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Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin)
Mad Penguin reviews the latest
version of Scribus. "Scribus is a desktop publishing program for
Unix and Linux. It is built with the Qt libraries and is run natively in
the KDE desktop environment. Scribus is published under the Gpl and is
similar to similar to Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe
InDesign. Scribus has an unusually small development team and is mostly the
work of a German programmer called Franz Schmid. The Scribus team are
positioning the program as an easy to use DTP publishing program for the
Linux and Unix operating systems with support available for professional
publishing features." (Found on KDE.News)
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Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin) Posted Apr 27, 2004 21:10 UTC (Tue) by ordonnateur (guest, #6652) [Link] Just what qualifies someone who has been 'using Linux since 2001' to write a review of software. Come back when you've been using publishing software for 20 plus years and I might think it worth paying attention.
Using Linux since.... Posted Apr 27, 2004 22:37 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Yeah, since 2001 isn't all that long compared to some of us (I startedwith Linux in 1995, Unix in 1991), but who cares? Anyone with DTP experience is qualified to review Scribus. What does 20 years of publishing software have to do with anything? The users are the ones that matter.
Accuracy of the review Posted Apr 28, 2004 2:28 UTC (Wed) by malex (subscriber, #15692) [Link] Unfortunately your argument does not really apply to this case. It seemsthat the reviewer has made some solid journalistic goof-ups such as the flashback into his computing experience and the "grandma" reference. Another example of his lack of research: "LittleCMS is a program which is used to create PDF files from the documents you create in Scribus." The majority of his article seem to have no "added value" over what is written on the front page of the program manual. This has also been exaggerated by the "slashdot discussion" effect. Frankly, some Scribus developers have spent hours on the /. explaining the omissions and misconceptions, correcting erroneous DTP and scribus references and facts. All in all, review like this seem to do more harm to the potential users of the software than good. In addition, he could've run a spell-checker, but chose not to. To finish on a positive note: reviewer's remark about the lack of templates spurred one of the contributors to Scribus to investigate the MSPublisher templates. Then he started creating a set of Scribus templates from scratch. So, for casual users of Scribus, there will be the stepping stones to build their simple documents on. This kind of critique is a Good Thing (TM) and is useful as compared to calling the interface "Ugly" instead of going to the BTS and filing bugs against the UI.
Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin) Posted Apr 29, 2004 0:06 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] Well, my personal first DTP app was Ventura 1.2, under GEM, back in, oh, 1989 or so. Did extensive work with it and 2.0, took a long hiatus, came back and did a bunch of work in 5.0, then took a professional vacation and spent 2 years art directing a medical newspaper using PageMaker6/Mac (26 editions each quarter, each between 12 and 20 pages, 2 half-sig's in 4c).So I know whereof I speak when evaluating DTP software. I've been a systems admin and support person for longer than that, so I know whereof I speak when evaluating software and reviews. And I've been an active writer and weblogger for about 4 years; you can evaluate my prowess therein yourself. So I came to this review with some pleasant trepidation; I am happy and sad for the reviewer. All of the shortcomings mentioned above by others are pretty much accurate, but they stem, IMHO, from failing to understand the domain -- by which I mean both electronic publishing, and applications complex and powerful enough to support complex tasks like electronic publishing. Much of the reviewers ire seems to be inspired by the fact that Scribus isn't MS Publisher. Well, neither are PageMaker, FrameMaker, Ventura, or Quark. Therein, of course, lies a tale. The analogy I like to draw notes that you can cut wood a lot faster with a bandsaw than with a handsaw. Of course, you can also cut your hand off a lot faster -- bandsaws are power tools, intended to make complex tasks much more tractable. This implies that they require more training to get the best use out of. DTP software, for example, will serve you *much* more effectively if you utilize paragraph level styles for as much as you humanly can (a lesson much less difficult to teach to anyone who's done HTML design). Many DTP software manuals fail to teach this effectively. But this is, ultimately, the target market for a package like Scribus, so I'm actually pleased that the reviewer had problems -- it increases the odds that the package will actually be able to do what I need it to. :-) With any luck, I'll be doing a hard drive upgrade (6GB is pretty cramped these days) and possibly a laptop upgrade (primary computer; 96MB and P-266MMX not real pleasant either) in the next couple weeks. If I succeed at that, Scribus will be on my list of things to play with, and perhaps our grumpy, if well esteemed editor, will see fit to publish my own meanderings on the package, from the standpoint of one who's spent extensive time with it's erstwhile competitors. But who knows, maybe it's just me. So many things are just me.
Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin) Posted May 4, 2004 9:50 UTC (Tue) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] But who knows, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I'm just too easily amused, but that line (and the one that always follows it) still makes me smile.
Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin) Posted Jun 14, 2004 17:48 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] It's just you.:-)
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