Tinys World of Technology BS

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Do you send out an annual Christmas letter to all of your relatives?  Do you like to make personalized greeting cards and party invitations?  Do you make a lot of posters?  Are you writing the next great novel?  Would you like to make your own personal calendar?  Would you like to edit the Cajun Clickers Computer Club Newsletter?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you probably need some good desktop publishing software.  There are many programs you could buy: Microsoft Publisher, PrintMaster, The Print Shop and PagePlus, to name a few of the more well known ones.  These programs will set you back anywhere from forty to two hundred dollars or more.  Like much other software, some of them are purchased via subscription.

If you’re thrifty like me, you could download and use an open source program that does everything the paid programs do and more.  I’ve been using Scribus Open Source Desktop Publishing to edit and publish the club newsletter since I replaced Pat as the editor.  I’ve been a Scribus user for more than ten years now.  I’ve come to think of the program as a word processor on steroids.

With Scribus you can create single or multi-page documents which can be single or double sided.  You can also create three or four fold documents for making brochures.  After your document is created, you simply have to insert text or image frames.  All the frames can be re‑sized, dragged and dropped or copy and pasted, etc.  You can also enter your data directly on the page, but it is much easier to create a frame.

Although I haven’t used all of the features, you can also insert render tables, frames, tables, shapes and much more.  There is also an insert barcode option.  I might research that feature in the future.  Wouldn’t it be cool to be reading a newsletter article and scan a barcode to get more information?

A search of the internet will yield several sites where you can find free templates for everything from creating a comic book or magazine to printing your own newspaper.  You can also create and save your own templates.

I’ve done that for the newsletter.  Every month, several of the pages are nearly the same.  I just load the template, change the dates, meeting information, speaker’s biography, etc.  Then it is just a matter of inserting articles, pictures, web site charts, etc.  My template is twelve pages, but it is a simple mouse click on the menu to add, delete or rearrange pages as needed.

There are a few other things about Scribus you should know.  If you want to use the print preview, you have to install the interpreter Ghostscript.  Ghostscript is a non-harmful open source program, but it is more software on your computer.  Scribus will work without Ghostscript, but is more useful when it is installed.

Scribus has a medium difficulty learning curve.  Most items are intuitive and work much like any word processor.  Others are not.  For instance, to insert a hyperlink, you have to highlight the text and then select “Insert PDF Text Field”.  Then the inserted field has to be edited and the hyperlink inserted.  It was a pain in the you know what at first, but after about the tenth time, it became second nature.  For everything I have had difficulty with, it has been easy to find help and solutions in either the Scribus Wiki or an internet search.

Scribus is open source with versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and some other Operating Systems.  There is also a portable version.  You can download the software at Get Scribus.  If you have a need for desktop publishing software, give it a try.  The cost is zero dollars, plus tax.

Thanks for reading.