Scribus Forums

Development => User Interface => Topic started by: NathanUp on January 26, 2024, 09:29:19 PM

Title: Thoughts on Workflow and Speed of Design Iteration
Post by: NathanUp on January 26, 2024, 09:29:19 PM
I was just reading through this old thread (https://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,3294.msg15384.html) where a user is struggling to select colors. This in combination with seeing the outstanding work on the UI that's being done on the SVN version made me think about one of my biggest wishes for Scribus: increased design iteration speed, or the ability to create and change designs quickly.

That speed of iteration is a big difference from working in something like Adobe InDesign, which I did for many years. With InDesign, I could very quickly create and iterate on designs using features like
...and other little things that, when combined, enable the user to work at speed.

As a result, I would do much of my print design directly in InDesign, whereas now that I've moved to a FLOSS workflow, I have to create my initial design and iterate on it in something that has a much faster workflow, like Inkscape, and then I execute my finished design in Scribus so that I can have a reliably print-ready file. This isn't ideal because you can't really do this with longer documents, and when you do, you don't get the power of Scribus' text tools. Also, as a long-time print designer, I would strongly prefer to do as much of my design in Scribus as possible because it allows me to create precise, technically correct, and neatly set-up documents that are a joy to edit in the future (once the design aspect is complete), and I would of course prefer to only have to create my document once! Feature-wise, Scribus is wonderful, more than capable of good professional work, but the workflow speed is, I think, something that trips up many people.

At any rate, I just wanted to submit my thoughts and maybe start a conversation on the idea of "speed of design iteration" in hopes that my input as a design professional would be useful. I love Scribus and remain eternally grateful to the people who put their time into making it the power-house that it is, and I am very excited to keep following its development, and maybe one day, being able to contribute where I can!

---
1 When working on a design intended for 4-color process, I'll often just select random colors to play with, and then I can refer to a swatchbook afterwards and replace the color values with ones that look good in my swatchbook.
2 On that note, if anyone on the Scribus team ever wants to discuss workflow, have someone test a feature, or consult on a UI/UX matter, I would be delighted to help.
Title: Re: Thoughts on Workflow and Speed of Design Iteration
Post by: a.l.e on January 26, 2024, 11:29:02 PM
hi nathan,

nice list!

a first reaction from my side:


it's not easy to get specific features to be added to scribus.

maybe, the best thing one can do is to comment on the patches that have been done and help the brave ones that do make patches to improve them.
and, when the patches seem to be ready, help convince the team that it's now time to review the code and give feedback : - )

sadly, creating conceptual UI / UX papers has only worked once in the history of scribus...
and it only worked because the persone having written the proposal got proficient enough in c++ to create a prototype of it and, then, step by step also programmed real widgets that can be integrated into scribus.
it took years, but it's one of the best things that have happened to scribus in the last many years!
(thanks martin for all your work!)

proposing small incremental feature that seem to be easy to implement has also sometimes worked.
Title: Re: Thoughts on Workflow and Speed of Design Iteration
Post by: Nermander on January 27, 2024, 10:09:10 AM
As for vector graphics in frames (and also linked), would it not be possible to implement as an extension of render frames? But the rendering engine would be an internal function instead.

(I have to confess that since I have never used render frames I am not sure they support linked content, but I think that would be fairly easy to implement.)
Title: Re: Thoughts on Workflow and Speed of Design Iteration
Post by: a.l.e on January 27, 2024, 10:16:31 AM
0017144: PATCH: ctrl: move image orthogonally inside of the image frame
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=17144