[scribus-dev] cover.py script for perfect bound book cover design is ready.

["Christoph Schäfer"]

> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2014 um 21:18 Uhr
> Von: "John Culleton" <John at wexfordpress.com>
> An: scribus-dev at lists.scribus.net
> Betreff: Re: [scribus-dev] cover.py script for perfect bound book cover design is ready.
>
> 
> With the very welcome advice of JLuc and
> Gregory Pittman and the availability of the
> spine.py script as a model I have a production
> version of the script cover.py.
> 
> In gross this script terms does what what the
> Perfect Bound Cover extension does for Inkscape
> users and what my previous template.html did in
> more limited fashion for Scribus users. 
> 
> The data fields are:
> 1. Number of pages
> 2. Pages per inch (PPI) of the interior pages.
> 3. Finished book width.
> 4. Finished book height
> 5. Allowance for the thickness of the cover
> stock plus some additional distance for the fold. 
> A recommended value is 0.017 inch.
> 
> The one improvement that I see as useful would be
> to combine all the data entry fields into one
> window instead of producing a separate window
> sequentially for each data field. I don't know
> how to do this.
> 
> When the fields are filled out a base document
> correctly sized becomes the current document for
> Sribus. 
> 
> FEATURES
> There are two vertical guides marking off
> the edges of the spine. There are also vertical
> guides bisecting  the back cover, the
> spine and the front cover.
> 
> There are solid blue margins spaced 0.375 inch
> from each edge. These margin guides are designed
> to prevent text and similar entities from
> approaching too close to the finished edges. The
> distance consists of the bleed of 0.125 inch plus
> a safety margin of 0.250 inch. 
> 
> I tested it with Scribus 1.4.5, 1.5.0. 
> Now who wants a copy of the script to bash it
> around before I submit it for inclusion with the 
> two releases? I'll post it at
> http://wexfordpress.net 
> Your comments are most welcome.
> 
> BTW my draft update of the e-book mentioned below
> suddenly go a lot simpler.

Hi John,

Thanks a lot for your work. It is definitely something we can build upon and hopefully include in 1.4.5 and 1.5.0.

I didn't find the script on your website, so my comments are based on your description, as well as the reactions by others.

And now the criticism starts:

1) Your role model for the script seems to be Inkscape's "Perfect Bound Cover" extension. That's a bad idea, because it's completely useless outside the North-American market (and I doubt it's of much use in North America).

2) As JLuc already noted, the world outside North America uses the metric system, and even if some countries are still working with the irrational Imperial System, it's not likely to be identical with the the North American version. Hence my suggestion to add centimetres, millimetres and micrometres to the script.

3) In Europe and large parts of Asia it isn't enough to work with a "recommended", assumed or average paper thickness. A cover designer needs to operate with exact values, either per sheet or per a 1000 sheet (or a fraction of the latter). If you're interested in a European-style calculation, you may want to have a look at http://www.print-assistant.de/tools_press_berechnung_papier_staerke.html (you can use Google Translate to learn what it does).


As for the other features, I applaud your efforts. All you and the Scripter gurus have to do now is making it perfect :)


Kind regards,

Christoph