Hello Aaron, <I really really don't want to have to use OpenOffice.org if I can avoid it. > Why on earth? IMHO OO it's a very good, powerful tool. It makes quickly and easily the things you would like to do. Cheers, and a good 2010. Paolo A. Rismondo
----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron W. Hsu" <[email protected]> To: <scribus at lists.scribus.info> Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 7:00 PM Subject: [scribus] Long Document Preparation Workflows > Hello everyone, > > I've been trying to search through the archives for answers to my > questions, but I'm afraid that I haven't quite found them. Many of the > responses seem to relate to older versions of Scribus. Perhaps someone can > help me with long document preparation. > > I tend to write strong text-oriented documents which have a lot of > character styles and a fairly complex hierarchy of headings and other > objects that would be turned into entries in Table of Contents, indexes, > cross-references, &c. For the most part, I'm a long time Plain TeX user. I > write my styles, and then my books/papers/essays just sort of fall out of > that. However, I've been curious about scribus since someone recommended > it to me a short time ago, and I gave it a try on one of my recent papers. > It was a small nine page paper, so I didn't think it would be too much > work. > > I am using version 1.3.5 of Scribus. > > There are a few things I noticed. Firstly, Table of contents support seems > to extend only to individual text frames. So, I can't really attach > entries in the Table of Contents to particular styles. I can see why this > would probably be okay if you only want to record the chapter entires, but > in books with lots of subsections that also receive an entry in the > contents, this seems like a major hassle. Is this the only contents > support in Scribus at this time? > > Additionally, references are very critical in many of the documents I > create. I want to be able to move around whole sections and have them > automatically renumbered, and all the cross-references to those sections > adjusted. There doesn't seem to be any support for this in Scribus, but I > wanted to check to be sure. Moreover, there does not seem to be any > similar citation or bibliography support. Is this also correct? > > For building large technical documents with many references, links, and > the like, it seems like Scribus could be a good tool, but I'm a bit > confused about the normal workflow for these things in a program like > Scribus. I come from the TeX world, where you first program your style, > and then you write the content using the markup you have created. This > means that all the layout work is done programmatically. This can be a > headache to learn at first, but the advantage is that there is zero manual > layout work that is done once the right computations are determined. > Obivously, this appeals to someone who writes long books that focus on > consistency of style, rather than individual point oriented alignment such > as one might do with a newsletter or magazine. I have seen some of the > tutorials on the wiki, but most of them seem to be focused on short > document preparation. Does anyone have any recommendations for long > document preparation? > > I should also mention that I normally do everything with a text editor, > and I don't even have OpenOffice.org installed. I really really don't want > to have to use OpenOffice.org if I can avoid it. However, Text filters > only seem to be able to apply paragraph styles. Is there no way to apply > character styles? For example, I have a lot of entries that might look > like this in TeX: > > \datatype{data-name}{maker}{predicate?}{\field{field1} \field{field 2}} > > Which would turn into: > > \medskip\noindent > {\bf Name:} {\codef data-name}\hfil\break > {\bf Constructor:} {\procf maker}\hfil\break > {\bf Predicate:} {\procf predicate?}\hfil\break > {\bf Fields:} \field{field1} \field{field 2}\hfil\break > \medskip > > Now, I can do some rudimentary paragraph styles on this thing with Scribus > and get the same result except that I can't change the character style of > the individual components in the above paragraphs. This means that I would > have to edit manually hundreds of these entries. Additionally, each one of > these would receive a cross-reference and index entry, which, with a > little more TeX work would happen automatically. Are these sorts of things > possible using Scribus? > > If Scribus can't do them natively, is there some sort of workflow that > allows for this sort of development which doesn't force me to do > everything manually? > > Aaron W. Hsu > > -- > A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. > > > _______________________________________________ > scribus mailing list > scribus at lists.scribus.info > http://lists.scribus.info/mailman/listinfo/scribus > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.431 / Virus Database: 270.14.124/2597 - Release Date: 01/02/10 08:22:00
