I have a lead on a potential job that would involve DTP with something like QuarkXpress. I haven’t used to DTP package for years, what with the web and all, so I’d like to get my skills back up to scratch. Problem is DTP programs seem to be quite expensive. Does anyone know of an open source / free / very cheap package? It doesn’t have to be hyper modern or anything – we’re just talking text and a few graphics and the ability to output PDFs for professional printing. Mac OS X preferably, but PC stuff also of interest.
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About this site
In June 2000 I started blogging at peteashton.com and 10 years later in June 2010 I decided to stop. Blogging here, that is. I started a clean slate over on I Am Pete Ashton and maintain all manner of other web presences which are all listed here along with my contact details.
You probably came here via a Google search or from following a link on some old blog post somewhere. I hope what you find is useful in some way, though do check the publication date - it might be rather old now.
Thanks for your eyeballs.
Pete Ashton
http://www.scribus.org.uk/
They claim it runs under fink on OS-X
Scribus may well be your friend here. Indeed one of the developers is editor of one of the publications under discussion :)
For $20 you can get a 9 month trial of Eazydraw:
http://www.eazydraw.com/
Don’t know anything about it, tho, but it can’t be as good as QuarkXpress at that price.
For the sake of the community, as we just agreed by e-mail, eazydraw is too basic and has no text capability worth speaking of.
Scribus, OTOH, is a very good QuarkXpress alternative, once X11, Fink etc. have been loaded, etc. But then, you know that by now! I plan to put Scribus to use soon, possibly for making pdf files of my CV. That is, once I have found some decent fonts!
Yes, Scribus looks to be the answer, but getting there was a fucking nightmare. I’m in shock. Stupid Fink. Stupid for pretending to be easy.
Problem now is I’m so sick of the whole process that I really can’t face using the program. Maybe later in the week…
I’m wondering if the new iWork word processor Pages might do the job since it outputs PDFs and appears to have DTP-like qualities to the layouts…
I’d suspect not, actually. Most word processors (especially those with a good frame or box model) have been approaching or been equivalent to low end DTP packages for a few years now. While it may well be entirely suitable quite a lot of amateur (you know what I mean) publishing, it probably isn’t in this case. It’s all the typesetting, absolute positioning and generally print-readiness stuff they tend fall down on.
Fairynuff.
I just watched the demo of Pages (iWork’s word processor) on the 2 hour keynote address at Macworld, San Francisco (go to Apple.com to download into Quicktime). It is hard to tell whether or not Pages is good enough for DTP but it is worth investigating some more. I will be buying iWork as soon as it comes out (January 22) so will give you an update very soon. The difference between amateur and professional DTP is simply in whether or not the user has absolute control over the placement of items onto the page and the various interactions between items. This was not made clear during the presentation, which after all, was designed to be slick.
My ongoing experience with Scribus is mixed, but then my experience with QuarkXpress 5.0 was far from pleasant even though the final product (which you have seen) was very satisfying.
Well, I’ve ordered iWork from my local Apple reseller in Tewkesbury. They have iLife 05 in stock but iWork seems to be hard to come by (I would have thought it would be the other way round). So nothing to report yet. Keep you posted.
I just returned from our “local” Apple store in Tewkesbury. Quite a buzz going on there, more people than ever before being served. The reason for writing this, tho, was that I got talking to a DTP company owner and he said he was switching to InDesign as it is cheaper to do that than upgrade Quark from 4.0 to OS X. He said there is very little to distinguish between the two products but InDesign has the big advantage that it is part of the Adobe Creative Suite. I mentioned Scribus and his comment was “yes, and when it comes to printing. . . .”
iWork Pages is still not in my hands – back-ordered.
http://www.wordtech-software.com/aquascribus.html might be useful
I don’t see any recent updates, have you gotten Pages yet? I bought it on the day the Mini debuted at the Apple stores, installed it on my iBook, and have been quite impressed. I use it to publish a monthly newsletter I used to half-kill myself to put out in OpenOffice, and after the initial hurdle of getting the page layout mashed into shape it’s been good.