I?ve been experimenting with Aqua Scribus 1.3.4 on my iMac G5 (OS X 10.4.9) with an eye to using it as a replacement for Freehand MX. Here?s couple of constructive (I hope) observations:
If Scribus is to increase its user base it must be made to be installed and set up easier. It?s primary users are designers, not programmers and the last thing we need to do is to spend time mucking about via terminal. Now, I did get it installed via Fink Commander, but Scribus needs a stand alone Installer. It calls for Ghostscript and Python. Boy, did I have fun trying to set the preferences for that! I did, finally, but it took hours (literally) of hunting through System/Frameworks files with all the Python directories scattered about the disk, and then to discover that Gimpprint is now Gutenprint and I didn?t have a clue as to what either was or what they did. It really needs to be simplified (it?s installation and setup) for non-programmers. Finally, up and running, the observation that Scribus? performance seems awfully sluggish compared to other applications on my machine. Additionally, a WYSIWYG for font selection is needed so that at least the name of the font selected is in that font. I?ve a modest 500 or so fonts activated, cataloged into categories (Serif, Non-Serif, Script, etc.) that show in other apps like Word, Freehand and others. Fast font selection is needed. On the whole, I?m encouraged by the features I?ve seen, but could find NO help item on ?Resize?, by searching through the Help section. Since imported graphics seem to have a path, it would be good to allow the editing of these graphic via an additional graphics program (other than Python)...e.g. Fireworks. You know, select the graphic, click a button that launches that editor with that graphic. Save the edited graphic and the program switches back to Scribus with the updated graphic. Nevertheless, I?m going to continue experimenting with Scribus. I?ve hope that I?ll be able to eventually figure out how to do everything and that it will become my DTP substitute for Freehand. Charles Newbury -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20070601/b1cf7709/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 2139 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20070601/b1cf7709/attachment-0001.bin
