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Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: nitramr on March 21, 2025, 08:35:32 PM

Title: The future of DTP Software - Trends, Features and Technology
Post by: nitramr on March 21, 2025, 08:35:32 PM
Over the past few days, I've been researching trends in the desktop publishing industry to find out what features and innovations might be relevant for Scribus.

During my research, I came across an interesting LinkedIn article that highlights some interesting trends and innovations. I'd like to use this thread to gather general trends and developments from which we can derive a long-term roadmap for Scribus.

The aforementioned article also addressed a few things that have already been discussed in the forum, on Reddit, or in the bug tracker.

1. Variable Font Support
It seems that variable fonts are becoming increasingly important. Especially because, as a designer, you have many more options and have to install fewer fonts.

2. Collaborative Work in the Cloud
There have already been some discussions about this here in the forum. Even though it can be very complex to implement, I still consider it an important feature for the future.

3. Interactive Content
I know Scribus focuses on print. However, I think opening up to digital could be a logical next step. This starts with adding "pixels" as a new unit and ends with embedding videos and audio files in interactive PDFs.

4. Data Visualization
It might be possible to extend the render frame so that CSV files can be rendered directly as charts.

Here's the article:
https://www.linkedin.com/advice/3/what-some-emerging-dtp-tools-technologies-skills-desktop-publishing?lang=en

Let me know what you think of these ideas and feel free to add more trends here.
Title: Re: The future of DTP Software - Trends, Features and Technology
Post by: Nermander on March 21, 2025, 09:19:21 PM
As for item number 3, does the PDF format really support pixels as unit? Otherwise I cannot see why it would be useful in Scribus.
Title: Re: The future of DTP Software - Trends, Features and Technology
Post by: nitramr on March 22, 2025, 07:18:14 PM
I don't know if a PDF directly supports pixels as a unit. Regardless, I think it's good to be able to create a document in pixels (e.g., for screen sizes) and also specify everything in pixel dimensions when editing. The PDF output can then be converted to all supported units.

Use cases: Digital slideshows, export as images, document optimization for e-book devices.
I think an EPUB or AWZ export would also be nice. But for that, we need dynamic layout support.
Title: Re: The future of DTP Software - Trends, Features and Technology
Post by: a.l.e on March 22, 2025, 09:27:40 PM
Thanks for sharing the article!

Personally, I read it in two directions.

On the one side, there are trend that we might or should follow.

On the other side, most other software will be following those trends, and there will users who will not appreciate that. If we don't have the resources to do the same (or at least better), we can provide an alternative solution.

As an example, automation and scripting is for sure something where Scribus could shine, the question is: what changes would help new user in need for automation to adopt Scribus.

For cloud solutions, on the contrary, I have the feeling that Scribus won't be able to provide any viable solution in the foreseeable future. But Scribus might be able to solve the same problem that is solved by going to the cloud, in a different way, a way that will be liked by those who would prefer to not rely on the cloud.

Personally, I'd like to have some sort of a plan, in which direction Scribus could realistically go in the future, what needs to be done to get there, and to whom such a Scribus would profit.
Title: Re: The future of DTP Software - Trends, Features and Technology
Post by: crlMIDI on June 09, 2025, 09:53:55 AM
LinkedIn was too intrusive for me to login to it.

At first, I intended to ask a technical question in the appropriate place on how to modify the code in the preamble of a LaTeX Render Frame: either the relevant documentation is very hard for me to find, or it was never completed.

All I wanted to know is how to declare my language(s), for example with \usepackage[french,spanish]{babel}, and to select one of the fonts in the basic set that's native to LaTeX. An incidental advantage of this arrangement is that you can easily manage as many languages as you want in a Scribus document.

However, my difficulty with finding how to configure the Render Frame, perhaps symptomatic of something, reactivated a train of thought that's been bugging me for a long time. Scribus is unique on the free* open source (FOSS) DTP scene, but there are aspects that would better be managed, not by extensive development, but via better integration with other FOSS software.
* A usable version of the popular online Canva costs around 100 euros/year unless you're a registered non-profit association.

If you type some right-left justified text in a Scribus text frame using the default style settings, it doesn't look very nice. Scribus does provide all the adjustments a professional typesetter would have used in earlier times, but nowadays applying these line by line recalls an old-time beginner programmer punching software in binary machine code. LaTeX does typesetting automatically to a high standard, though you can still diddle the parameters.

That's one reason why various Render Frames were introduced into Scribus: here, you just input your text in the frame using LaTeX markup. True, the beautifully justified text does currently appear as bitmap in the PDF file. However compared to the alternative of inserting the text as PDF or vectors (via Inkscape), you can adjust the frame to the page, just like any (rectangular) text frame. Above all, anyone relatively inexperienced can make last-minute alterations to a newsletter (for example) without knowing how it works.

LaTeX text frames need an implementation installed on the computer (I use Texlive), but this is easy to do and it runs transparently in the background.

There seems to be a general impression that Render Frames are not worth further development because they are not much used, which may simply be a consequence of incomplete documentation for adjusting the settings. Other than LaTeX, various Render Frames come with preset settings, for example LilyPond (music scores), which is part of the LaTeX ecosystem.

Fully integrated with LaTeX is the powerful graphics package TikZ (tikz.org ; texample.net), which is extensively documented with plenty of examples, and which does things (even simple ones)  Scribus and Inkscape can't do. With TikZ you have to type your code (plenty of templates are available), but I must emphasise that what looks like a steep learning curve soon becomes surprisingly easy.  You can also convert from SVG (Inkscape...) to TikZ code. A major and useful enhancement would be to fully integrate TikZ into Scribus, using the vector objects. In the meantime, please could we have updated documentation for the Render Frame approach?

There's also the question of linking stuff from Scribus back into LaTeX, for example when fine placement of text and images needs an artist's eye. Regarding layout of the complete document, with left-right page margins, numbering, running titles, and all the rest, Scribus is at best disappointing and you have to do a lot by hand. With LaTeX you may not even have to think about that, and in addition, the markup code provides an easy and above all reliable way of including bibliographic references (essential for much scientific, medical and technical work), as well as cross-references to figures and tables. If you're writing a book, however short, it's far easier to do it in LaTeX unless placing images and other objects is critical; we need to be able to transfer items and document between the two, without hassle. That means ensuring both applications have access to the same font sets.

Learning curves and ease of use: all FOSS software in the field covered by LaTeX, Scribus, Gimp and Inkscape requires some learning effort. This should not be an obstacle to doing things well, which is why I present the case for better inter-operability. LibreOffice should be included, but I leave that for another time. LaTeX is exceptional because of its very widespread usage among authors, researchers and journal editors of all kinds; hence the huge number of templates to download. The commercial online LaTeX service Overleaf has a visual editor alongside the code editor, which allows a very inexperienced user to work on an existing document; two people can work together remotely, which is fun. A free Overleaf subscription is limited only by the compilation time for a given document; we got kind invitations to pay rather a lot when our current novel got beyond 400 pages, but it compiled all the same at 450 pages. You can compile for free as many short documents as you like; the code and PDF can be downloaded and/or stored online.  I often download code to work on my PC using Texstudio, one of the available FOSS front-end editors for Texlive (you install the editor after Texlive).