Special:Badtitle/NS102:Scribus Times and Gazette/Searching for a new angle in documentation

I'd like to see if I can generate some feedback and interaction about a new idea I have for documentation. I would divide this into 2 parts: Task-oriented Scribus and Workflow-oriented Scribus. In a sense these are 2 sides of the same coin, but let me explain each part.

Task-oriented Scribus
This approaches the learning of Scribus from the point-of-view of many if not most users. They want to make a newsletter, a brochure, a business card, a web PDF of some sort, maybe even a book.

So if I want to make a newsletter, what should be in my toolkit? What parts of Scribus do I need to know about? It's not just that there are text frames and image frames, but what are the aspects of layout for a one-off newsletter and maybe even something I'll want to develop a template for?

Workflow-oriented Scribus
This is the part that many don't think about, or perhaps when they think about it, they've already committed so much time and effort that they don't want to start all over again with a consideration of the workflow.

The workflow involves the issues of thinking about where the material is going to come from for your newsletter (or whatever), and thinking about what other sorts of software might be useful for putting this together. Where is this newsletter going? The web? To a commercial printer? Will I print it myself? Knowing something about the needs of the project, the people involved in various aspects helps to get a better sense of the time it will take, the various requirements, the restrictions you may have.

What comes next
Next I want to try to pull together information from various Scribus users so that their experiences and ideas may help both newbies and other experienced users avoid frustration and pitfalls as they get their hands dirty with Scribus. Feel free to contact me directly – my email address is all over the mailing list. I may also be initiating some contact in various directions – consider this the only warning you may get.

Greg Pittman