Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Has anyone here any experience with Open Office as a publishing tool? It has PDF support and is free - but how good is it otherwise?
Open Office as a publishing tool?
- Thread starter Jürgen Hubert
- Start date
Prime_Evil
Adventurer
Although I am a huge admirer of OpenOffice, I wouldn't recommend using any word processor as a substitute for a proper desktop publishing application. The obvious advantages of OpenOffice in the desktop publishing world include its sane use of document styles (in comparison to MS Word and Wordperfect) and its PDF export tool. When you export to PDF from OpenOffice.org, you are given the following options as to what quality you would like the PDF to be in:
Screen optimized (smallest file size) - this compresses graphics in a lossy form, so some fine details will be lost. Medium quality only, 600dpi resolution.
Print optimized - text and image resolution for good laser printing. High quality, 1200dpi resolution.
Press optimized - sharpest text and image output. Maximum quality, 2400dpi resolution.
If you are using OpenOffice on a Linux / Unix platform, you might want to take a look at the desktop publishing application Scribus (http://www.scribus.org.uk/). This is a free desktop publishing application with a feature set comparable to QuarkXPress or Pagemaker. Scribus runs directly on Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X, and an experimental port with KDE-Cygwin on Windows 2000 is in testing. In addition, there's good online documentation available at http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/
Scribus is a serious desktop publishing tool and has a fairly steep learning curve (comparable to that of the commercial alternatives), but if you're serious about producing high-quality output it is a pretty good tool. Scribus incorporates a commercial-grade PDF export engine with capabilities exceeded only by Adobe's own Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
The latest versions of Scribus (version 1.2.1) was released on January 9 2005 and includes a new tool for importing OpenOffice.org Writer files,complete with OpenOffice.org Writer styles retained. In addition, it includes an OpenOffice.org Draw importer that inserts Draw files onto the page as native Scribus objects.
Screen optimized (smallest file size) - this compresses graphics in a lossy form, so some fine details will be lost. Medium quality only, 600dpi resolution.
Print optimized - text and image resolution for good laser printing. High quality, 1200dpi resolution.
Press optimized - sharpest text and image output. Maximum quality, 2400dpi resolution.
If you are using OpenOffice on a Linux / Unix platform, you might want to take a look at the desktop publishing application Scribus (http://www.scribus.org.uk/). This is a free desktop publishing application with a feature set comparable to QuarkXPress or Pagemaker. Scribus runs directly on Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X, and an experimental port with KDE-Cygwin on Windows 2000 is in testing. In addition, there's good online documentation available at http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/
Scribus is a serious desktop publishing tool and has a fairly steep learning curve (comparable to that of the commercial alternatives), but if you're serious about producing high-quality output it is a pretty good tool. Scribus incorporates a commercial-grade PDF export engine with capabilities exceeded only by Adobe's own Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
The latest versions of Scribus (version 1.2.1) was released on January 9 2005 and includes a new tool for importing OpenOffice.org Writer files,complete with OpenOffice.org Writer styles retained. In addition, it includes an OpenOffice.org Draw importer that inserts Draw files onto the page as native Scribus objects.
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