[Scribus] Scribus observations

[Charles Newbury]

I?ve been experimenting with Aqua Scribus 1.3.4 on my iMac G5 (OS X 10.4.9)
with an eye to using it as a replacement for Freehand MX. Here?s couple of
constructive (I hope) observations:

If Scribus is to increase its user base it must be made to be installed and
set up easier. It?s primary users are designers, not programmers and the
last thing we need to do is to spend time mucking about via terminal. Now, I
did get it installed via Fink Commander, but Scribus needs a stand alone
Installer.

It calls for Ghostscript and Python. Boy, did I have fun trying to set the
preferences for that!

I did, finally, but it took hours (literally) of hunting through
System/Frameworks files with all the Python directories scattered about the
disk, and then to discover that Gimpprint is now Gutenprint and I didn?t
have a clue as to what either was or what they did. It really needs to be
simplified (it?s installation and setup) for non-programmers.

Finally, up and running, the observation that Scribus? performance seems
awfully sluggish compared to other applications on my machine.

Additionally, a WYSIWYG for font selection is needed so that at least the
name of the font selected is in that font. I?ve a modest 500 or so fonts
activated, cataloged into categories (Serif, Non-Serif, Script, etc.) that
show in other apps like Word, Freehand and others. Fast font selection is
needed.

On the whole, I?m encouraged by the features I?ve seen, but could find NO
help item on ?Resize?, by searching through the Help section.

Since imported graphics seem to have a path, it would be good to allow the
editing of these graphic via an additional graphics program (other than
Python)...e.g. Fireworks. You know, select the graphic, click a button that
launches that editor with that graphic. Save the edited graphic and the
program switches back to Scribus with the updated graphic.

Nevertheless, I?m going to continue experimenting with Scribus. I?ve hope
that I?ll be able to eventually figure out how to do everything and that it
will become my DTP substitute for Freehand.

Charles Newbury
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