[Tfug] Desktop Publishing Software

[Judd Pickell]

Scribus I believe is probably your best bet, as the really good
desktop publishing stuff is all very non-linux friendly. Of course you
could hackishly make InDesign, or QuarkExpress work, but then you
would still have to shell out the cash. In my searches before, Scribus
seems to always be the one that comes up.

However on your points of needs: I am not sure that it is entirely
scriptable, but that is usually not a big problem, as I don't know of
many that allow for that type of exporting anyways. When I worked  at
the Indianapolis Star Newspaper, they paid 300K for a system to do
that. But I am guessing that if you can export the files into a XML
structure you would be able to make it web usable. Just don't recall
if I saw that that as a feature or not when I was looking to Scribus
to replace InDesign.

Sincerely,
Judd Pickell

On 10/29/07, Claude Rubinson <rubinson at u.arizona.edu> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Yesterday, in a fit of religious fervor or insanity (it can be
> difficult to distinguish between the two) I volunteered to edit a new
> newsletter for my church.  For some reason, the fact that I've never
> done anything like this before and have little-to-no aesthetic sense
> didn't give me pause.
>
> So, I come asking for recommendations on appropriate software for the
> task.  This is completely new territory for me, so I'm not even sure
> what questions to ask.  I think that I've opened Scribus once but
> that's about it.
>
> In descending order of desire, I'm looking for something that has the
> following characteristics.  But, in general, any pointers, tips,
> suggestions or recommendations would be great.
>
> - A solid f/oss project that will be around for a while.  If I'm going
>   to invest my time in learning a new software package, I want to know
>   that it's not going belly up.  I tend to have more faith in packages
>   that have been around a while.
>
> - Something graphical.  I know that may seem odd coming from me but my
>   limited aesthetic sensibility suggests that I'll do better if I can
>   actually see the results immediately.
>
> - Good documentation and/or responsive user-base.  I want to be able
>   to get good answers when I go looking for them.
>
> - Preferably, something that has a decent Windows and/or Mac port.  I don't
>   expect that I'll be editing this newsletter for too long and it
>   would be great if whoever takes over didn't have to reinvent the
>   wheel.
>
> - If it were scriptable, that would be great.  It may be the case that
>   we might want to move some of this material onto our website at some
>   point in the future.  I would be great if we could write a script
>   that would automatically generate the newsletter for people who
>   prefer to receive a hardcopy.
>
> I appreciate any help or direction!
>
> Claude
>
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