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Since almost two years ago, I am working in the preparation of a book on photographic edition with GIMP, mostly dedicated to black and white. Mi idea is to further develop many of the topics named in these posts, together with added ones and a lot of step-by-step examples.
Actually, I didn't do much in the last year. The birth of my daughter and my job (in an office, already with a computer) do not leave much time for hobbies. In my case, I prefer reading and photography. Furthermore, currently I am taking a course for Community Manager - you have to always have a plan B...
Anyway, working in this blog gave me new energies to recall that edition activity. I installed Scribus again at home (new version 1.4.0) and that is the perfect excuse to kick this section off. I will present concepts and techniques as I use them in my activities; I hope you will find them as interesting as the GIMP section...
Scribus
Scribus is (officially) a "document layout software". In spite of the great improvements made to text editors, there are still compositions or formats that can benefit from speficit layout programs.
Specifically, these applications provide bigger freedom when adding several texts in a same page, together with titles, graphics, pictures... without the strict need of having the text in "vertical" columns.
Control on objects separation, publishing and printing options and work with layers are just some of the further advantages of layout software...
Commercial alternatives
Of course, you may always decide to use commercial projects, with two major players: Adobe InDesign (evolved from the former Aldus Pagemaker) and QuarkXpress. For a personal use, I find those two VERY expensive. And the do not offer that many added functions that you may need in your initial work...
Those commercial programs are the key to newspapers and magazines layout. In their most complex versions, they allow for collaborative work, where several people can edit different sections of a document simultaneously... Do you need this? Not now...