Hi J, I love your Scribus reports, thanks a lot for taking the time to write them. If I was a Scribus developer, I would be extremely motivated by your mails! They are even motivating for a Scribus beginner like me. Big Issue -- Great Job!
Cheers Peter > Hi all > > Been a while since I've been on the list. > > I just finished my third Big Issue designed completely in Scribus. > > My second issue is viewable here: > http://www.bigissue.org.za/issue-192/issue-192 - for anyone who might care. > The contrast/saturation of the flipbook is not quite accurate - Still > getting to grips with Imagemagick's nuances. > I will be adding this new issue on Thursday. > > I essentially work with Scribus on a daily basis - it's my job - and I > cannot emphasise again how mature > and brilliant this program is. > > Coming from Indesign/Photoshop and switching to Gimp/Scribus was a tad > daunting, but I believe I have > completely proven to myself that the open source design tools are exactly > where they should be > and not a poor man's adobe - but a brilliant alternative. Well done all > involved again! > > I have been meaning to put together a list of grievances and ideas, but > just can't find the time, > but as a daily user my wishlist could be summarised as this: > > 1. More intuitive microtypography > > This was one of my first issues on the mailing list, but a.l.e pointed out > that "perfect" typography is achievable > by just playing around with some advanced settings. > > I can vouch that that is more or less true, but there is room for > improvement - haven't checked out 1.5 yet - > wil see how it's progressing there. > > > 2. Shrink textframe to text - or baseline. > > This is also one I've mentioned before. Making a little block with > perfectly horizontal and verticallly centred text > is not possible - which means an additional block is required behind the > text to simulate this. > > If textframes can end on the baseline and allow descenders to extend, one > can perhaps work in a padding model - > like the current columns & text distances, but better. > > Try and achieve THIS label with 2 textframes - impossible: > http://www.bigissue.org.za/misc/scribus/label.jpg > > I have tried the adjust to content python scripts - and they're good, but I > could never get the vertical one to work. > > > 3. Soft Dropshadows > > Need I say more. > > > 4. PDF's are too big > > My 48 page magazine exported with 300dpi and quite a few embeded fonts > currently weighs in at 317MB! > The Indesign ones never ended up more than 150MB - I'm not using > excessively more images so I'm not sure > where the bulk comes from. > > This might seem trivial, but we upload the magazine to a Kodak Insite > system and on a slow 60kb/s connection > on deadline this is tedious. > > Where could the bulk be coming from? Any ideas how we can reduce this? > > > 5. Colour picking without having to save or name the colour. > > Often I want text to match a clour scheme in a picture - picking the colour > of course works, but I don't think it's > really neccesarry to always save a picked colour in the pallette if it's > only being used one. Indesign is a good example > of how a temporary colour can be applied. > > > 6. A more incremential zoom would be nice. > It seems one is sometimes choosing between CLOSE and FAR - a gradual 1% > mousewheel zoom would be great! > > 7. Selecting text over multiple columns. > If I want to select specific text in a paragraph that spans multiple > columns - I have to resize the subsequent column to > bring the text into the first and select it - annoying. > > These are just things that were annoying me in this last issue and would > make my life easier. There ARE other things > as well. Some of them are bugs and some of them I'm sure are scriptable - > must just find time to investigate. > > > My top annoying bugs at the moment: > > Firstly for such a complex and powerful program it's incredibly stable I > have to say. In Indesign I ended up with at lease a > crash every few days - I have not experienced any Scribus crashes :-) > (except once when exporting jpegs, but using imagemagick now) > > 1. Applying master to page makes canvas jump to the pasteboard on the left > - this is very frustrating little bug and happens often. > I think there is a bug report for that. > > 2. Selected text properties not always accurate. > This one is quite big, but I realised that selecting the text from left ro > right gives the correct details. > > 3. Color pallete for text sometimes fills entire screen > As you can see I'm nitpicking now - minor annoyance this one. > > > I work in the streetpaper industry - there are about 120 around the world. > It is my aim to get all these papers > and magazines to use Scribus. I have some thoughts on achieving this, > perhaps with the help of the > Scribus community, but that's another e-mail alltogether. > > Many thanks > > J
