On Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:10:49 -0600 Rob Oakes <lyx-devel at oak-tree.us> dijo:
>LaTeX certainly has its place, but so does Scribus. For that reason, >I wanted to give a +1 to John Culleton's comment: > >> I have never viewed TeX and Scribus as rivals but rather as >> complementary tools. I would never try to set a 286 page novel or an >> academic text in Scribus. And I would not do a cover in anything >> other than Scribus 1.5.0. I didn't mean to imply that TeX did not have its place. It's a fine tool for what it does. I just didn't want to try to get into a comparison. I have only an hour and a half, and the audience is usually pleased when the speaker ends earlier. >As a user of both, I would love to hear where you think the dividing >line between tools is. And I am willing to bet that your audience >might as well. Software programs are tools designed to do particular >jobs. And though we can often force them to do work for which they >weren't designed, it isn't a fun experience. Hearing how other people >use the same software has given me ideas I might not have had, >otherwise. Especially if they bring examples, which it sounds like >you intend to bring. I cannot address where I think the dividing line is because my knowledge of TeX is limited. I can also say that my work does not fit in where I think the strengths of TeX are. I do textbooks and workbooks. For my most recent work I tried Lyx for a week before giving up in frustration. Actually, I started in OOo and had to give up due to bugs in the formula utility. Then I tried Lyx and found that it kept me on a really short leash. E.g., I was trying to set the title page, where I wanted the title in 120 point type. Lyx insisted that 120 points was a bad design decision. Yes, I eventually learned that you can convince Lyx to do it your way, but the whole idea of being forced to someone else's idea of good design practice left me cold. I have 12 published textbooks, and the first 11 were done in InDesign. Three of them have won awards, and I get constant remarks from students and teachers that the layout is a delight. I have read Bringhurst and have done computer typesetting for ages. I know what I am doing and it annoys me to have my layout tool hamstring me. Moreover, I lay out books for linguistics where I need several hundred special characters. I need a special font and TeX is not really geared to using anything other than its own fonts. But enough of my frustration with TeX. And I know there are people here who are itching to post back how I can overcome each of the issues I have mentioned above. Save your time. I have more important things to do than spend the next several months trying to learn TeX. I uninstalled LyX and all of the underlying stuff a long time ago, and I have no intention of reinstalling it. In my personal work I start by writing in OOo. But I do not "write" the same way everyone thinks I am supposed to. That is, in today's parlance I am supposed to create "content" and then use something else to format it. I hate the word "content." My brain does not work that way. I need to format it as I write it. Else I will forget that I intended that paragraph to be formatted a particular way. Indeed, I write as though I was teaching the material to a class. As you explain the subject to the class it occurs to you that a drawing showing how the concepts you are explaining fit together would help the class understand. As the teacher I would turn around to the board and draw a diagram or make a bullet list or table or something to give the students a visual perception of what I am talking about. Thus, when writing the same thing occurs to me. I need to stop writing then and run off to Inkscape or whatever and create the graphic. In my OOo document I would just enter a paragraph containing <graphic001 here>. Then, while doing the layout later in Scribus I can just place the graphics at the appropriate places. In my brain the graphic elements are at least as important as the words; in many cases more so. I cannot understand how people can write without visualizing the final layout as they write. >>> A preliminary idea I have is to arrive with printouts to hand out >>> of really beautiful pages done in Scribus, and then go through how >>> the pages are created in Scribus, running Scribus on my machine >>> projected on the screen. I may abandon this idea as I think further >>> about the talk. > >I think this would be another wonderful way to go with your >presentation. Perhaps you might wrap your use of Scribus around a >discussion of the principles of design? Principles of design sounds like an entire art course. Perhaps several art courses. Again, I have just an hour and a half. >I attended a presentation at a design conference a couple of years ago >that did something similar with Illustrator, and it was marvelous. >The presenter first showed a layout of a particular principle, and >then proceeded to demonstrate how it had been created and why it >worked. The talk was an hour long and he covered three layouts. It >really opened up my mind to what could be accomplished in Illustrator >and I've wanted to see something similar done with open source tools. >(I even ranted about it: The more I think about this approach to the talk, the more I like it. >>> When finished, whatever slides and materials I produce should be >>> posted somewhere. Is there a Scribus place to do this? > >+1 for this recommendation, as well. Even if you just posted them on >your own site and sent a link, I'm sure that would be greatly >appreciated. I know that I'd like to see them, at least. Unfortunately, I do not have a web site. I might be able to post it to the web site of our local LUG. But we'll cross that bridge when and if we get there.
