David RevoyScribus , the open source desktop publishing software I use for my comics, just had two new releases!
- 1.6.6 (stable) https://www.scribus.net/scribus-1-6-6-released/
- 1.7.3 (unstable) https://www.scribus.net/scribus-1-7-3-released/
🎁
Sven-Ola Tücke ✌@davidrevoy
Oh! really, you work with scribus! Thats awesome. Can I have a pepper scrnshot for a Linux presentation?
Oh! really, you work with scribus! Thats awesome. Can I have a pepper scrnshot for a Linux presentation?
@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
Cedric Rossi@davidrevoy
wow, that would really improve Scribus website which sorely miss any screenshot (at least any I could find!)
Thanks @davidrevoy ! I was not aware that you published all via Git. I am still waiting for my PC to silence it's fans, but then I have something to show off in a live scribus. A big THANK YOU. 🥰
cc @ced
cc @ced
Hello @ced, why not send a post to the scribus forum as an improvement suggestion? https://forums.scribus.net/
@davidrevoy
@davidrevoy
@sven_ola
Why not!
@davidrevoy would you be ok with that?
Emilion@davidrevoy @sven_ola Is there a way to buy your books from a EU-based web store? DriveThru is a US company, and in the current climate I'd rather prefer my money to not cross the ocean.
@emilion @sven_ola Hey Emilion, I totally understand, and I would do the same 👍
Unfortunately, for the self publishing books 100% made with FLOSS, that was the only company/solution I found long time ago, before that was so problematic (the Brexit put a lot of tax on the UK print pod). I might need to look for a EU print-on-demand solution soon.
For the version of the publisher Silly Studio (Italian publisher), they just put their Italian/English version in the shop https://sillystudiosofficial.com/shop/
@davidrevoy @sven_ola Check print houses in Poland too. Example: https://www.drukksiazek.pl/ (never used them personally)
Patrick Georgi@davidrevoy I used epubli.de for a few things I wanted on paper and am pleased with the quality I received.
Not sure about colors (I needed b/w), and I couldn't find a way to get their website to not be German though…
(addendum: I just remembered that German publishing has that oddity of "Buchpreisbindung", fixed book prices, which you might have to deal with when publishing via Germany. Far from impossible, but an extra thing to think about, so might not be the best choice…)
@patrick Thank you for the feedback and info! I'll study them 💜
Matt Godden@davidrevoy @sven_ola wondering, can the individual palettes (properties, Arrange Pages, align & distribute etc) be torn off to separate floating windows / put on separate displays (IIRC Krita can do that)?
Jolle Carlestam@davidrevoy Just ordered 2 X the bundle to give as gifts to my grandchildren. Please verify that by doing that I also contributed to your wallet, not just the printer and shipper?
@jolle Thank you very much for buying them! 🤩
Yes, I confirm, I received an email notification with the new purchase on the platform (order ID finishing by '60').
I hope they'll be well printed (I ask each time, and so far, only good feedback).
If you are curious of what goes into my pocket, I made this graph; outdated because of inflation and books are $23 now and artbook $25 (bundle price) but percentage are still the same.
A big thank you for your support!
artlog@artlog @jolle Yes, normal, I live in France, and to declare my taxes, I have to convert the currency to Euro (the 'bank of France' publish a conversion monthly table to indicate the change accepted by tax administration) so, when I split my part, it's already after that, that's why it's in Euro on the graph. ☺️
Jerk@davidrevoy Your love for sharing, open source and (as I just learned) transparency amaze me as much as your work. Really like to thank you for that! 😍
NeroBurner@davidrevoy @sven_ola needed to reread the comic of the second screenshot.
https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/webcomic/ep25_There-are-no-Shortcuts.html
such amazing storytelling. the only ascii char used is a question mark but still so much wonder so much curiosity. Marvelous!
@NeroBurner @sven_ola Thank you very much! 💜
SAÏD@davidrevoy OMG 🤩
Carl C@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@raven @davidrevoy what is the input format for a print on demand product? I expected that would be a PDF adhering to certain rules.
Sneezyi 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
@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.
@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'?"
@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...
this is a colour bug for libreoffice going back to 2018 and still not fixed
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.
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 @davidrevoy @corvus_ch Yeah, this surprises me with Scribus, claiming it can be used for professional publishing. I didn't expect it to be so fiddly.
@rapsneezy2 @raven @corvus_ch Thank you for reading! Yes, I'm still surprised this compatibility between Scribus and DriveThruRPG/Comic printing system wasn't a central point of Scribus. Lightning Source print on demand machines are still the number one indi printing solution, and Scribus could position themselves on offering a premium experience for this audience. But worst, they lost it.
A bit like if a video editor project ignored they couldn't export to a major player like Youtube.
A bit like if a video editor project ignored they couldn't export to a major player like Youtube.
@davidrevoy @rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch And with Affinity Studio going free, and working very well with OneBookShelf, that's quite a blow.
@davidrevoy @rapsneezy2 @corvus_ch I've also been unclear how much of this is Lightning Source, and how much of it is OBS has a very old and poorly maintained layer in between.
Canageek@davidrevoy @rapsneezy2 @raven @corvus_ch It's so weird to me that with them being such a major publisher, there isn't some sort of a pre-configured setting for them.
LisPi@rapsneezy2 @davidrevoy @raven @corvus_ch > basic things are still a challenge with open source software
I'm personally quite appalled that in just as long the publisher still haven't fixed their machine.
I'm personally quite appalled that in just as long the publisher still haven't fixed their machine.
@lispi314 Their machines perfectly works ... with Adobe tool chain.
So, for the publishers, it's a software issue and a problem of the graphic designer, not their. ¯\(ツ)/¯
@davidrevoy I like how you incorporated a description of your test parameters into the back cover of the book.
vulgojackson
Topaz 🐇@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!
@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.
@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.
Sam Chavez (she/they/he) 🌈🤠@davidrevoy this is amazing 🤩 thanks for the tip!
Alan Campbell@davidrevoy very interesting. I have a side project that I’ve been noodling at on Krita for that last few years. Still unsure about publishing, this DTP tool for Linux is worth a look, at least if I see what my stuff would look like.
jfml - Jonas Laugs@davidrevoy Oh, nice updates, live spell checker, changing case and more!