Clare Kitson wrote: > I wonder if someone can advise me. > > I'm a total beginner with DTP, and I was hoping to download Scribus in > the hope of, eventually, publishing a book. > > But, although Wikipedia lists books among Scribus's uses, the Scribus > website doesn't. What would be the problems if I did try to use it > for a book? I agree with Louis. Perhaps a way to get a better understanding of how Scribus might be used for a book would be to check the "Success Stories" on the Wiki: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories As you can see, there are several books that have been done with Scribus, some with more than 100 pages. TeX/LaTeX/LyX is an alternative for a book primarily or entirely made of text. I think Scribus is a bit more intuitive, and certainly allows for much easier, precise control of various items on a page. > > And, secondly, is the version for Windows actually usable? In the > notes I found for 'Before Downloading' I noticed the paragraph: > > This is beta software which is undergoing many code changes daily. > While it is fairly stable and usable, caution is advised. It is not > recommended yet for production use. The underlying file format is > undergoing rapid changes and will not be finished until the 1.3.4 or > 1.3.5 version is released. > > Does anyone know when that will be? Is it worth my downloading it or > should I forget it?
There are various bits of information on the Scribus site that need updating, and this is one of those. The Windows version is fully functional and stable, and as we see from a message on the list, works on Vista in addition to 2000/XP. 1.3.4 and above are currently developmental versions, and therefore considered less stable than 1.3.3.x -- the latest stable version has just been released (1.3.3.9) and is available for Windows. Especially for someone new to Scribus using the stable version is strongly recommended, in part because the documentation is more up to date (at least on the Wiki). So by all means, dive in -- download 1.3.3.9, try it out (note the requirements). In addition to the documentation that is included with Scribus, there is the documentation site: http://docs.scribus.net/ and the Wiki: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Main_Page and of course this mailing list. Greg
