Hi everyone, For whatever it's worth, I would like to insert my "two cents" regarding the discussion of the value--or validity--of adding an imposition utility to Scribus. Although still a "newbie" I have laid out pages for several issues of a newsletter for a ministry which, unfortunately, is still waiting to get off the ground. The newsletter issues that I expect to produce might range anywhere from 4-8 pages, up to perhaps 16-24 pages, laid out two pages per side, printed on both sides of "legal-size" sheets, and center bound vertically. Because I was not able to find a free or low-cost imposition utility online I had to develop something in BASIC that would graphically work, allowing me to view the page orientation necessary to properly assemble each project. My little "utility" appears to work well and can be used on documents of anywhere from 4 up to 996 pages, the actual page limit being determined only by the limit I've arbitrarily imposed upon the page identifier data fields.
From my very limited perspective, I support including an imposition tool with a future Scribus release for two reasons: 1. Especially for someone like me as an inexperienced Scribus user, it would be tremendously helpful to be able to move right into imposition after completing my layout, instead of having to launch another application, such as my BASIC utility [as simple as it is] OR to begin learning code that would accomplish the task in some typography application. I'm still struggling with familiarizing myself with Linux commands, and am not particularly anxious to try learning any other types of code at the moment. 2. Regardless of one's actual level of expertise with Scribus, I would think that an imposition tool would be invaluable to those--again, like myself--who expect to handle duplication without outsourcing to a print shop, who, I assume, would perform the imposition before binding. I guess I can envision pre-imposed work being a problem for the photography involved, but in my case I plan to print out "master" sheets of each issue, from which the copies for distribution will be run off on a photocopier [Kinkos, Staples, etc.], and then hand-collated, hand-assembled, manually bound and finally mailed. Initially, I realize that it will be a crude operation, somewhat labor-intensive, and of only marginal quality at best, but the circulation will be low and the mailings will be local. As the ministry grows, both in size and in capital worth, we can consider outsourcing. E-mailing the issues in .PDF format is not out of the realm of possibility, as well, especially since I would have to do all of this only once every two months. So, yes, the idea definitely has my vote. Those who still would prefer to use other methods can continue to do so, but for the rest of us, I believe this addition--or at least, a plugin option--would be most welcome. :)) Unfortunately, I lack the coding skills to implement this change, otherwise I would have been happy to give it a try myself. Bob Marma
