[scribus] Dumb newbie question

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:22:51 +1000 (EST)
"Owen" <rcook at pcug.org.au> dijo:

> 
> > On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:16:09 -0400
> > Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> dijo:
> >
> >> Plan B might be to try 1.3.5svn, where you can use a TeX frame and
> >> make
> >> your formula there directly in Scribus.
> >
> > I am trying this out, but find the instructions hopelessly inadequate
> > and confusing.

> > What I need to create is 

> > [ sometext           ]
> > [ some more text ]
> > [ yet more text     ]
> >
> > Sometimes my stacks have only one item, sometimes as many as seven. I
> > need the brackets to scale.
> >
> > If there is someone here familiar with math syntax in Latex, could you
> > give me the syntax to create the above? Once I have the correct syntax
> > for one formula I'm sure I can change it for additional formulas.

> If you have latex installed, (there is a fair bit of it!) put the
> following in a text editor and save it as say test.tex  (Thats  T E X
> not txt)
> 
> --------------------------------------
> \documentclass{article}
> 
> \begin{document}
> 
> \[
> \left[
> \begin {array}{c}
> \textit{one little line\hspace{20 pt}    }\\
> \noalign{\medskip}
> \textit{two a very big line}\\
> \noalign{\medskip}
> \textit{three\hspace{60 pt}}
> 
> \end {array}
> \right]
> \]
> 
> \end{document}
> ---------------------------------------
> 
> Then say # latex test.tex
> then do  # xdvi test.dvi
> and then # dvips test.dvi
> 
> then try importing the test.ps into your Scribus
> 
> If you have 1.3.5, after hitting the TeX icon, edit source and drop in
> everything after \begin{document} and \end{document}
> 
> I am no expert on Latex, and there is a newsgroup that is pretty
> active in helping, see comp.text.tex  As I think the above code is
> crap, you might want to ask them to codify it correctly

Thanks, but it didn't work.

First, I created a new Scribus document in 1.3.5. I clicked on the TEX
icon and created a frame. I right clicked on it, deleted the sample
text and entered everything after \begin{document} and before \end
{document}, but it just gave me an error.

So then I saved your whole code as test.tex using Gedit. Then from a
command line I tried "latex test.tex," but the terminal informed me
that I didn't have Latex installed. (Duh!) The terminal helpfully told
me the apt-get command to install it, so I did. Then I tried it again,
but it started Latex in the terminal and I didn't know what to do with
it. I closed and restarted Scribus, then opened a new document, and
tried the TEX icon again, but still get error messages.

I tried comp.text.tex but got the Atlanta error. I tried googling on
latex mailing lists, but there are too many and I couldn't figure out
which one I need.

I don't have time to learn Latex, I'm afraid. I need a GUI to do my
layouts. I think the TEX frame thing for Scribus is way overkill for my
needs. Buggy as it is, I'll just continue to do it in OOo.

Thanks for the help.