[scribus] Scribus book review, first impressions.

[John Culleton]

I promised to share my impressions of the new book
"Use Scribus" by Thomas Ecclestone, an
Englishman with many technical books to
his credit. I am a bit at a loss however because
I am both American and a Linux user. He is
neither. More seriously his degree is in
Engineering, mine in English. And I lay out,
typeset and index books for money.
 
I cannot criticize his index because there isn't
any. A technical book without an index is
not very useful. And his layout is to my
eye amateurish. One doesn't both indent each
paragraph and yet skip a line between them. And
the indentation is sizable, about 20 points or
two ems.

The dedication is page roman numeral one. the next
page is blank and the following page (chapter
1) is numbered with an arabic numeral three. That
is just sloppiness.

There is no space skipped between the chapter
head and the first paragraph, not even the line
left between paragraphs. But there is plenty of
space over the head. And yes, that first
paragraph is indented.

Ragged right layout is a  chancy choice at best
and when combined with plentiful small graphics
scattered here and there the layout is, well
distracting. 

I just opened a page at random. It was the last
page of a chapter, verso and with only one
paragraph on the page. All right so far. But the
single paragraph is centered vertically on the
page. Oy! He lays out each such last page the
same way, whether recto or verso. Is this a
British custom?

How good is the information? Haven't got that far.
But a book on using a DTP program should meet
some minimal standard of layout correctness and
attractiveness. This book's interior appearance
is, again IMO, not up to standard. It sets a bad
example for its readers.

The book only lists at $15.00 discounted
already to $14.17 on Amazon. And it is updated to
Scribus 1.4.4. I truly hope the content is better
than the layout. I'll read some more... 

-- 
John Culleton
Wexford Press
Free list of books for self-publishers:
http://wexfordpress.net/shortlist.html
Updated PDF e-book: "Create Book Covers with
Scribus 1.4.5" coming soon at
http://www.booklocker.com/!
o