r15965 by christoph - rewritten about2.html
scribus-commit
scribus-commit at lists.scribus.net
Tue Nov 23 21:38:12 CET 2010
Author: christoph
Date: Tue Nov 23 20:38:12 2010
New Revision: 15965
URL: http://scribus.info/websvn/listing.php?repname=Scribus&sc=1&rev=15965
Log:
rewritten about2.html
Modified:
branches/Version135/Scribus/scribus/doc/en/about2.html
Modified: branches/Version135/Scribus/scribus/doc/en/about2.html
URL: http://scribus.info/websvn/diff.php?repname=Scribus&rev=15965&path=/branches/Version135/Scribus/scribus/doc/en/about2.html
==============================================================================
--- branches/Version135/Scribus/scribus/doc/en/about2.html (original)
+++ branches/Version135/Scribus/scribus/doc/en/about2.html Tue Nov 23 20:38:12 2010
@@ -6,47 +6,30 @@
<body>
<h2>Scribus Basics</h2>
-<h3>Why Page Layout is different from Word Processing</h3>
+<h3>Why Page Layout is Different from Word Processing</h3>
-<p>What can you do with Scribus ? What is a "page layout" program ? </p>
-<p>Fundamentally, Scribus is <strong>not a word processor</strong>. This is a very important concept to understand. Scribus belongs to the family of applications known as page layout programs or more commonly known as Desktop Publishing programs. Scribus gives users great flexibility in placing objects like photos, logos, text frames and shapes in the exact place where you want them. This short guide is meant to give a first time user a sense of what Scribus can do. It is not meant to cover every feature, just a simple over view to get you started and being productive.</p>
+<p>What can you do with Scribus – and what is a “page layout” program? </p>
+<p>One thing you should be aware of is that Scribus, like almost all DTP programs, is very different from a word processor. It is very important to understand the fundamental difference! Scribus belongs to the family of applications known as page layout programs or more commonly known as Desktop Publishing programs. These programs give users great flexibility in placing objects like photos, logos, text frames and shapes in the exact place where they want them. This short introduction, together with the <a href="qsg.html">Quick Start Guide</a>, is meant to give a first time user a sense of what Scribus can do and how to avoid mistakes.</p>
-<p>With Scribus you can:</p>
-<ul>
-<li>Create great looking documents including things like CD covers, greeting cards, company brochures, newsletters and posters. </li>
-<li>Create files which will print easily at your commercial printer.</li>
-<li>Create interactive PDF forms and presentation documents. What is interactive PDF? <!--Your looking at one.--> Interactive PDFs have special features like hyperlinks, annotations (non-printing notes), bookmarks – a kind of an automatically created index for your PDF, as well as special navigation features – just like a web browser.</li>
-<li>Create logos and drawings with Scribus' easy to use tools including the ability to create neat font effects.</li>
-<li>Import photos and other artwork with precise color control for high fidelity printing. </li>
-</ul>
-<h4>First the Theory – The Right Approach</h4>
-<p>First time users of page layout applications like Scribus can find starting out quite frustrating. The interface seems approachable and familiar enough, but when you make your beginning steps things often do not quite work as expected. Do not make the mistake of launching Scribus, opening a new document and expect to start typing. Making the most of an application like Scribus, requires a bit of understanding of the concepts of "workflow" in the page layout world. It might seem a bit arcane at first, but will pay off in the end.</p>
-<p>Part of the challenge of learning Scribus is you are often not just trying to learn a program, but learning page layout, which has its own sometimes subtle rules. There are stark differences from word processors or other text editors. Fortunately, Scribus comes with its own built-in Story Editor (SE). Using this instead of editing on the canvas, understanding the setup and application of styles will greatly enhance your productivity, as well as providing you with more consistent, easier to edit documents.</p>
-<p><i>Workflow</i>, means in the page layout world a way of assembling both the files to be used, but also some forethought on where and how your document will be printed or used. If for example, you were planning on creating a brochure for your business, you certainly would want to have it commercially printed. Thus, you would be sadly mistaken if you thought you could take the low resolution JPEG from your website and use them in Scribus directly. Web and print have two different objectives. <b><i>Graphics used on a website are almost always unusable for commercial printing.</i></b> You need <b>much</b> higher resolution graphics. File size should almost always be secondary to image quality when considering commercial print needs. A typical website image is 72–96 DPI , where for good print results, you need 200–300 DPI. Scribus can export PDF at <em>4000</em> DPI</p>
-<p>A Simple Page Layout Workflow:</p>
-<ol>
-<li>Make a simple sketch on paper of the basic layout. This helps to visualize how to mix text, artwork and images.</li>
-<li>Get images collected as needed, preferably high 200 DPI or higher saved as TIFFs or PNG. Get your artwork (illustrations or line art in a suitable import format. SVG or EPS are usually the best option.</li>
-<li>Write out the text in a word processor or text editor. Spell check, double check grammar, etc.</li>
-<li>Collect all these files in a project directory and start building your document in Scribus.</li>
-</ol>
-<p>In a commercial setting, this might be far more complex. In my experience, using similar methods will allow the planning and structure to make sense and greatly enhances productivity.</p>
-<p>Lastly, Workflow similarly takes into consideration the many options when exporting PDF or printing. There are extensive notes about this in the chapter <a href="pdflavor.html">PDF Export</a>. Scribus has many advanced printing features, which are atypical of desktop applications. Make sure <b>tooltips</b> are enabled, to get general guidance and/or read the <a href="print1.html">Printing Section</a> carefully to understand the options.
-</p>
-<p><!--For first time users, I would encourage you to launch Scribus while looking -->When reading through the parts of the documentation, especially some of the sections on more advanced topics,<!-- . Read everything once thoroughly. M-->make notes on what you do not understand, then post your questions to the mailing list or IRC.</p>
-<p>Before diving into a project, sometimes the best thing is to put the computer aside, get out a sketch pad and make a simple drawing how you want the doc to appear. I too have rediscovered pen and paper. On a recent vacation, lacking a computer at times, I discovered my lack of writing by hand has lead to very poor penmanship. Results, I wrote 8 complete pages in an afternoon, more than I might have written in three nights. Why? Because, I could only concentrate on content. I suggest you do the same. Scribus's real magic is the ability to assemble all the bits <i>at the end</i> to create your masterpiece.
-</p>
-<p>So, if text is going to be a big part of your document, start your favorite text editor or word processor and compose the text first. This way you can concentrate on content. This is where word processors sometimes work against you Note how often you can be distracted by editing done to affect the look, instead of the content. (I'm guilty too) I need not preach to the choir and explain the benefits of saving plain unformatted text. This, in the UNIX world is a given, but for migrating Windows/Mac users may not be the usual habit. Save plain text, you will be happy about this some day. Alternatively, you can import OpenOffice.org.org 1.x and 2.x (OASIS) text and or MS Word documents.</p>
-<p>Next, you will need to consider drawings, photos, tables etc., which might be a part of your doc.</p>
+<h3>The Final Assembly Line</h3>
+<p>First time users of page layout applications like Scribus can find starting out quite frustrating. The interface seems approachable and familiar enough, but when you make your beginning steps things often do not quite work as expected. Do not make the mistake of launching Scribus, opening a new document and expect to start typing, because it won’t work!</p>
+<p>You can compare a document that will be sent to a commercial printer or uploaded to the web to a car or a computer. Such a machine consists of thousands of parts, most of which haven’t even been produced by the car or computer manufacturer himself, but by suppliers. What the manufacturer does is assembling the parts into the final product, and that’s exactly the main purpose of a layout program: It’s the final assembly line of a document that is going to be published – most likely in print – hence the name “Desktop <i>Publishing</i>”.</p>
-<h4>Bitmap Images</h4>
-<p>Like photos that come from the GIMP, Krita, Adobe Photoshop or similar. They could also be images from a digital camera program like <a href="http://www.digikam.org/">digiKam</a> or a scanner application like <a href="http://www.xsane.org/">Xsane</a> or <a href="http://kooka.kde.org/">Kooka</a>. Bitmap images are composed of pixels or dots, typically compressed in a file format like JPEG, TIFF, PNG or bmp. For images in Scribus, I prefer and recommend either PNG for things like screen captures or TIFFs. TIFFs are generally very reliable in DTP and should be chosen for any kind of high resolution photos.</p>
-<h4>Vector Drawings or illustrations</h4><p>come from applications like Inkscape, OpenOffice.org Draw, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Sketch, or Xfig. These generate line drawings and other artwork which is kept in a vector format inways which preserve their appearance at any scale. It should be mentioned that vector files don't save dots, but coordinates which <em>describe</em> mathematically where to draw the lines or fill shapes. That's the reason why they can be scaled endlessly without loss of quality. The preferred way to import them into Scribus is via EPS (Encapsulated Post Script) or via SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). The advantage of SVG is Scribus imports this into native editable objects and can re-edit almost every features in SVG. <!--The importer can import almost every type of SVG from the W3C test suite, excepting multimedia features and scripted actions for Win32 plug-ins in a browser.--></p>
-<h4>EPS/PS Importing</h4>
-<p>One of the reasons we recommend the latest Ghostscript is to enable the best possibility of importing EPS and PS vector files, which can then be edited natively as Scribus objects. This can be very useful for imports which need further changes and you do not have the original source files. </p>
-<h4>Importing PDF</h4>
-<p>One other way you can import files into Scribus is via PDF. Scribus will use Ghostscript to create a high resolution image with a lower resolution file for preview on screen. This is more appropriate for drawings and images versus text. If you need just the text from a PDF, you can open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader or KPDF and copy and paste from the clipboard. Note: you can only import one page of a PDF at a time, and you cannot yet edit imported PDFs. </p>
-<p>Once you have assembled all these bits, it is time to begin working in Scribus. For previous users of desktop publishing, launching Scribus for the first time will seem comfortable and familiar.
-</p>
+<h3>Workflow</h3>
+<p>Manufacturing complex machines requires an enormous amount of planning: Resources like available plants and employees must be taken into consideration, as well as the materials required to build the machines. It also requires coordination with suppliers, since modern machines are made of complex parts, which are often tailored to the final product, which, in turn, means that the suppliers, too, have to allocate resources, buy materials etc. The whole process of planning, coordination and production is called <b>“workflow”</b>, and if you remember that Desktop Publishing is the final assembly of visually complex documents, the process needs to be applied here as well.</p>
+
+<h4>Planning</h4>
+<p>It doesn’t matter whether you want to build a complex machine or create a complex layout – in both cases it often starts, quite literally, at the drawing board. Many products, including cars, have been first “created” on a sheet of paper. Thus, in design, it’s often a good idea to switch off the computer and use a sketch block to outline your future layout.</p>
+<p>Since there are many inspiring designs for almost every purpose available, it’s often unnecessary to re-invent the wheel. Learning from the masters in the art will probably help you further with becoming creative yourself than anything else. It also helps to read a few books on page layout, typography or color theory – there are many available, and most of them are full of inspiring examples.</p>
+<p>Learning from existing examples is something different than copying a layout – it’s actually hard work, because you need to analyze a layout, for example by using a ruler to determine page margins, dimensions etc. If you’re serious about learning, you’ll learn quickly that a good ruler can be one of your most valuable tools.</p>
+<p>Once you think you have created a great layout on your drawing block, the analyzing doesn’t stop, quite the contrary! Part of the planning stage is to determine which parts of your layout are static and should become part of a <a href="pagetemplate1.html">Master Page</a>. You also need to find out which elements will be repeatedly used in different places of your layout, as you can store all those elements in a single directory that can be used as a Scrapbook folder etc.</p>
+<p>Layout considerations aside, there is another important aspect to your project planning, namely the other side of the assembly process, which, in our case, is commercial printing. It is <b>very</b> important to know what kind of files (e.g. PDF versions) a printer can handle, and if you plan to use <a href="color1.html">spot colors</a>, you should know in advance which colors the printer can reliably reproduce. All this information will influence the next stages of production on your side.</p>
+<h4>Preparing Your Suppliers</h4>
+<p>Just like a manufacturer of machines is coordinating with its suppliers to avoid frictions and hickups during the final assembly, you can avoid problems by providing guidelines to those who will produce the “components” of your layout (and if you do everything yourself, you can make some mental notes to avoid hassles down the road).</p>
+<p>For writers it should be clear which file formats are acceptable. Ideally, only a single file format should be used, and if that’s impossible, perhaps due to different software tools available, plain text files can be used as the lowest common denominator. Writers should also be advised to use consistent spelling, quotes dashes etc.</p>
+<p>As for graphics files, you should figure out which <a href="importhints.html">file formats</a> work best for you and then ask contributors of graphics not to use anything else. You should also provide clear guidelines for the use of <a href="color1.html">spot colors</a>, image resolutions and <a href="cms.html">color profiles</a>.</p>
+<h4>Getting Ready to Work</h4>
+<p>From experience it can be told that the final layout should only be started when you have collected all the components you need, and that’s especially true for text. If an image needs color corrections it can be done with the layout in place, but changes to a text, like adding a line or even a paragraph can result in a <b>lot</b> of extra work, as the placement of graphics or captions needs to be adjusted. Thus, make sure that no surprises happen down the line.</p>
+<p>Before you start your work, it’s alyways recommended, to collect all project files in a single project directory, with subdirectories for text, vector graphics and image files. Files that you want to re-use often should be moved into a single Scrapbook directory for use in Scribus. Once you’ve done all this, you are ready to go ...</p>
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