Recent posts

#51
Beginner Talk / Unlinking text frames
Last post by occamsrazor - May 05, 2025, 08:25:23 AM
My first ever post, so first: Thank you, you lovely people for producing this software and giving it to humanity for free! :-*  I love you! And thank you community for being here to help newbies like me!

I have been trying to unlink text frames and been unsuccessful.

I clicked the upstream frame to be unlinked, then selected "unlink" (arrows appear between frames) and clicked the frame downstream. The downstream text disappears and becomes overflof in the upstream frame. When i let the text paste into the downstream frames, the link is re-established.

What am I doing wrong?
#52
Raster and Vector Graphics / fuzzy images - why is this hap...
Last post by rocking - May 05, 2025, 05:02:27 AM
I have been using Scribus to produce a club newsletter (10 issues per year) since June 2021 which means I am working on my 40th issue.  I generate a 300 dpi pdf for printing and also generate a 100dpi pdf for online viewing.

I am on Linux (Ubuntu).  I use images (mostly jpg) as they are sent to me as most do not need editing. If one does, for something like removing keystoning, then I will use gimp.

There is a weird thing that sometimes happens with images and I cannot explain it, and it is happening again with a couple of images in the next issue and I am tearing my hair out over it (please help me not go bald!)

I have an image that gwenview reports is 1920x120, 2.3 MP and X and Y resolution is 250.  However, in an image frame that is 263.5 pt width, the image is blocky and blurry. The image actually looks better in the generated pdf, even the 100 dpi, but it is still pixelated compared to the image when viewed in gwenview.

Images attached show the signature (at bottom left of image):
-- on screen view, at 200%.
screen-view-at-200-pct.png
-- pdf generated at 100 dpi, at 100%
pdf-100dpi-at-100-pct.png
-- image, from gwenview, at 100%.
gwenview-at-100-pct.png

I hope this is understandable.
#53
Beginner Talk / Re: Beginner consider giving u...
Last post by Jensus - May 04, 2025, 11:28:24 PM
I will try to explain "where they should be" regarding images.
I am writing a technical book. This is a section from it:
Spectrally measured signal to noise ratio versus power supply induced noise
-image of oscilloscope screen-
Visible peaks at 50Hz, 100Hz, 150Hz, 200Hz and 300Hz.


In the text above the image must be locked there inbetween those lines, not locked in position on the page, no matter if I rewrite something above it and the text section moves to the next page, the image must move with it.

I will use the software not only to format but do some writing. For example I may want to add some text above. The image must move with it. I have not managed to get this to work in Scribus, the image is locked on a position on the page, not locked in relationship to the text. In Word you anchor an image to text, and it moves if you write, add, delete e t c. But not in Scribus, from what I have found. Not if you use an image frame in any case.

(Or maybe I have misunderstood this image positioning thing and overlooked some basic trick..)

You're right, I am not sure why Scribus is unsuitable for a longer technical book with many images. Trying to find out. My book is massively image oriented, I'd say it is 40% images.
I did try to create some documents. Did not manage to make it work very well. I understand this is a new craft, and it will take time to learn. I am not a complete beginner though, I wrote my graduation thesis in university in Word, but that was 20 years ago. It was both text and images.

AdmFubar, thanks for the advice, yes I have heard about LaTex, is that what you are referring to? I haven't checked that one out yet.
#54
Beginner Talk / Re: Beginner consider giving u...
Last post by AdmFubar - May 04, 2025, 11:24:57 PM
What you prolly need to use is TeX. It is designed with technical documents in mind.
#55
Free discussion / Self-Introduction
Last post by kitzune - May 04, 2025, 08:45:21 PM
Hi!  :)

I'm in love beautiful books and one of my favorite book designers is Hans Gremmen. I heard him talk about his design process and how he ended up being a publisher and got to touch and flip through a book he designed called "This Mountain, That's Me". I dreamt about this book for years, but when I tried to find it, it was completely sold out with a few used copies going for :o €1850 or so today. It won a ton of awards back in 2012 for being the most beautiful book in the whole world.

I thought I'd introduce myself since I read that new user accounts will get deleted if there's no activity after registering. :-\

As far as my own experience with book design goes, I've self-published five books (very small print runs) and I'm familiar with the digital design products Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and I've got some very basic knowledge of InkScape and Blender. When I'm not designing on a computer, I'm a very happy printmaker with experience in woodcut, linocut, letterpress, screen-printing, Riso, lithography, etching, cyanotype and most recently gel image transfers.

Hello to everyone on the forum and thank you in advance for advice I'm sure I will be asking for as I learn to use Scribus.
#56
Beginner Talk / Re: Beginner consider giving u...
Last post by a.l.e - May 04, 2025, 06:05:56 PM
I somehow don't understand what you mean by

Quoteit is important that they stay in place and I prefer to have them in the text rather than always on the bottom e t c.

You keep on saying "where they should be", without really defining what exactly means.

Anyway, my stance:

  • If you want to place your images at specific positions, with a specific size, then Scribus can easily do that.
  • Your problem with placing images is very likely a consequence of a wrong manipulation on your side, and probably not a shortcoming of Scribus (I don't understand what is going wrong, but loading images in a text frame is something all the Scribus users are doing all the time; there are even multiple good way to do it... but in your case, only the most cumbersome ones seem to be working.)

Of course:

  • Scribus is not the best tool for a longer technical book with many images. But you seem to be far from noticing the real reasons why that's so.
  • Still, it might be the best tool among the ones that are free and "easy" to use.
  • And there is probably no perfect tool for technical books (There used to be Frame Maker, which was told to be exactly that. But it has been bought by Adobe many years ago and I really have no idea what it's state is nowadays)

At the end, but -- I repeat and formulate it a bit differently -- creating about 20 pages of your documentation with one of the tools, might be more helpful for you to understand what are your real needs. Probably better than evaluating in a superficial way a dozen of very different software.

You're going to learn a new craft: it will take some time and dedication.
#57
Beginner Talk / Re: Can't select
Last post by Papa Mouse - May 04, 2025, 04:01:33 PM
Me so sorry ... yes of course.
Thanks for bothering to talk to this newbee.
 :-X
#58
Beginner Talk / Re: Can't select
Last post by MrB - May 04, 2025, 03:51:18 PM
Maybe you put them on a master page so they would appear on every page using that master page? You need to edit those pages in master page edit mode.
#59
Beginner Talk / Re: Beginner consider giving u...
Last post by Jensus - May 04, 2025, 03:48:33 PM
Thanks again for your advice. Yes, this is my motivator, to get this project done! I am passionate about it.
I think Scribus is not the right option, it is probably not optimal for such a long document with image heavy content. I guess it is more suited to text only or mostly, or one or a couple of pages with complex layouts mixing text and images.

It has been very difficult to find something suitable. I have tried Atticus (got my money back today, nice customer support), Calibre, Manuskript, Reedsy, Abiword, Calligra Words and researched Affinity Publisher, Papyrus, Scrivener (could maybe do the job, but complex), Poe-writer, Writing Master, Narrative Writer, Focus Writer, Ulysses (mac only), Dabble, Novlr, Etherpad, Ywriter (win), Quoll Writer and Blurb BookWright.
Scribus is very feature rich, much more than most of the above. However image handling is a problem, which was a bit surprising, for both Scribus and almost all of the above. Maybe such works are completed mostly in InDesign.

I just found and installed WPS Writer for Linux :)  Haven't done any deeper work with it yet, but so far it looks good, I managed to create a page with an image that stays in place even if I modify text before it on the page. It seems to be a free software and I will check it out some more.

LibreOffice and its horrid image handling is not an option, I need to have the images flow in the text, "where they should be". This is a book about analog electronics with lots of instructions in photos and images like schematics, it is important that they stay in place and I prefer to have them in the text rather than always on the bottom e t c.
#60
Linux / Re: Scribus Version for LinuxM...
Last post by RodneyLee - May 04, 2025, 02:58:54 PM
all versions of Scribus work with my Mint installation (latest)