LaTeX is a widely known technical authoring tool. It has a community in the computer science department and in mathematics. It is used since the 1980s and allows to generate large complex pdf files mostly automatically. Even if the software is so great there is a need to investigate what potential alternative programs are available. Most users are familiar with the Libreoffice program already but a less described program is Scribus. Scribus is a Quarkxpress clone and is working similar to other layout software with the frame concept. The user can positioning text frames on a page.
The following blog post explains how exactly this workflow is done to create a longer academic paper. First thing to do is to make sure that the latex file is available and all the images are available either in the PNG or in the EPS format. And now it is up to the Scribus newbie to use this content to create a professional looking pdf file.
The first problem is that scribus can't import the LaTeX markup format. What is possible instead is to use plain text as source. So the user has to tag again all the sections in the file. This is realized of course manual but after a while all the sections are formatted this way.
A unique problem of the Linux version of scribus is that some dialog boxes can't be resized so in the very important style menu it is not able to update the style property. This makes it harder to assign a certain font to all the section. What the user can do instead is to format the words manuel which is technically possible but takes extra time.
The text is spread over many frames. Each page has a new frame and they are linked together. For reason of simplicity i have selected the single column mode. If the text was entered the next step is to add the figures. In contrast to LaTeX, there are no float images but the user has to position the pictures manual on the page. The advantage is that he can make the page layout more convenient. For example it is possible to place a wrap figure page on top of the page, which is not possible in LaTeX. Also a table was added.
Then a major problem has occured. Scribus can't create a Table of content. According to the documentation this is very complicated, so i have left out this step and made only a manual Table of contents. And now the long waiting moment is there. The document gets rendered into the pdf format. The output of scribus is much bigger compared to latex. The same document needs 2.5 MB vs. 400 kb.
A sbujective judgment comes to the conclusion that the pdf quality of scribus is worse than LaTeX. Technically it is possible to create pdf files with Scribus but it can't replace LaTeX. Nevertheless it was an interesting experience to see how Frame oriented layout software is working.
Content vs layout
After this report let us discuss what the most obvious difference is between both programs. LaTeX has a focus on text structure. It is some sort of advanced outline editor. The user creates sections and subsections and this allows to add new content to an existing text. In contrast, Scribus is based on the idea of a page. The user has to create new boxes and arrange them to fulfill certain layout requirements. It is not possible to add new subsections, but this will cause a complete reformatting of the project.