[Scribus] Question about output formats

[Bruce Kingsland]

I'm really new at even being a newbie (as far as DTP goes, that is).
I've been lurking on the list for awhile, mostly gathering data for
answering questions prior to asking them. But I couldn't find the
answer to this one; and that is because I didn't/don't know what to
search on:

I belong to a nonprofit that produces a 40 page newsletter each month.
Sometimes the number of pages varies, but they vary in steps of 8 because
the publisher uses newsprint on a large web printer. The organization
is confused about FOSS, and considers it to be inferior shareware; so
they have invested large amounts of $$ in hardware to make XP and
Pagemaker work reasonably well for this continuous volunteer task. I'd
like to change that by using Scribus for the task, and showing them
that they can save $$ and get a superior product.

However, I don't know enough about DTP to know what the output format
of Pagemaker is, or whether Scribus can provide a similar result. I
believe it can, but I'm concerned that were I call the publisher to
ask what format they want to recieve the source file in - they will
tell me "use pagemaker (or the equivalent mac product)", which won't
get me the answer I need. I know that the orgainization will simply
tell me that only pagemaker will work, but I know better than that.

I saw this page:
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/For_whom_is_PDF/X-3_really_desired%3F
and thot that this is probably what the publisher is really wanting,
but prior to seeing this I had no inkling that a publisher would want
a PDF file; for some reason I thought that they would want some
complicated tiff format, or something else common in the DTP industry
but not commonly used in daily WP printing activities.

So, perhaps I've found the answer, but I'm not sure; which is why I'm
posting to this list. Sorry for the longwinded question, but I felt it
was somewhat necessary to provide a little background. Once I'm
comfortable that I can produce the necessary output format, I expect
the rest of the project will go relatively smoothly (albeit a steep
learning curve awaits me!). :)

Thanx!
-bk
-- 
Bruce Kingsland                                       wizard at renigaid.biz
RenigAid Services         ICQ: 273027311                cell 360-531-3730
Port Hadlock, WA          AIM: RenigAid Wizard           fax 253-322-0745
_________________________________________________________________________