On Sunday 14 December 2008 07:33:29 am avox wrote: > John Culleton-3 wrote: > > For Scribus to be comparable to TeX for long books it needs to be > > able to justify a paragraph at a time, optionally > > That's a nice-to-have but not mandatory. I think the justification > algorithm in 135 is good enough. > > > use hanging punctuation, optionally use microtypography, > > Late additions to TeX and already available in 135 > > handle books of a thousand pages or more without subdividing the > files, provide for > > > indexing, toc, automated footnoting, > > True > > > automatic placement of graphics, tables etc. on the current page > > or on the next page depending on how > > things work out, > > That's something you control manually after TeX had it's try, so > maybe not so essential. > > > allow the insertion of a paragraph with automatic repagination as > > needed and automatic adjustment of both the toc and the index, > > Well, that's what you expect from automatic pagination and > indexing. Or do you mean that Scribus should insert new pages > automatically? I'm still looking for a specification where and with > what master page that should happen. I'm afraid that users might > have quite different needs when it comes to inserting new pages. > > > provide a facility for putting out different page sizes and page > > orders with a simple switch from the same file, > > Uh, like an A4 and an A5 version from the same file?? That's a > design layout no-no IMHO. > > > draw bibliographic references from a bibliographic database, with > > automatic formatting and ordering of those entries depending on a > > bib style selection and etc. > > That's only needed for scientific books. > > > I said before almost anything can be done with almost any tool, > > as the man with the IBM 1100 proved. But it is not sensible to > > use a tool ill suited for the purpose at hand. I am in the > > process of writing an e-book on using Scribus for book cover > > design. Book cover design is a task for which Scribus is > > admirably suited. But the e-book publisher insists that the book > > file size be held to less than two megabytes. If it goes over > > that parameter I may have to redo it in TeX. I can compress a > > pdf from Scribus but then I lose anchors etc. > > The e-book publisher wants a PDF? Is that also the final e-book > format or are the pages reflowed? Would be interesting to see the > specs. > The pdf version will be encapsulated in an exe file but basically it is pdf. You can't reflow pdf using any tool I know. It is a final format. Basically you send them a pdf.
> > I am not knocking Scribus. I am putting in a lot of hours on > > learning it. But all of us need to have more than one arrow in > > our quiver. > > Sure. But Scribus will get there eventually. > > /Andreas My actual case was a newsletter that was double column 8.5 x 11 inches imposed on 11 x 17, single column 5.5 x 8.5 inches with different margins of course imposed on 11 x 8.5 for a pamphlet , and the 5.5 x8.5 layout in normal page sequence for proofing. Now this requires formatting and paginating on the fly based on some commands up front and a command line switch that selects the correct format. Here is an extract of the code: ------------------------------------------------ \startmode[full] \definepapersize[reg][width=8.5in,height=11in] \definepapersize[ful][width=11in,height=17in] \setuppapersize[reg][ful] \setuparranging[2UP,rotated,doublesided] \setuplayout[textwidth 7in,marking=off,textheight=9.5in] \stopmode \startmode[hal] \definepapersize[halff][width=5.5in,height=8.5in] \definepapersize[ful][width=8.5in,height=11in] \setuppapersize[halff][ful] \setuparranging[2UP,rotated,doublesided] \stopmode %% \startmode[online] \setuppapersize[letter][letter] \setupcolors[state=start] \setuplayout[textwidth 7in,marking=off,textheight=9.5in] \stopmode %% \startmode[pruf] \definepapersize[halff][width=5.0in,height=8.5in] \setuppapersize[halff][letter] \stopmode ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The underlying philosophy of Scribus is enough different that such games are not practical. But within the page-oriented scheme of Scribus there should be better handling of very long documents. The reason? An automated index pretty much requires handling the whole document as a single entity. And indexing is essential. Knuth, the author of TeX, created the paragraph-at-a-time justification scheme and InDesign copied it. So for text-heavy documents that is the standard practice today. You may judge 1.3.5 good enough. Others will compare the results to e.g., InDesign and judge that Scribus is not a serious player. It might be possible for the authors of Scribus to copy the paragraph making algorithm of TeX just as the authors of InDesign did. I don't know the code so I can't judge. -- John Culleton Resources for every author and publisher: http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf http://wexfordpress.com/tex/packagers.pdf http://www.creativemindspress.com/newbiefaq.htm http://www.gropenassoc.com/TopLevelPages/reference%20desk.htm
