Scribus , the open source desktop publishing software I use for my comics, just had two new releases!

[sven_ola@norden.social]

@davidrevoy
Oh! really, you work with scribus! Thats awesome. Can I have a pepper scrnshot for a Linux presentation?

[saidsaidwords@re.lire.im]

@davidrevoy OMG 🤩

[raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com]

@davidrevoy Scribus can have a rough on-boarding experience (especially if you've never used a frame-based layout package), but it's a solid piece of software. Unfortunately, it was confusing enough for newbies that DriveThruRPG quit supporting it for their print-on-demand.

I'm using it to lay out my PDFs, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I decide to take a product to POD. Get by without support, or lay it out in a different package.

Looking forward to trying the new stable, though.

[corvus_ch@social.corvus-ch.name]

@raven @davidrevoy what is the input format for a print on demand product? I expected that would be a PDF adhering to certain rules.

[rapsneezy2@mastodon.social]

@corvus_ch @raven @davidrevoy

i was thinking the same

why would they care as long as the PDFs are conformant

i've done POD from google docs as well as LaTeX - they don't care as long as the PDF is correct

[raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com]

@rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch @davidrevoy Because the people submitting PDFs for POD proofs are amateurs, and they get it wrong over and over again (especially cover color profiles), and are waiting weeks and paying $20-40 per attempt, and expect DTRPG to help them figure out what's going wrong, or to refund their money (that was paid to the third party printer).

And most of the beginners on DTRPG are losing money trying to start a tiny publishing business.

[vulgojackson@mastodon.social]

@davidrevoy

[raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com]

@rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch @davidrevoy I, on the other hand, am an _experienced_ amateur and can read and understand documentation. I'm not starting with "WTH is a 'color profile'? What is a 'bleed'?"

[davidrevoy@framapiaf.org]

@sven_ola Screenshots of Scribus running on Debian KDE with the Pepper&Carrot books on it (CC By)

- Sources: https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/book-publishing (require 24GB)
- Books: https://www.davidrevoy.com/static9/shop#official

#scribus

[davidrevoy@framapiaf.org]

@raven @rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch It took me 7 failed print proof to find a setting with DriveThruRPG/Comics: I'm sharing it here https://www.davidrevoy.com/article757/the-english-book-printed-project-production-report-3

I understand they officially stopped their support; their machines needs a PDF/X-1a support with a broken ICC color profile that the FLOSS LittleCMS project refused to make a workaround (so it's broken in Gimp/Krita/Scribus/everything)

It's really specific PDF, and it was a nightmare to make the right type of files. Took me 3 years...

[topazrabbit@oldbytes.space]

@davidrevoy Cool! I just fired up Scribus again to lay out a minicomic, something I haven't done in almost two decades in that software. It worked great, even printing spreads direct to my printer!

[rootschange@federate.social]

@davidrevoy this is amazing 🤩 thanks for the tip!

[davidrevoy@framapiaf.org]

@TopazRabbit Nice! When the exported files prints correctly Scribus is such a smooth experience.

Disclaimer: I worked as a professional "desktop publisher operator" (not sure about the word?) in my first years as a graphist (25 years ago ) in QuarkXPress then InDesign after 2003, so I don't have a lot of issue with Scribus user interface or desktop publishing jargon in general.

[topazrabbit@oldbytes.space]

@davidrevoy I used a lot of Quark back in the day as well. I was in college when DTP was really taking off, so I used Quark for just about everything page layout-wise. I had switched to FOSS art tools for personal work around the time my job no longer required DTP, and I eventually automated my minicomic workflow using some Ruby and command line tools. But for this recent one-off, I didn't want to dust off that now-decade old code and I just used Scribus instead.

[raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com]

@davidrevoy @rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch Oof. The broken color profile is definitely a road block.

[rapsneezy2@mastodon.social]

@davidrevoy @raven @corvus_ch

David - i just read your journey - wow, what a journey.

It does show how, even after many years, basic things are still a challenge with open source software. Understandable as these tasks are very much specialist and not what most users do at home - and so attract less developer attention.

I was surprised by the Scribus bugs given how they have long centred themselves as a serious DTP option.

Hopefully your feedback and findings will result in improvements.

[raven@fedi.raventhemaker.com]

@davidrevoy I like how you incorporated a description of your test parameters into the back cover of the book.

[rapsneezy2@mastodon.social]

@davidrevoy @raven @corvus_ch

I had similar colour frustrations about 10 years ago and in the end I moved to Affinity software on macos which did a better job.

But the quality of colour rendition of POD publishers was so poor, even with excellent PDFs (inlcuding variability, good one day, bad the next, and they don't always the same printers depending on workload) .. i just gave up.

for my books I avoid any assumptions of colour inside the book now.

(that wouldn't work for "art" like yours)

[rapsneezy2@mastodon.social]

@raven @davidrevoy @corvus_ch

this is a colour bug for libreoffice going back to 2018 and still not fixed

116846 – Colour profile issues with edit view and PDF export compared to Preview

(bugs.documentfoundation.org)

[ced@mapstodon.space]

@davidrevoy
wow, that would really improve Scribus website which sorely miss any screenshot (at least any I could find!)

@sven_ola