[scribus] Long Document Preparation Workflows

[Paolo Alberto Rismondo]

Hello Aaron,
<I really really don't want
to have to use OpenOffice.org if I can avoid it. >
Why on earth?
IMHO OO it's a very good, powerful tool.
It makes quickly and easily the things you would like to do.
Cheers, and a good 2010.
Paolo A. Rismondo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron W. Hsu" <arcfide at sacrideo.us>
To: <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 7:00 PM
Subject: [scribus] Long Document Preparation Workflows


> Hello everyone,
>
> I've been trying to search through the archives for answers to my
> questions, but I'm afraid that I haven't quite found them. Many of the
> responses seem to relate to older versions of Scribus. Perhaps someone can
> help me with long document preparation.
>
> I tend to write strong text-oriented documents which have a lot of
> character styles and a fairly complex hierarchy of headings and other
> objects that would be turned into entries in Table of Contents, indexes,
> cross-references, &c. For the most part, I'm a long time Plain TeX user. I
> write my styles, and then my books/papers/essays just sort of fall out of
> that. However, I've been curious about scribus since someone recommended
> it to me a short time ago, and I gave it a try on one of my recent papers.
> It was a small nine page paper, so I didn't think it would be too much
> work.
>
> I am using version 1.3.5 of Scribus.
>
> There are a few things I noticed. Firstly, Table of contents support seems
> to extend only to individual text frames. So, I can't really attach
> entries in the Table of Contents to particular styles. I can see why this
> would probably be okay if you only want to record the chapter entires, but
> in books with lots of subsections that also receive an entry in the
> contents, this seems like a major hassle. Is this the only contents
> support in Scribus at this time?
>
> Additionally, references are very critical in many of the documents I
> create. I want to be able to move around whole sections and have them
> automatically renumbered, and all the cross-references to those sections
> adjusted. There doesn't seem to be any support for this in Scribus, but I
> wanted to check to be sure. Moreover, there does not seem to be any
> similar citation or bibliography support. Is this also correct?
>
> For building large technical documents with many references, links, and
> the like, it seems like Scribus could be a good tool, but I'm a bit
> confused about the normal workflow for these things in a program like
> Scribus. I come from the TeX world, where you first program your style,
> and then you write the content using the markup you have created. This
> means that all the layout work is done programmatically. This can be a
> headache to learn at first, but the advantage is that there is zero manual
> layout work that is done once the right computations are determined.
> Obivously, this appeals to someone who writes long books that focus on
> consistency of style, rather than individual point oriented alignment such
> as one might do with a newsletter or magazine. I have seen some of the
> tutorials on the wiki, but most of them seem to be focused on short
> document preparation. Does anyone have any recommendations for long
> document preparation?
>
> I should also mention that I normally do everything with a text editor,
> and I don't even have OpenOffice.org installed. I really really don't want
> to have to use OpenOffice.org if I can avoid it. However, Text filters
> only seem to be able to apply paragraph styles. Is there no way to apply
> character styles? For example, I have a lot of entries that might look
> like this in TeX:
>
> \datatype{data-name}{maker}{predicate?}{\field{field1} \field{field 2}}
>
> Which would turn into:
>
> \medskip\noindent
> {\bf Name:} {\codef data-name}\hfil\break
> {\bf Constructor:} {\procf maker}\hfil\break
> {\bf Predicate:} {\procf predicate?}\hfil\break
> {\bf Fields:} \field{field1} \field{field 2}\hfil\break
> \medskip
>
> Now, I can do some rudimentary paragraph styles on this thing with Scribus
> and get the same result except that I can't change the character style of
> the individual components in the above paragraphs. This means that I would
> have to edit manually hundreds of these entries. Additionally, each one of
> these would receive a cross-reference and index entry, which, with a
> little more TeX work would happen automatically. Are these sorts of things
> possible using Scribus?
>
> If Scribus can't do them natively, is there some sort of workflow that
> allows for this sort of development which doesn't force me to do
> everything manually?
>
> Aaron W. Hsu
>
> -- 
> A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> scribus mailing list
> scribus at lists.scribus.net
> http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
>


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