I've been looking for an open source FrameMaker replacement (as my group is
switching from Solaris to Linux, FrameMaker isn't available for Linux, and
FrameMaker is the only commercial program I still use, now seemed like a good
time to finally replace it with open source).
The three choices I see are OpenOffice, Kword, and Scribus. I went thru the
tutuorial to see how Scribus works. It has a few things missing that I would
need to be able to switch. My note is to see if anybody knows the direction
Scribus is taking so that I can see if this is a dead end or if I should keep
my
eye on development.
For what Scribus does, it seems like a pretty good program. However, I'm not
really making catalogs or magazines. I make books describing the software I
write (usually 100+ pages). After using FrameMaker for 15 years, I'm spoiled
by
a DTP program instead of just using a word processor type of app. The list of
things missing from Scribus for me are below. If Scribus isn't going the
direction I need, that's fine. If it can do something and I missed it, let me
know.
1) Automatic text flow
Going thru the tutorial, you manually set up the flow from one text region to
another. I have manuals over 100 pages, don't think I want to manually set up
links. In FrameMaker, when text reaches the end of a text region, another one
is created automatically on the next page. There are ways to manually link
text
regions, but the default is to just keep going onto the next page. This brings
me to item #2
2) It seems that text regions created in the template are not usuable in the
regular mode which means that not only do you have to manually link text
regions, you also have to manually created them on each page as well. Also not
good when you have 100+ pages.
3) Book mode. I did see a book item in the roadmap for v1.3. I don't remember
it giving specifics but I would need to generate table of contents, indices,
list of figures, i.e. generate a list of a given type of marker.
Those three seem to be the biggies that I can think of. Scribus does most
everything else that I use (like importing images). I'm sure I can figure out
a
way to do little things if the big stuff is there like importing C code
examples
(via Python scripts or something).
Thanks in advance for responding.
Adam Stein
--
Adam Stein @ Xerox Corporation Email: adam at scan.mc.xerox.com
Disclaimer: All views expressed
here have been proved to be my own. [http://www.csh.rit.edu/~adam/]
