On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 14:38:14 +0000 (GMT) LORN MACINTYRE <lorn.macintyre at btinternet.com> dijo:
From: Jean-Louis Cordonnier <[email protected]> dijo >>I agree with the choice of LaTeX. If your book is only text + chapter >>titles, it takes only 10 minutes to do the whole job with LaTeX ! >>Try to know if this tool fits to your wishes. >Thanks for this advice about LaTex being preferable to Scribus for my >purposes. How does the transfer from Word XP work? >Do the files go straight into LaTex or via Open Office? >Will headers and footers (running titles and page numbers) be >preserved? What do I do about kerning? >Can I transfer pages into PDF format? >Where is the best place on the Web for a tutorial on LaTex? It may be possible to do your book in ten minutes with LaTeX. But it may take a month to learn how. At the same time, I know Scribus well and it would probably take me not much more than ten minutes to do an all-text book in Scribus as well. But it may take you a month to learn how to do it in Scribus, the same as LaTeX. I spent a week trying to do a book in LaTeX (using LyX as a front end), and eventually gave up. It was one of the most frustrating computer experiences of my life. Yet others love it and think I am crazy for not using it. One of my professors once said "brains don't come off an assembly line." Every time I see a debate like this about computer programs I realize how true that is. It's not just that Scribus is close to 100% instant visual GUI and LaTeX is text-based so you have to export to PDF in order to get a visual image of what you have done. I do prefer to see the results of what I am doing immediately on the Scribus canvas, but I could manage the LaTeX way if it really had features that I needed. My real beef with the whole TeX family is the philosophy. They were designed initially for academic papers, e.g., dissertations and theses, where the formatting is as important as what you say. (Don't get me started on the insanity of universities.) The result is that by default you are forced into "good" design decisions. The idea is that someone who may know an academic subject thoroughly can produce an elegantly formatted paper without the slightest knowledge of the rules of typesetting and design. Yet, as great as that is, LaTeX does not cover everything that a good typesetter knows. For example, did you know that "am" and "pm" are properly set in small caps in English? Well, TeX doesn't know that either. It's very good, but you still have to know a bit about what you're doing. It also can't do CMYK colors and several other things that are necessary for a design application. Yet, it does great typography, and automatically, and somewhat better than Scribus, although Scribus is almost as good. To me, the beauty of Scribus is that it does not continually annoy me by forcing me to decisions when I know and prefer another way. I've been doing layout and design for a long time. I know the rules, including when they should be broken. Scribus gives me the freedom I need, and for that I love it. But I must caution that, while Scribus gives you freedom, that freedom allows you to create stunningly awful work. And Scribus will let you do so without a peep. Yet, when I pick up a book I can almost tell if it was done with TeX. It is done generally properly, but the effect strikes me as cold, mechanical and uninspired. LaTeX is Mozart. Scribus is Mendelssohn. Some love them both; others prefer one over the other. I encourage you to give LaTeX a shot. But don't kick yourself if it turns out not to be your cup of tea. You can always come to my house and we'll put on the Hebrides Overture. :) :) :)
