Create advanced layouts with the free Scribus destop publishing tool

Most modern word processors can be used to create documents that mix text and images, which is useful if you have something like a simple newsletter to create and don’t want to learn how to use a new application.

For an explanation of how to improve the look your documents in Open Office Writer, take a look at our feature.

To create more sophisticated pages, though, you will soon find using a word processer becomes a hindrance – these tools aren’t designed for complex documents. For more fancy layouts, you need a dedicated desktop-publishing (DTP) tool, and in this second instalment we will explain how to get and use a free one.

Getting started
There’s plenty of good commercial DTP software, but the two industry-standard tools, Quark Xpress and Adobe Indesign, cost hundreds of pounds. Instead we will use a free but powerful alternative called Scribus, available for both Windows and Mac OS.

Download and install the relevant copy – stick with the Full option to include the additional fonts, which are useful. Once installed, run the program and you’ll see a warning about a missing program called Ghostscript. This is an optional plug-in that can be safely ignored, so click the OK button to continue.

Next, you will be prompted to choose a new document type. We are going to recreate the A4 page review from part one of this feature, so select Single Page from the Document Layout list at the left of the dialogue box and click the OK button to accept the default A4 Portrait shape.

Working with text frames
In a word processor, you can start typing on a new document as soon as it is created. Scribus, like all DTP applications, doesn’t work this way. Instead, you must begin by creating at least one container on the page to hold the text.

These containers are called ‘frames’ and Scribus uses separate types for text and images. Frames can be any shape and, once created, can be moved around and resized to change the page layout; something you can’t do easily with text on a word processor page.

To create a text frame for the body text of the Computeractive printer review we are laying out, click the Insert Text Frame button on the Scribus toolbar. This looks like a box with the letter A in it and is about halfway along.

Next, drag and drop the mouse to draw a text frame that roughly fills the left third of the page, starting at the margin indicators at the top-left of the page (the blue lines).

We want three columns of text. To do this we could create two more text frames and measure their size using the ruler at the top of the page. This is fiddly though, so it’s better to get Scribus to add some more column indicators to the page, much like the ones for the margins. These are called ‘guides’, so select the Manage Guides option from the Page menu and, on the dialogue box that appears, increase Columns (near the bottom) to ‘3’.

We also want a margin between each column, so also enable the Column Gap option and increase its value to 10.00 pt. Finally, select the Margins option for Refer to at the bottom of the dialogue box and click OK.