SCRIBUS 1.3.5: BEGINNER'S GUIDE  (GEMAN)

Scribus is an Open Source program that brings award-winning and inexpensive professional page layout to desktop computers with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Creating professional-looking documents using Scribus is not a cakewalk, especially with so many features at your disposal, it’s hard to know where to get started!

Scribus Beginners guide walks users step by step through common projects, such as creating a brochure,newsletter, business cards and so on. It also includes guidelines on starting a web newsletter and online PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) newsletter along with basic scripting to extend Scribus as per your requirements.

This book begins with the simplest tasks and brings you progressively to adapt your workflow to the most efficient tools. It commences with the description of the graphic tool chain and an overall chapter on how to draw a simple and attractive business card. You'll then see how to manage the pages of your document and organized their structure thanks to guides. Then being invited to fill them with text, you'll be able to import, set text style as well as use replacement and hyphenation tool. Pictures or vector drawing will be added to the documents too. You'll be taught to choose the best format at the best time, modify or distort the shapes to get very custom documents. You will also learn how Scribus handles advanced color features such as transparencies, overprinting, spot colors precisely and be sure they are set well for a print result without bad surprise. At the end, you'll know to produce a perfect PDF file, be it for print jobs or web with effects, buttons and javascript interactivity, extend the document capacities as well as Scribus tools with simple programming especially with the python language.

A practical guide that reveals everything you need to easily create professional-looking documents with Scribus.
What you will learn from this book :

• Create page layouts using functional options in Scribus
• Create a master page such that the changes are automatically updated in the rest of the pages too.
• Apply text and picture frames for accurate placement of text and images
• Use path tools and coordinate system to set the frame shape
• Links one frame with another if you want the text to fill all the pages
• Use paragraph and character style to make text handling more easier
• Import pictures of many types, including JPEG, PNG, PSD, TIF to make your documents appealing.
• Set the image resolution, layers, and clipping paths to construct accurate images
• Apply interesting effects to your images such as to make the text flow around an image or another frame
• Import content from Open Office document such as text, graphics or tables.
• Use shades and transparencies to predict perfect colors of the images to get improved image effects after printing.
• Set the incredibly powerful color management system to work trustfully with your colors and pictures
• Extend Scribus with python scripts using the Scribus API

Approach
This book is a step by step guide packed with interesting examples and screenshots that cover lot of support options to help you achieve the superior quality documents.

This books is divided into 11 chapters, each chapter dealing with a precise aspect of the software to help you have the best overview and make the best design choices for your document.
Who this book is written for
This book is for people who want to create professional-looking documents with Scribus. If you want a great looking brochure, newsletter, or poster, this is the book for you.

No experience of desktop publishing software is required – only creativity and enthusiasm for creating great documents!

About the Author
Cedric Gemy is a french freelance graphic designer and training advisor (or should i say edult educator, i don' t see the difference) who lives in Rennes but travelling a lot to teach Scribus, Gimp and Inkscape. He works with those softwares since around 2003.

Besides is this freelance activities, he also teach communication design in some french universities and private schools.

He is an active member of Scribus and Inskcape team, involved in the user interface refactoring project of the first and in the documentation of the last. He is a creator of French Free Graphic Designer Association (AFGRAL) and FLOSSMANUALS Francophon.

This is his 5th book for he already wrote two about Gimp, one published under GPL licence, one about Inskcape and one in french about Scribus.

Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Scribus
Chapter 2: Creating a First Layout
Chapter 3: Mastering Pages
Chapter 4: Using Text in Scribus
Chapter 5: Formatting Your Text
Chapter 6: Special Frames for Complex Content Management
Chapter 7: Drawing Advanced Frames and Shapes
Chapter 8: Importing Images
Chapter 9: Applying and Managing Color
Chapter 10: Print Your Layout
Chapter 11: Customizing the Creation or Viewing Process
Appendix: Pop Quiz Answers
Index