[wplug] posters with linux?

Scott F. Kiesling kiesling at pitt.edu
Tue Sep 21 00:33:13 EDT 2004


On Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 10:54:25PM -0400, Doug Green wrote:
> 
> Hi all-
> 
> I need to produce posters that illustrate my work for scientific 
> meetings. These posters are usually about 48" x 36" (or greater), 
> output with a large-format printer. In the past I have used MS 
> Powerpoint, resized a "slide" to meet my specs, and incorporated text 
> boxes and illustrations as needed. It's a sloppy process since 
> powerpoint really wasn't made for poster creation. Text is sub-optimal, 
> figures are frequently not aligned, and images are always poor. I then 
> used a package for LaTeX, which gave beautiful text, but required way 
> WAY too much effort. It's also not optimal for a number of other 
> reasons... for example, you're limited to standard page sizes (such as 
> a0poster), it's a lot of work to make a new template, and there a big 
> limitations on making certain tables within column formatted posters.
> 
> I found this package called "Scribus" (see: http://www.scribus.org.uk/  
> ) which claims to be an open source DTP (desktop publishing) app for 
> Linux. Has anyone used this, or have any info about it? Could this be a 
> solution to oversize printing needs??
> 
> I'm sure that I'm not alone in needing "poster making" software. What 
> have other people done?

I've used OpenOffice.Org for this, using the presentation
software just as you describe for powerpoint. I export it to
a pdf and it prints OK at the Pitt print shop (one Kinko's place
had a problem, but they still had the problem when i did it
in powerpoint...and it was Kinko's). 

SFK

-- 
Scott F. Kiesling

Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Pittsburgh
    
2816 Cathedral of Learning     Phone: 1-412-624-5916
Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA       Fax: 1-412-624-6130

kiesling at pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~kiesling/skpage.html
http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu


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