Graphic Design Using Scribus

So this is a little different from what I usually blog about but here goes...

Recently I have been tasked with a new type of work for me. I usually enjoy programming, I cope with web design as this has a little programming from time to time, especially when you get into Javascript or PHP. I actually am looking forward to a Django project that I am going to get in to soon, but that is for another time.

However, a week or so ago, a contact of mine got in touch about a client that wanted a magazine to be designed for them. They are good at the acquisition of advertising and content, but not so hot on the design parts. I agreed as the money is constant and not half bad.

However, I am not the world's best graphic designer. It isn't one of my best qualities and I will be the first to admit that. I am no artist and my enjoyment with web designs isn't in HTML/CSS but in Javascript and server side scripting. Nevertheless, I gave it a good shot.

I did copious amounts of research and I found that there are really two pieces of software that you need in order to do the graphic design for a mag. First, a publishing software, second an image manipulator. The latter is catered for in GIMP, which I use daily anyway and I actually don't mind ( although at the risk of starting a holy war I am not saying it is better than any others, it's just what I am used to). The former was something that I needed to look at. So, what GOOD publishing software can you find.

Well, I narrowed it down further to 4 basic options. They are listed below with a little synopsis:

Adobe InDesign
Adobe products are generally first in any design conversation. People really love Photoshop for image manipulation, and I can't blame them, it does a lot of the leg work for you. I have heard great things about illustrator, and I am sure that for vector based images it is great ( I rarely do this so I don't really know how this program works ). One cannot ignore Dreamweaver either, although I can honestly say that I haven't ever created anything in it as it is a little too magic for my likes.

So InDesign is of a similar ilk. It is a fully featured program that does things for you and is easy to use, although you may need some time set aside to really work out how it works in order to become proficient on it. The thing is, as with MOST Adobe products, you will spend the time wisely as you can do all that you need to do on this program.

The other benefit is that it integrates with the other professional standard programs that we have already mentioned.

The con is as always the price. If this job turns in to doing this sort of thing more often, then I will go for this, if not then I will stick with the cheaper options.

QuarkXpress
This is another program that gets a lot of great reviews from professional users. The website is clean and the software works well. However, there is one problem that I have with this program and it is similarly reflected in the above option. The price! As far as I can tell this was THE publishing software to have when you were creating mags/books etc back in the day, but then, as always, other software came along. This program HAS I believe moved with the times, but the price is still so high that you would need to be a dedicated fan not to try out the cheaper (although not by much) and more integrated InDesign.

Microsoft Publisher
If you create a professional looking magazine in this software, please comment below and tell us how much you sold your soul to the devil for. This is not a horrible software if you need to do something quick and dirty but I cannot see how you could possibly use this to do the "real" work on.

Scribus
This is an open source software and I should add, the one that I used in the end to get the first edition of the magazine up and running. The software has an adequate reference online and a reasonable interface that allowed me to work through the problems that I came across as an amateur.

There are some REALLY annoying features in Scribus that perhaps I came across as a result of using more than the others and therefore not finding the niggles in the others. One really bad feature is the text box not showing a preview of what the text will look like and being immensely buggy.

However, you over look that sort of thing when you CAN create a professional looking magazine in the time frame and you don't have to pay the earth, or even anything to use the software.

So I am annoyed with things in Scribus and it isn't the quickest way to do the job, but it is the cheapest and until the ground opens up with jobs of this nature, I will most likely stick with it. I appreciate your comments/suggestions as this is really a new area to me!

Database Designer Tool

I am a very visual person. I like to see animations in a UI. I even have blogged about liking the new UI from Microsoft's latest Windows installment, why because everything is there and it's visually easy.

So that leads me on to my methodology to database design. I have mentioned before that I like to use PGSQL. Recently I have had some work to do that required MySQL. However, the database design was done already and I was touching up the code for someone else. So I needed to see the database design in a visual way. I tried to make diagrams, but when we are talking about hundreds of database tables, views and other goodies, I was just wasting time, or at least it felt like it.

So I looked online for Database designers for MySQL. I found an excellent helping from a company called Micro Olap. They have a couple of products for various database types. The ones of interest to me were the Postgres and the MySQL database designers. Including (and this was very important for me) a trial of their software.

So I downloaded the MySQL trial and within 5 minutes I had a working diagram of the hundreds of tables. How? The software included a reverse engineer feature that worked on the database that I was using. It had a lot of options but I quickly found what I wanted and ignored the rest so the best thing to do would be to have a look for yourself.

Then when it appeared you have a huge area that you can move about and see the data tables and views in relation to one another. It is similar to the database designer that you get with Visual Studio but for more useful database engines.

After a small amount of time I felt proficient enough with the software to say that I enjoyed using it. Whilst it may not be the sort of thing that you are after, especially if you prefer to see your data in a less visual way (there are people still like that out there!) but for me it answered my problem for me and I didn't have to write out all the tables by hand (which was a bonus because years of computer use have left my writing hand as out of shape as retired dosser!)

The pricing is as follows (for the products that I was interested in ):
$124.95
MicroOLAP Database Designer for MySQL (Personal/Educational license)

$124.95
MicroOLAP Database Designer for PostgreSQL (Personal/Educational license)