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Re: [LUG] OSS DTP ... (ie. Publisher looka-a-likes)

 

On 23/04/2011 21:45, Rob Beard wrote:
On 23/04/11 21:14, Gordon Henderson wrote:

Wifey is struggling with Scribus - after X years of using publisher
(curtsey of her employer, DCC, who's just made her redundant), she
thinks it's utter rubbish.

And I have to say, watching her struggle to use it, I'm starting to
think that too - a seemingly simple task she showed me in Publisher -
inset some clip-art, resize it, move it into place - a doddle in
publisher, required that Scribus launch gimp to do the image
manipulation...

So she's on the verge of spending £120 on publisher... Unless there is
an alternative?

It's probably the one thing that would stop her going over to Linux and
give-up her XP desktop once and for-all, however...

Any suggestions welcome...

Gordon


I'd agree about Scribus, I'm sure it'a a powerful tool, but for most it's also probably a bit OTT (reminds me a bit of Aldus PageMaker but even then not as easy to use).

I tend to find that OpenOffice Draw seems to do what I want, there are differences between OOo Draw and Publisher but I find it's reasonably easy to get on with when you've got used to it. Not sure if LibreOffice Draw is any better as I've not tried it yet.

Other than that I'd also suggest Inkscape.

If she still can't get on with any of those she could take a look at Serif PagePlus SE which is available for Windows. It's been a few years since I used PagePlus but it was reasonably good. I'd suggest getting it from Tucows though rather than Serif's site who insist you register an account (they had a habit of spamming me with daily offers and wouldn't remove my e-mail address from their records).

http://www.tucows.com/preview/826706

In fact I'm going to see if I can get it running in Wine (doing a google search seems to suggest PagePlus 9 works fine on Wine, if you can find it).

Hope this helps.

Rob

PagePlus X4 or the latest X5 - pretty good ... I know a few places using it. I got the X4 version on a DVD suite 'PC WORKS SUITE PRO 2010' from Morgan for about £30 - it came with photoplus X4, DrawPlus X3, WebPlus X4 along with a load of others. OK it's not free but pretty cheap!

Dave

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