Hi

I want to create a linuz-magazine with some friends and we're wondering which is the best option to do so. I usually work with Inkscape and for me it should be the best option, but I'm not sure about Inkscape is the best option when it comes to magazines. Actually, I don't really know how to do it: the only options that we had when creating a new file are just "unitary elements", not mazazines or something similar.

So, do you think we should use scribus or is there a way to use inskcape for doing magazines?.

Thanks all!!

Sorry, I made some mistakes:

Magazina -> magazine
Linuz-magazine -> Linux-magazine

I'd recommend learning Scribus. The latest version came out only yesterday (1.3.5.1) and it's pretty good!

You could also create your pages in Inkscape, export them as a pdf and then, if you're on Linux, combine the pages using either PdfMod or Pdf Shuffler. There may be an equivalent piece of software for Windows/Mac

I'm on linux, of course!!

Thanks!! If finally I'm successful I'll show you the magazine!!

Scribus :
Scribus annoyed me a bit. The first bad experience was with the "new document" menu. It doesn't save your settings! I was doing a few experiments so I had to start new documents quite often... and typing all the settings all the time is a drag (I had to change 4 values for the margins and 1 value for the units).

The next thing I disliked was the line tool. When you draw a line it stays red (because it is selected) and wider than the line you actually draw. Pretty bad for WYSIWYG. Also, moving the thing around had some odd behaviors....

The next problem was undo. Not sure what it actually did... Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't... sometimes it did odd things. Like after moving the line, undoing deleted the line. Pretty bad.

The final annoyance was with the snap to guides. I set the option but it did nothing... it just kept not snapping. I gave up at this stage.

Inkspace :
No questions asked when the software starts, the document is already there and it actually has the settings I wanted to use. Not bad.

Drawing lines was also as I expected, and after a web search on how to snap to the guides, it worked OK. And undo did what I expected.

After I did a bit of work on the actual invitation, I decided to move the files around to organize my folders. Turns out Inkspace stores the pictures as references, so I lost all the pictures I had in the drawing (about 9 pictures). Restoring the references seemed like a drag, but since the save format is SVG I was able to use a text editor and perform a simple find and replace! Not bad.

Then I wanted to add a new page. I wasn't able to find out how to do it! Fortunately there is the concept of layers, so I just used one layer for each page. I could have used another document, but since the invitation isn't that complex this solution was good enough.

Time to print! This was another surprise. You actually need to know the lp command details and how CUPS works to do some basic printing tasks (like printing more than one copy in normal mode). So much for a grandma friendly application. But at the end of the day I managed to print everything without a problem and the invitations were sent on time.