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Scribus Cracks the Big Leagues in Print
An anonymous reader writes "In an interview on O'Reilly, The Scribus Team, who recently released Scribus 1.2 , reveal the first commercial adoptions of Scribus, GIMP, Inkscape, and Linux by commercial newspapers. Who said Linux could not make it in the print world ?"
IMO the real issues with GIMP are more with CMYK support, 16bit per channel , and other pro features.
The interface isn't too bad with 2.0 - unless you're expecting a Photoshop clone.
For those who don't know, the publishing layout world is in a bit of a turmoil. The makers of Quark seriously dropped the ball porting the most recent version to OSX so Adobe's version, called InDesign, has been making huge strides. Aside from using Photoshop and Illustrator for one-page layouts (brochures, postcards etc.) there are no other multipage layout programs out there that are as popular as Quark and InDesign.
It really doesn't matter what you design something in if you can get it to a PDF of at least 300 DPI resolution for print. Your printer normally takes care of the rest.
With both programs costing between $700 and $1,000, this has the potential to be huge.
CMYK support is of uptmost importance to desktop publishing, that's true, most prints are sent in that format. But I sincerely can't force myself to work adapt to the right-button interface. I like having the menu always on the same spot, if you know what I mean. I'm sure others will find it appropriate though - so that's not in question. :) I've used Pagemaker extensively before though (a couple years ago), and I think we have a real winenr here! :)
As for Scribus, I've tried it before, but for most of my work VI and xslproc seem to do the trick, so I don't count.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
I've used Quark and InDesign, and strongly prefer InDesign. In particular, InDesign seems to have a much better hyphenation (not the dictionary, but better choice of hyphenation spots to keep paragraphs from being ugly), better font kerning, and support for transparent images. Does anyone know how Scribus compares in these areas? Basically, how pretty does Scribus output look?
PS is the standard for image manipulation programs, so I don't understand the reluctance of gimp developers to provide a 'ps emulator' mode for Gimp so people familiar with PS could feel more at home. Heck, even emacs has vi modes for crying out loud! It's not like actually getting more users for Gimp would be a bad thing, right?
Personally I don't mind as much the Gimp UI (in 2.0, in 1.3 I minded it very much) despite the fact that I am more used to the PS keyboard shortcuts, but can't really use it as my primary app until adjustment layers will finally be supported (people have been asking for this feature for years and years, yeah, I know, if we want it so bad, why don't we code it)
-- the cake is a lie
I do quite a bit of graphic design (including text layout), and while I can definitely see myself using Scribus and I'm sure Inkscape or one of the other mature OSS vector drawing programs would be more than adequate once I got used to it, and a great solution if I weren't stealing Illustrator (i.e. if I were running a design shop and I needed to make sure all my licenses were legit), I just never got to like Gimp. It's significantly gotten better over the years but it still seems like a poor substitute for photoshop. Although, I would say that it's definitely gotten to the point where I could see it becoming a suitable all-around substitute for photoshop in the next few years.
My personal suspicion would be that they may feel they have better things to work on - like core functionality.
IMO the really important things PS gets write - like the quickmask - are the important bits to look at.
I'm a heavy Photoshop user myself, and I prefer it - but mostly because of the more polished tools like the masking, filters, and selection tools.
Perhaps a group of users who really want a PS-like UI will get together and write one...
Since I work in the digital printing business I have to love Linux because open source started with a printer driver. :) But the really important thing is that my few Linux customers can deliver me the perfect file: A PDF. Making a PDF under Linux is very easy and doesn't require expensive software like Adobe Acrobat. I got a lot of my customors to use PDFcreator (sourceforge) but a lot of them just have to hand over MS Word and MS Publisher documents. They are both a big problem. Especially Publisher. Even a (Ghost- or PostScript) PDF made out of a Publisher file is messy. I like Scribus a lot and it's just something you have to get used to. For the lack of CMYK support: I don't care that much. The CMYK Offset printing has tough competition from machines like the HP Indigo 3050. These baby's print from RGB files and make really stunning prints. My Windows Office clients using MS Word and MS Publisher can design their own stuff and have it printed with Offset Quality and speed as long as they take the effort to make a PDF file. My Linux Scribus, KOffice, OpenOffice, etc. customers too but they have less problems with making a PDF file. The thing that that is still a problem is the lack of PANTONE color support. This would make it possibe to have stuff printed with just two colors insted of four making the prints a LOT cheaper.
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
You're in the minority...and I'm speaking of shops that use graphic programs.
I've been to many a shop where they are 3D-studio specific...then another that was Alias PowerAnimator specific (pre Maya), or one that was Lightwave centered. If you want a job in 3D you keep your options open.
But they all used the same paint program, Photoshop.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
There's talk about better support for spot colours for 1.3 . As for PANTONE, there are unfortunately licensing issues that make it tricky.
Right now I'm taking a DTP class and everyone else uses Publisher, 2000/2002/xp/2003. One big problem is that not all versions are compatible with each other. So when we do group project some people can't see the others. (I know save as jpeg and such but some people in the is class can't) Any how I love to export to PDF function-along with embeding the fonts! For this class I have not had a problem yet!
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
/me puts graphic designer hat on
.. Scribus is always is the final touch.
..
... in 99% of cases it will get done within the week. In my experience every bug and rfe has been taken care of by the next morning.
Inkscape, GIMP and Scribus are a lethal combination.
In the past two months ive produced all my Press-ready PDF's in Scribus thanks to imported artwork from inkscape and some content from gimp.
Being able to have these tools on as many computers as you like is an awesome inclusion. Now I can work from home, from work, from Uni even my grandparents place to get a project finished on time. And when it comes to publishing
my advice for anyone who questions the features in scribus
submit an rfe
Tell me a software vendor that does that for you ?
- Andy Fitzsimon