed into frames.

Also I don't think images can be pasted into image frames because Scribus does not store images into the file, Scribus links to the images just like you do in HTML (so the image must be a file on the disk).

There are many tutorials on how to get started using Scribus, I suggest you read a few of them to learn the tool you are trying to use. Scribus does NOT work as for example MS Word.

GarryP

After following Nermander's advice and learning more about how Scribus works you could try the following, just to give you some idea of how easy it might be to get your web page text into Scribus.

Use can use a text file merging tool or OS command - this will depend on your OS etc. - to get all of your HTML into one file. Remember to give the file a recognised HTML extension so Scribus knows what to do with it. (You could do this by hand but for 300 pages I'd find an automated process if I were you.)

Then you can make Scribus create text frames automatically by clicking the relevant check box on the "New Document" dialog. More details are in the manual/wiki. (I'd also suggest that you delay using templates until you get more used to how Scribus works.)

And Scribus lets you import HTML text very easily. You just use the "Get Text..." function after right clicking on a text frame. If your HTML is written "properly" it will be imported with styles automatically created for things like <h1> etc. (You might get some questions about fonts to use but just take the default for now.)

Once you've imported the text just keep adding pages - with their automatically added text frames - until all of your text is displayed in the document. (As a guide, just keep adding in multiples of 10/20 then delete what isn't used/needed.)

You can then start to play around with styles/images and whatever to get things looking as you want them.

BUT: Please don't do any of this until after you get used to how Scribus works with text frames/images/positioning etc. It's so different to classic web page design that if you don't "get it" early on you'll only end up being more confused. It's always best to learn the basics before you try anything complex.

All said, I wish you luck with your project.

Mike JezZ

Hey guys

I want to make some magazine, just for fun.

I want to make a magazine that has pictures and text.

If I make a magazine with Scribus, people will always need to load the images off the internet?

I cannot export a document with all the pictures and text included?

GarryP

If you want to distribute a Scribus file - this is a file with a ".sla" extension - then you'll also need to distribute the fonts and images that are used in that file (the .sla file holds the text). You can do this by using the "File -> Collect For Output..." function. You would normally only need to do this if you were sending the file to be edited by someone else (or, in some cases, professionally printed). That person would also need a copy of Scribus installed.

However, and I'm guessing this is what you actually need, if you want to distribute a file that can be read by someone who doesn't have a copy of Scribus - i.e. the general public - you can export the file as a PDF (these files have a .pdf extension). A PDF is a self-contained document which holds all of the text, images and fonts needed to display the document. The end user will not have to load anything else to read the document. All they would need is one of the many PDF reader applications that are freely available, and a lot of modern operating systems have a way to read PDFs built-in. You can export as a PDF in Scribus via the "File -> Export -> Save as PDF..." function.

I'd strongly suggest that you should first go through the wiki tutorial at http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Get_Started_with_Scribus. This will give you a good grounding as to how Scribus works and what you can do with it. (It also has more information on PDFs near the end.)

Mike JezZ

Quote from: GarryP on April 25, 2013, 01:41:48 PM
However, and I'm guessing this is what you actually need, if you want to distribute a file that can be read by someone who doesn't have a copy of Scribus - i.e. the general public - you can export the file as a PDF (these files have a .pdf extension). A PDF is a self-contained document which holds all of the text, images and fonts needed to display the document. The end user will not have to load anything else to read the document. All they would need is one of the many PDF reader applications that are freely available, and a lot of modern operating systems have a way to read PDFs built-in. You can export as a PDF in Scribus via the "File -> Export -> Save as PDF..." function.

This sounds like exactly what I need.

Can Scribus make Epub, or only PDF?

AFAIK, Scribus is a layout tool where you can design magazines etc right?

GarryP

Currently, as of version 1.4.2, Scribus can only export to a limited number of document formats - PDF being the most popular - and ePub/eBook formats aren't yet supported.

However, if you read this forum topic http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,665.0.html you'll see that it's in the pipeline (unless something has changed since then).

As to your last question: Scribus can be used to design magazines, books, newsletters, PDF forms, posters, and just about anything that has a fixed layout. Have a look at this forum's "Showcase" section and this wiki page http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Category:Success_Stories for some excellent examples.