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Other DTP Tools

You will probably want and need other programs to support Scribus. My bias is clearly towards creating documents which will be later sent to a commercial printer for 4 color output, if your needs are different, you might find other choices more compelling. The short list:

Vector Editing Choices

One of the major recent additions to Scribus has been the addition of many new vector editing capabilities which can be placed in layers on the Scribus canvas. While they are not a replacement for a complete vector editing application, the feature set includes: polygons, bezier curves, 2D shading, gradient fills and text on a path. All of these tools have easy to use palettes. The Text on Path tool is the easiest I have used in any vector editor. You can also convert (with freetype2 installed) type to outlines, which can then be edited as a vector object.

There are three good choices available for vector editing on Linux:. Sketch is comparable to Illustrator or Corel Draw in that it handles a multitude of vector operations including text on a path, 3D models, rendering gradients and bezier curves. Sketch requires Python and the Python imaging libraries, so make sure you have the required libraries or installing will be painful. The more I use this program the more I like it. My thinking is to export EPS which Scribus can place and print properly. Kontour is simply currently not polished enough in my opinion, though I am sure the KDE folks will put a lot of shine on the next version of Koffice.

Another option is Artstream from Mediascape. This application was originally developed for SGI workstations, so as you can imagine, this is a serious, polished program for professional level vector editing. It has some specific hardware needs, including enabling the backing store in Xfree86, so check the download page for details. You can get a fully functional demo from their website. It performs fairly well, but without the backing store enabled in Xfree86, it will not perform properly.

Star Office / Open Office Draw also have some 3D and vector editing capabilities, including 3D text editing, Goraud shading and bezier curves. Though it is not as complete as dedicated programs, it was surprisingly good within its feature set. It was a snap to convert some 3D drawings to full color PNG's with shading and transparency intact.

Sodipodi is a Gnome based vector editor with a lot of promise. On the website is a couple of conversion tools, including one for Illustrator to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) . Sodipodi is in included in many newer versions of Gnome and Ximian. Installation and compiling from source is tricky. The latest versions are based on Gnome 2 and have added a lot of polish, including the ability to use autotrace, a specialized application for converting bitmaps into vector shapes.

Bitmap Editing

Everybody loves the GIMP. It is one of the leading examples of open source development. However, the current versions are seriously lacking in support for a professional printing environment, mostly in the area of CMYK support. Version 2.0 is planned to have this included, as it will need features not easily included with the current GIMP code base. If you are working primarily in RGB colors and printing to a local deskjet. GIMP will fill all your needs. I recommend exporting hi res PNG or TIFF for use with Scribus. For higher end 4 color CMYK, where can go? Two choices which include both ICC support and CMYK color; Corel Photopaint and Cameleo Light. I would urge you to install both and try them. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. Cameleo Light has excellent batch processing capabilities, where Photopaint has loads of filters and effects.

Corel Photopaint 9.0

Fortunately, Corel makes Photopaint 9.0 a freely available download. While Photopaint is not the equal to Photoshop and lacks some of GIMP's nicer features, it has several important components for pre-press; proper support for Pantone and other color systems used for spot and process color printing. It has a wide array of import and export filters, it has complete support for color management and device icc profiles. Lastly all the image formats commonly used for images such as gray scale, duo-tones and both CMYK and RGB color. For bringing in proprietary formats like Autocad DFX drawings or wmf, Corel applications have usually been quite good at exporting EPS on Windows. I cannot imagine it why it would not work the same on Linux. It can also open XCF (Gimp native files) and convert them to CMYK TIFFs.

Your import choices for Scribus should be either TIFF or EPS, depending on the content of the file. EPS will be necessary for image files which are vector based or have transparency or special effects like text on a path. TIFF will work well with images such as photos, where loss less compression and color fidelity are important. (TIFF fully supports and Scribus can read embedded icc profiles.) These two file formats have proven to be most reliable when printing commercially and are recommended by other layout programs, such as Quark, Pagemaker and InDesign. Do not take anything else but CMYK TIFFs or EPS for images if you want an easy time at a service bureau.

Diagrams and Flow Charts

Dia works very well for creating flow charts and diagrams. You can use it both on Win32 and Linux for creating network diagrams. It will export EPS which can be placed by Scribus or it can export a PNG file which can be placed in Scribus or converted to a TIFF. The advantage of converting to TIFF is you will have an on-screen preview which you can then use to accurately place the image. CMYK TIFFs are also good at supporting icc profiles.

Scanning / Image File Management

Caldera Graphics, a division of Caldera offers a free version of Cameleo Light, part of their larger professional Cameleo suite which includes a RIP and other image handling tools on Linux, SGI and Sun hardware. Cameleo Light is actually a group of eight separate applications. This group of programs can handle batch processing and conversions quite easily and has icc color management support. The user interface, based on Motif is a bit odd, but is once you poke around the menus, you will find this a very serviceable program. It can also spot out of gamma colors á la Photoshop. This is a Motif application, so you will need the lesstif or open motif packages installed. You will also need to install an RPC daemon to support the keyserver, a minor annoyance for obtaining a part of an expensive and well supported Linux application. Cameleo Light is supplied with the Caldera's Open Linux distribution.

Xsane - My first impression with Xsane was quite favorable. Right after installation it rendered good color fidelity and the layout of the dialogs was well done. A couple of word of caution for using this with Scribus: 1) Xsane generates RGB Tiffs, which should be converted to CMYK if printing to a high end printer.2) The default resolution is 72 dpi, which is too low for anything except screen based documents. Any image meant to be printed, should be at least 200dpi or 300dpi for best printing results. More to be added on this in the future. 3) If you plan to adjust / edit colors after scanning disable the auto color adjustments and scan full range. Experience has shown this will render good fidelity if you have color icm profiles for your scanner.

Viewing

Adobe has released a new version of their Acrobat Reader v. 5.0.7 for Linux and Solaris. (Note 5.0.7 is a bug fix for 5.0.6) Download Links There is also Notes on the Hidden Features.

This release appears to remove many of the color display bugs of the previous 4.05 release and does seem to run much quicker. Regretfully, it still does not have all the color management features and options are available on other platforms, nor is a full editor available. Moreover, it can display all of the new interactive features available in Scribus Upgrading from 4.0.5 on Linux is highly recommended.

Color Management

Elsewhere this is documented for Scribus, but the above is intended to work hand in hand with the built-in color management within Scribus. With careful preparation, you can have a fairly good representation on screen of what will print in a commercial environment.

Preparing your files you plan for commercial output should always be done in consultation with your printer, especially as they may not be familiar with Scribus. Now, that Scribus can export ISO PDF/X-3 compliant fies, printers can accept Scribus created PDF's with confidence. Keep in mind PDF/X-3 is a fairly new standard and not all printers can handle this format. When they say "Scribus ?", at least you can tell them it is not Publisher, the bane of most pre press folks ;)


Optimize Part 2 § Document Index § Red Hat 8.0/9 Tips