'exporting' Odt into Scribus

users
#1

Hi :slight_smile:
I do my company newsletter in Writer but want to do the finishing touches
in Scribus.

Has anyone else tried this? A few years ago someone from this mailing
list offered to give me a hand but i had no time to even try it back then.
It's suddenly become quite viable to put some time into this at work.

The one thing that Writer doesn't seem able to do is use curved
text-frames. I'm kinda trying to get some nicely rounded corners to
upgrade the newsletter from Win98 style to Xp style.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#2

Hello Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
I do my company newsletter in Writer but want to do the finishing touches
in Scribus.

Has anyone else tried this? A few years ago someone from this mailing
list offered to give me a hand but i had no time to even try it back then.
It's suddenly become quite viable to put some time into this at work.

The one thing that Writer doesn't seem able to do is use curved
text-frames. I'm kinda trying to get some nicely rounded corners to
upgrade the newsletter from Win98 style to Xp style.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Have you read this wiki page? http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Help:Manual_Importodt
It seems to be documented and the import to Scribus looks reasonably rich.

I must ask you, however, whether you have a particular reason to use an ODF document to create a newsletter? Many people, including me, would come up with something in html they or someone else in the company can send via the internal mail server. Or did I miss something?

Best,

Charles.

#3

Hi Tom:

  I check the Scribus open file format and it accept .pdf, I made a probe
with one document of mine, and Scribus open it.

  I suggest you to export your .odf file to .pdf and then open it with
Scribus. I don't know how it will configure the pages opens but it would
be well.

Regards,

Jorge Rodríguez

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks! :slight_smile: It didn't quite work for my newsletter but it may open things
up a bit for other documents we have struggled with here.

I'm beginning to see why Charles tried to find out about what sort of thing
i'm aiming for. Scribus has a LOT of options and templates and stuff early
on. Form over content, of course.

I think i am going to struggle on with it a bit first to make a prototype
and learn as i go. Then do the real thing another week.

I had been thinking about using Draw as a stepping stone - using lots of
linked text-boxes but i think it's going to be easier to just leap into
Scribus from the start. I'm not sure how work-flow is going to go in the
future but i have a feeling most of the content is going to be best done in
Writer.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
Historical reasons really. The company tries to avoids using anything
modern and generally prefers to do things the awkward way.

The newsletter is a bit basic in it's layout. Generally we avoid using
images or fancy layouts or anything that might make it attractive. Just a
few tiny things to make it awkward without having much effect on making it
look nice.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks! :slight_smile: It didn't quite work for my newsletter but it may open things
up a bit for other documents we have struggled with here.

I'm beginning to see why Charles tried to find out about what sort of thing
i'm aiming for. Scribus has a LOT of options and templates and stuff early
on. Form over content, of course.

I think i am going to struggle on with it a bit first to make a prototype
and learn as i go. Then do the real thing another week.

I had been thinking about using Draw as a stepping stone - using lots of
linked text-boxes but i think it's going to be easier to just leap into
Scribus from the start. I'm not sure how work-flow is going to go in the
future but i have a feeling most of the content is going to be best done in
Writer.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hello Tom,

Draw is an option - if your newsletter is a bit "basic" I understand this as being text-intensive?
In this case Draw is not necessarily the best part of LibreOffice for you: Writer has all sorts of features to offer: text over several columns, text frames, half transparent images insertion. Writer is (and I know anyone from Scribus will scream reading this) designed as a DTP software just as much as it is a word processor. If you consider Writer (okay, Draw would be similar) then indeed, exporting your document to PDF will work out perfectly. By the way, what is your output format supposed to be?

Best,

Charles.

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
Output format is Pdf.

I've been having good fun figuring Scribus out. Already getting close to
what i need!

Writer has been doing a brilliant job as a DTP. When i first started i
just used the old .Doc and even that made a huge improvement. Styles were
the huge for time-saving and increasing quality. Then saving that as Odt
allowed more finesses. Then starting again from scratch made a huge
improvement.

However i still inherited some flaws in the basic design, partly due to a
lack of knowledge of LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I hadn't figured out having a
separate style for the front page. That page had a text-box that was quite
different from the 'normal' other pages and pasting stuff between it and
the 2nd page kept being messy. Scribus has allowed me to have linked
text-boxes on every page and just "get text" brought everything in. Then i
just tidied a few things up. Tomorrow i'm hoping to get the images in.
Making some of the fussy tiny boxes was easy with the LO "position and
size" dialogues open and using Scribus' "insert frame".

Writer is brilliant as a DTP but the newsletter needed a fresh start and i
figured i might as well start using a proper DTP for the final polishing.
We have several leaflets in Publisher too but i figure those are better in
Draw - mostly because it's likely to be easier for people to modify.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

On Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:11:47 +0000
Tom Davies <tomcecf@gmail.com> dijo:

I do my company newsletter in Writer but want to do the finishing
touches in Scribus.

The proper way to do this is to do your writing in Writer and then use
the ODT import ability of Scribus. You can use styles in your ODT
document and Scribus will import them. After importing you can use the
advanced text features of Scribus to enhance the styles.

However, layout programs like Scribus will not import much more, e.g.
footnotes, page numbering, margins and such will be discarded, so
don't bother formatting in Writer beyond styles. But that's what you
want; you want to do the writing in LO and the layout in Scribus.

You can actually do the writing in Scribus as well, but Scribus lacks
some of the word processor features that Writer has such as autocorrect,
drag and drop text, and lots more.

There's a lot more to say about a marriage of Scribus and LO for
newsletters and other format-heavy documents, but this is not a Scribus
mailing list. I suggest you subscribe to the Scribus listserve:

Scribus Mailing List: scribus@lists.scribus.net
Edit your options or unsubscribe:
http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
See also:
http://wiki.scribus.net
http://forums.scribus.net

#9

Still using quills on parchment? :wink: