[scribus] Scribus!

[Frank Swygert]

I can easily agree with your first three points. But what makes you 
think "Scribus is gaining significant market share."? The number of 
downloads? That's people looking at, or "checking out", not necessarily 
USING Scribus, and IS NOT a valid indicator of market share gain. 
There's no way to tell how many people actually use Scribus, and I 
suspect that most use it for a rare project and not as an every day or 
on-going project (such as my quarterly magazine that's been published 
for 11 years now using PM). Price and ease of use is why programs like 
Serif's PagePlus and Microsoft's Publisher are popular (though I'd rate 
P+ well above MSP in power/value/usability!). InDesign was cumbersome 
and hard for me, a seasoned DTP user, to work with, and why I didn't 
even consider it. I must admit being biased to/spoiled by the PageMaker 
interface, but it seems a lot more intuitive and logical. Quark and 
Scribus use a similar interface, shouldn't take long to learn Scribus. 
If the software is hard to use though, it takes up too much of the 
publisher's time. I need something I can easily and quickly work with! I 
don't use a lot of fancy features, just basics really, so I expect 
Scribus to be a viable alternative for my DTP needs. Will just take some 
time to learn the differences in menus and commands. I've had the 
opportunity to play with Quark a bit, and it's pretty much the same way 
-- a comfortably familiar look and feel, but the commands and menu 
structure are a bit different in some cases. Quark supposedly handles 
large page formats, like newspapers, better than PM, PM supposedly 
handles large page count books better than Quark. Ease of use is 
essential -- that's my main point! The easier Scribus is to use, the 
more popular it will be, and the more market share it has the potential 
to capture. Market Share isn't really the correct term since it's OSS, 
but I know what is meant. -------- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:12:00 +0100 
From: John Beardmore <John at T4sLtd.co.uk> Most people doing DTP are not 
naive users. Most DTP software is expensive. (Overpriced ?) Scribus is 
offering a real alternative. Scribus is gaining significant market 
share. What more do or should we want ?

I suspect that many of the people to whom you wish to appeal aren't 
using DTP at all. I'm not sure that scribus is for them, and I'm not 
sure that it should be until they recognise the limitations of the 
software they have already, and go looking for better tools.



-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
(free download available!)