On Monday 07 May 2007 11:12, Clare Kitson wrote: > Thank you so much Louis, Andreas and Greg for all your help. > > My book will have a lot of text (maybe 80,000 words) but an > enormous quantity of pictures too. And as it's about a visual > subject (animated films) I need good layout. > > I looked at the success stories and found a 400-page exhibition > catalogue, which seemed a similar kind of thing. > > Louis, do you happen to know what sorts of weaknesses there tend to > be with long texts? > The weakness that Scribus has with long texts has to do with the paragraph layout mechanisms. They do not begin to approach those availalable with TeX or with InDesign. Also TeX at least allows for global adjustments up front which affect the entire book automatically. For example it is quite feasable in TeX to adjust a margin with one simple comand and have the entire document reset and repginated automatically. So I would not consider Scribus as competitive for an 80,000 page work.
The Context version of TeX allows for excellent placement of graphics with (rectangular) text wraparound and so on. OTOH for an arty or "cocktail table" type book the greater flexibility of Scribus for setting type against a curved or irregular shape might be irresistible. In such a book the "grayness" of the text block and superior punctuation, indexing, bibliographic support, optical alignment, and other bookish features of TeX would be irrelevant. _________________________________________________________________ Need personalized email and website? Look no further. It's easy with Doteasy $0 Web Hosting! Learn more at www.doteasy.com
