When it comes to desktop publishing, a lot of people might think of big organizations producing newsletters, or your local boy scouts producing a fund raising flier.  But the average person out there might not see where any kind of desktop publishing is really needed.  Honestly, if you really look deeply, you might be surprised.  There are a lot of great uses for desktop publishing.  A lot more than people realize.   But what is desktop publishing?

Understanding Desktop Publishing

The urban dictionary defines it like this: "Software programs that enable the user to use a computer and a printer to produce relatively high-quality publications."   But really, there's a lot more you can do with desktop publishing.  You can create advertisements, fliers, pamphlets, posters, and so many other things.  It's like taking what you've already been doing and taking it up several levels.  But right now you're probably saying, "I don't do any desktop publishing!"   That may be true.  But think about it.  Have you ever used a word processor to create a poster, a flier, or something like that?  How about a bulletin or something similar? 

While it's not desktop publishing in the traditional sense, in the end it still is, just in a much cruder way.  Plus with word processors, you tend to be locked into a stringent set of rules that hinder a lot of what you can do with your documents.   Creating fliers or other desktop publishing related articles can be done, but it tends to be a bit of a chore to complete.  Typically this means that you need to get your hands on a dedicated desktop publishing program.  But here's where things get sticky.  Anyone who's ever tried to buy a professional or even amateur level desktop publishing program has typically been the victim of as severe case of sticker shock.

This is because of several reasons.  In the professional category of desktop publishing, you have two main contenders: Adobe Pagemaker, and QuarkXpress Express.   Both can run you anywhere from $475 upwards to $900 or more.  So unless you're a big marketing or advertising agency, that's a bit of overkill.  In the middle is Corel Venture, InDesign, and Adobe FrameMaker.  And on the low end are such programs as Microsoft Publisher and Print Shop.  But the thing is, none of these programs is cheap.  Even Print Shop isn't cheap.  And even if you could afford the price, the quality it produces isn't worth the money.

This then creates a problem that needs a solution.  There is a need out there for a good low cost or free desktop publishing program that really does a great job at its primary task.  I've had my hands into everything from Print Shop and Publisher all the way up to Pagemaker and QuarkXpress.  Now while I admit that QuarkXpress is probably the best desktop publishing program out there, despite it's insane sticker price, it's not the most practical.  The reason for this is because, as I stated above, only a narrow group of people are going to have any use for the full features of Quark.   Out of all those who can and do use desktop publishing apps, 98% or so use less than 1/4 to 1/2 of what the program can do, and less than 1/4 of the remaining 2% actually use the full 100% extreme potential of Quark or Pagemaker.

There's also the issue that every single one of these programs is a closed source, highly controlled, proprietary software package.  This even includes dozens of proprietary formats, none of which are compatible with each other.  So what's a person to do?

Well, you could possibly pirate the software, but that's neither ethical, nor safe.   There are legal issues, ethical issues, and a long list of other problems that come about from such activities.  So again, we're back to the original problem.  What do we do when we want a good quality, free, open source desktop publishing program?   You need to look no farther than Scribus.

Inside the Heart of Scribus

Scribus really strives for excellence, and while it may never become the all time favorite desktop publishing application, it's certainly going to be in strong contention for number one for quite a number of years to come.  I began playing with Scribus a couple of days ago and to say that I'm blown away is an understatement.  As I said before, I've used QuarkXpress and I've use Pagemaker among others, so with that kind of experience in my back pocket, so to speak, one might think that I would find a free and open source application like Scribus to be second rate, or unable to stack up to the big boys.  Hardly.  If anything, I think the big boys should start quaking in their boots in fear of Scribus.

The program is very rock solid, and while it has probably a fifteen minute learning curve for all the basic features, it's a continual journey of discovery while you're using it that I suspect would go on for at least a couple of weeks.  But that's not a bad thing.  Once you've mastered the basics and understand the interface, the rest is pretty easy.  You might have to hunt around a little bit and tinker for a while at first until you get used to where everything is and what it all does, but after that you should have no problem producing professional quality documents!

There's another nice thing about Scribus.  It's got a built in document verifier called "PreFlight".  Essentially what it does is it searches the page and finds any possible problems with it such as overflowed pictures and text, font issues, and more.  It's also got a built in PDF maker, which is completely legal since Adobe recently released PDF as an open standard.  So now anybody can read and write PDF's without any problems.  And that's a good thing since PDF's are such an integral part of today's world.  So you no longer have to fork over money for a PDF maker.

The whole interface itself is very comfortable to use, and most everything is mouse driven in one way or another.  Adding pictures or text is as easy as clicking "Insert" and then the item you want to insert.  That creates a document object that can then be edited to do a variety of things.  Another nice thing about Scribus is that all the fonts it uses are free and open source fonts!  This means you can use them in whatever you want without having to buy a professional license to use them.  That'll save you a lot of money by itself and free you from a lot of potential legal issues.

The internal text editor that comes with Scribus is called "Story Editor" and is a fully featured text editor that will allow you to do some pretty amazing things with the text in your pages.  You can also insert shapes, lines, curves, draw freehand, rotate and manipulate pretty much any item, and even create interactive PDF's.  Also, if you do something a lot, you can even script it if you want.  I can't say how easy the scripting is to use, but I don't suspect it's too hard.  And if you think that's not enough, there's even an included bar code generator!  Seriously!

As I said, I've played with this a couple of days and I'm still uncovering interesting things, and likely will for quite some time.  So if you're ever needing to create some high quality, good looking documents, I recommend Scribus.  It's really that good.  I'm not hyping this up because I've got anything to gain from it.  It's an open source project, and thus it has nothing it can give anyone to make people praise it except to go above and beyond and provide you with a top quality program that gives you a top quality desktop publishing experience.  Give it a try!  Even though you may think you don't need it right now, after you've been in here a few times, you may find that not only is Scribus as good as I stated, but you'll wonder what you did without it before.

And one last thing.  If you ever need to take your work to a printer to have them do it, if their computers can read the SLA or SCD open formats, then you're all set.   And they don't necessarily have to use Scribus to read them.  Any SLA or SCD aware program can handle the formats without a problem.  Scribus is available for Windows, Mac, and most especially Linux and BSD.  You can find out more information on this awesome project by going to their homepage.