Laidout, Scribus, and You!

This page will, over time, contain little bits and pieces of code and wisdom that are designed to help you play nice with a combination of Scribus and Laidout.

Scribus File Format

In the course of making an importer/exporter for Scribus files, I made a chart of the Scribus file format, as the existing format descriptions were horribly out of date. You can see this Scribus file format chart here. This was built from this config file, using this script. For the most current official Scribus file format work, see their wiki here.

Scribus Scripts For Imposition

Here's a couple of scripts you can use to reimpose Scribus documents, such as for making booklets. After installing Laidout, just download the scripts, and call them up from the "Scripts->Execute Script..." option from Scribus' menu.

These scripts are limited by the deficiencies of Laidout's Scribus importer. Known issues include:

Objects that bleed over onto other pages are not handled properly.
Also, Scribus page bleed values are basically ignored. Really they should be applied upon import to something meaningful to the signature.
Furthermore, Laidout assumes the first page of the Scribus document is the cover of the booklet. This is not always the case, depending on how your spreads are set up in the Scribus document.
And just so you know, master pages are applied on import to simplify exporting.

I have not tested very thoroughly, so there are probably other quirks. Please let me know of any other snags you encounter! I will at some point make all of Laidout's impositioning abilities available, rather than just signature based impositions. This will probably happen when net based impositions get a little stabilized.

Signature Editor Launcher.
Here is a script that calls Laidout's Signature Editor from within Scribus, which lets you fold paper right on screen to reimpose a Scribus document, and a new reimposed document will be opened in Scribus. As of Laidout 0.092, you can add automatic cut and fold marks appear on you document when you export it, assuming you have area between the printed pages and the edge of the paper! One limitation is that you cannot currently add your own custom marks from the plugin. For that, you must import a Scribus document from Laidout itself, add the marks, and export. This will be changed eventually!

Click the image at left to watch a video tutorial.

Inivisible Reimposer.
Here is a text only script that calls Laidout from within Scribus, which allows you to reimpose a Scribus document, and the reimposed document will be opened into Scribus.