I promised to share my impressions of the new book "Use Scribus" by Thomas Ecclestone, an Englishman with many technical books to his credit. I am a bit at a loss however because I am both American and a Linux user. He is neither. More seriously his degree is in Engineering, mine in English. And I lay out, typeset and index books for money.
I cannot criticize his index because there isn't any. A technical book without an index is not very useful. And his layout is to my eye amateurish. One doesn't both indent each paragraph and yet skip a line between them. And the indentation is sizable, about 20 points or two ems. The dedication is page roman numeral one. the next page is blank and the following page (chapter 1) is numbered with an arabic numeral three. That is just sloppiness. There is no space skipped between the chapter head and the first paragraph, not even the line left between paragraphs. But there is plenty of space over the head. And yes, that first paragraph is indented. Ragged right layout is a chancy choice at best and when combined with plentiful small graphics scattered here and there the layout is, well distracting. I just opened a page at random. It was the last page of a chapter, verso and with only one paragraph on the page. All right so far. But the single paragraph is centered vertically on the page. Oy! He lays out each such last page the same way, whether recto or verso. Is this a British custom? How good is the information? Haven't got that far. But a book on using a DTP program should meet some minimal standard of layout correctness and attractiveness. This book's interior appearance is, again IMO, not up to standard. It sets a bad example for its readers. The book only lists at $15.00 discounted already to $14.17 on Amazon. And it is updated to Scribus 1.4.4. I truly hope the content is better than the layout. I'll read some more... -- John Culleton Wexford Press Free list of books for self-publishers: http://wexfordpress.net/shortlist.html Updated PDF e-book: "Create Book Covers with Scribus 1.4.5" coming soon at http://www.booklocker.com/! o
