[scribus] book design

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2014 12:13:59 -0600
"Michael Coughlin" <coughlin at cheqnet.net> dijo:

>I am trying to design a book using Scribus.  I have found on-line
>tutorials which have been a great deal of help.  However, I think I am
>missing pieces of the puzzle.  I have designed master pages for
>chapter head pages and for subsequent chapter pages, but when I
>attempt to insert text and have it flow from page to page
>automatically, it won't do it.  I need to move it individually from
>page to page.  Then, when I try to insert a new chapter page I can't
>get the chapter number and then chapter title to fall in the right
>areas, to be followed with the continuing text.  

You didn't say which version of Scribus you are using and whether it is
on a Mac, Windows or Linux computer. How powerful the computer is and
how patient you are can also have a bearing on the answer.

Conventional wisdom is that for book layout you should use individual
Scribus files for each chapter, then export each as a PDF, and finally,
join the PDF files together with a PDF tool. Doing it this way keeps
Scribus runnning fast; Scribus can become very sluggish when it has to
deal with files of many pages.

I never do it this way. Instead I use a very fast computer with lots of
RAM and keep my book projects each in one file. That is, there is one
file for the entire book, but I also keep a dummy file open where I
work on just a few pages at a time, then copy them into the main
document. The dummy file keeps Scribus performing very fast.

As for your text flow issues, there is a fundamental difference between
a layout app like Scribus and a word processor. In Scribus the page is
everything; in a word processor the text is everything. If you insert
text at the beginning of a word processor document the word processor
will automatically create enough pages at the end to hold the text.
Scribus will not do that. In Scribus all text must be in frames and the
frames must be linked for the text to flow through them.

I suggest you create a new Scribus document as an experiment. When you
create the new document give it some random number of pages, and in the
opening window tell it to create automatic frames (there is a checkbox
for this). Then Scribus will create the document with a text frame on
each page and all the frames will be linked. If you don't do this when
you create the document you will have to create and link all the frames
one at a time manually. 

Oh, and welcome to Scribus!