[scribus] Some thoughts from a daily user

[ale rimoldi]

hi jean,

> Been a while since I've been on the list.
> 
> I just finished my third Big Issue designed completely in Scribus.
> 
> My second issue is viewable here:
> http://www.bigissue.org.za/issue-192/issue-192 - for anyone who might
> care. The contrast/saturation of the flipbook is not quite accurate -
> Still getting to grips with Imagemagick's nuances.
> I will be adding this new issue on Thursday.
> 
> I essentially work with Scribus on a daily basis - it's my job - and I
> cannot emphasise again how mature
> and brilliant this program is.
> 
> Coming from Indesign/Photoshop and switching to Gimp/Scribus was a tad
> daunting, but I believe I have
> completely proven to myself that the open source design tools are
> exactly where they should be
> and not a poor man's adobe - but a brilliant alternative. Well done
> all involved again!
> 
> I have been meaning to put together a list of grievances and ideas,
> but just can't find the time,
> but as a daily user my wishlist could be summarised as this:
> 
> 1. More intuitive microtypography
> 
> This was one of my first issues on the mailing list, but a.l.e
> pointed out that "perfect" typography is achievable
> by just playing around with some advanced settings.
> 
> I can vouch that that is more or less true, but there is room for
> improvement - haven't checked out 1.5 yet -
> wil see how it's progressing there.
> 
> 
> 2. Shrink textframe to text - or baseline.
> 
> This is also one I've mentioned before. Making a little block with
> perfectly horizontal and verticallly centred text
> is not possible - which means an additional block is required behind
> the text to simulate this.
> 
> If textframes can end on the baseline and allow descenders to extend,
> one can perhaps work in a padding model -
> like the current columns & text distances, but better.
> 
> Try and achieve THIS label with 2 textframes - impossible:
> http://www.bigissue.org.za/misc/scribus/label.jpg
> 
> I have tried the adjust to content python scripts - and they're good,
> but I could never get the vertical one to work.
> 
> 
> 3. Soft Dropshadows
> 
> Need I say more.
> 
> 
> 4. PDF's are too big
> 
> My 48 page magazine exported with 300dpi and quite a few embeded fonts
> currently weighs in at 317MB!
> The Indesign ones never ended up more than 150MB - I'm not using
> excessively more images so I'm not sure
> where the bulk comes from.
> 
> This might seem trivial, but we upload the magazine to a Kodak Insite
> system and on a slow 60kb/s connection
> on deadline this is tedious.
> 
> Where could the bulk be coming from? Any ideas how we can reduce this?
> 
> 
> 5. Colour picking without having to save or name the colour.
> 
> Often I want text to match a clour scheme in a picture - picking the
> colour of course works, but I don't think it's
> really neccesarry to always save a picked colour in the pallette if
> it's only being used one. Indesign is a good example
> of how a temporary colour can be applied.
> 
> 
> 6. A more incremential zoom would be nice.
> It seems one is sometimes choosing between CLOSE and FAR - a gradual
> 1% mousewheel zoom would be great!
> 
> 7. Selecting text over multiple columns.
> If I want to select specific text in a paragraph that spans multiple
> columns - I have to resize the subsequent column to
> bring the text into the first and select it - annoying.
> 
> These are just things that were annoying me in this last issue and
> would make my life easier. There ARE other things
> as well. Some of them are bugs and some of them I'm sure are
> scriptable - must just find time to investigate.
> 
> 
> My top annoying bugs at the moment:
> 
> Firstly for such a complex and powerful program it's incredibly
> stable I have to say. In Indesign I ended up with at lease a
> crash every few days - I have not experienced any Scribus crashes :-)
> (except once when exporting jpegs, but using imagemagick now)
> 
> 1. Applying master to page makes canvas jump to the pasteboard on the
> left
> - this is very frustrating little bug and happens often.
> I think there is a bug report for that.
> 
> 2. Selected text properties not always accurate.
> This one is quite big, but I realised that selecting the text from
> left ro right gives the correct details.
> 
> 3. Color pallete for text sometimes fills entire screen
> As you can see I'm nitpicking now - minor annoyance this one.

as you have noticed, your mail was positively welcome in the scribus
community!

personally, i love reading such reports!

but as is there are almost no chances that any action will be taken
upon it. sad but true.

if you want that something happens, you will at least post one bug
report or feature request to http://bugs.scribus.net .

but it would be even better if you would take the time to create
specifications with details, mockups and use cases for each of the
issues.

it will take time... but the programming will also take time!

ciao
a.l.e