Article:		Scribus: Open Source Desktop Publishing
Subject:		A false picture
Date:		2004-09-04 01:45:41
From:		iconara
In which world do you live? In the world I live, GIMP does not support CMYK, so I find it hard to belive that anyone serious would create a DTP workflow using it, unless they handled only black-and-white-photos. Moreover, in the world I live and work, PageMaker was more or less decommissioned a few years ago (and now lives on as a plug-in to InDesign), which makes the comparison between PageMaker and Scribe quite pointless. InDesign is mentioned perhaps twice, which also does not reflect the world that I live in, where people started abandoning the sinking ship named Quark somewhere around InDesign 2.0. So, to be able to take this article seriously I would have liked to see comparisons to Quark XPress 6 and InDesign CS, not PageMaker. But I guess this article was written by a tech-journalist for programmers, and not DTP-people. Face it, Scribe is not going to dent the sales of InDesign or Quark one bit. GIMP is a laugh in the DTP-world. It's not that I'm happy with this. Oh no, it's nice to see that OSS applications like Scribe are being made, but they can't compete on this market, not just yet, perhaps never.

Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• A false picture
  2004-09-05 04:43:22  rjplus [View]
  
  
  Gimp does support CMYK at least for export and editing through a plugin, I use it all the time.
  Importing of CMYK is not currently available but I usually create my graphics is Gimp so this hasn't been much of a handicap for me. Yes, I admit the editing is a bit of a hack but it works well enough.
  
  see http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml
  
  RJP
  

• A false picture
  2004-09-05 03:54:32  scribusdocs [View]
  
  

  Well, now we have confirmation of two other weekly papers, besides the one in the article which are using Scribus and no, not black and white, but full CMYK color.

  Scribus has its own RGB > CMYK conversion routines, including ICC support via littlecms, so whether GIMP has CMYK support is irrelevant. Scribus handles that part..quite well I might add.
  
  Mind you this interview was conducted over different times starting a year ago.
  
  So, to be able to take this article seriously I would have liked to see comparisons to Quark XPress 6 and InDesign CS, not PageMaker. But I guess this article was written by a tech-journalist for programmers, and not DTP-people.
  
  
  You are invited to look at:
  http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=printing&page=prepress
  
  This will give you an idea of Scribus's pre-press capabilities.
  
  
  What I did say about Pagemaker and Quark are still relevant. There are many many shops still on MacOS 9 and Quark 4.
  
  
  Moreover, we could care less about Quark or Adobe sales, Scribus is all about providing similar capabilities for Linux users. The point of newspapers using this for production merely highlights Scribus's maturity and capabilities.
  
  
  
  
  

• A false picture
  2004-09-04 10:39:52  RobM [View]
  
  
  GIMP 2 does support CMYK.
• Still a false picture
  2004-09-05 05:27:39  iconara [View]
  
  
  From the GIMP user manual:
  
  Let us say first that Gimp doesn't support the CMYK mode. (An experimental plugin providing rudimentary CMYK support can be found at www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml.)
  
  In the world I live, experimental does not mean "fit for production".
  
  (http://docs.gimp.org/en/index.html)