This seems interesting and it seems like a big update. Has anyone used this for print media formatting? Can you speak to how well it works, how easy it is to use, and what it's like to switch if you're coming from Publisher or InDesign?
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Used Adobe for years, made an effort in the last year to switch to FOSS, mainly Inkscape and Scribus. And yes, as other comments have mentioned these tools have some weird quirks and some things don't work. But that's the same for Adobe and most other software. I remember switching from Macromedia Freehand (lol, remember that) to Illustrator back in the day and everything felt just wrong and awful in tge beginning (until you learned to work around the quirks?). It's super hard to tell how much it's "Software Bad" vs "Not Used to New Thing" and this will be different for everybody as well. But nobody (including the software) is stopping you from using this professionally, I just finished a 20 page PDF for a client with Scribus, used it to print my 32 page comic etc.
I tried it years ago and it felt more like Quark to me (not a compliment) but should give it another chance. For the past several years I've been using Affinity Publisher in a Windows VM.
Edit: just tried it out a bit (ver. 1.5.8 because that's what's in the Arch repo) and it's better than I remembered. Adobe-like shortcuts. I made a new document and created a few text styles.
I mostly use it to make my resume. It works well for that, but feel like it would be annoying to make a large document using it.
I've previously used versions 1.4.* and 1.5.* quite a bit for print, because I'm a one-man marketing department in a tiny company.
Scribus was (is?) somewhat finicky and cumbersome to work with. It had certain quirks and workarounds you had to learn to deal with. It lacked many creative features you find in bigger suites. I didn't feel like I worked quickly and efficiently in it. BUT I got my work done in it nevertheless, and I really appreciate that it exists for the people that simply can't afford the alternatives.
Nowadays I use the Affinity suite, which includes Affinity Publisher, a competitor to InDesign. It's quite affordable and not subscription-based.