[evergreen-outreach] annual report printing

Wed Jan 3 12:40:24 EST 2018

Hi all!

Thanks for sending this along Rogan. I finally had a chance to look at 
using Scribus with Rogan's files today. The development version of 
Scribus (1.5.3) seems to handle idml file whereas the older, 1.4.x 
version of Scribus did not. The file does not import perfectly: fonts 
needed to be changed and we would need to adjust some of the layout, but 
I think I could turn it into something workable.

There are two issues to consider then:

- The original reason this topic arose was because of concerns that the 
font size was small, making it difficult to read the annual report. Last 
year's report is available at 
https://evergreen-ils.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Evergreen-Annual-Report-2016-Print-Version.pdf 
if anyone wants to look at it for context. This could be addressed by 
increasing the font size in the current layout, which will necessarily 
reduce the amount of content we can include, or by switching to a larger 
booklet. However, the issue with switching to the larger booklet, as 
Rogan noted below, is that it requires a lot of labor time. Rogan has 
already put in hours to create the current layout, and time is valuable.

- The other issue is that the current report is done in Adobe InDesign, 
which, due to cost and OS support, is not available to most of us. This 
means that the work of creating the annual report always falls on 
Rogan's shoulders. By creating it in Scribus, which is open source, we 
might be able to divide up the work so that two or three of us are 
helping to put the report together. Even if we didn't change the layout 
of the report, it might not be a bad idea to consider this change so 
that we can divide and conquer.

We have a few options.

- We could decide to go with the current format (with or without font 
size changes) for this year and look at moving to Scribus for next 
year's report. If we start the work in the spring, it gives us time to 
troubleshoot any issues in time for the 2018 report.

- I would be willing to commit to working on transferring the file to 
Scribus and the larger size before the February meeting. This would give 
us  layout to work with over February as we plug in the content. 
However, I can't guarantee that I won't find pitfalls along the way. If 
the pitfalls are too large, we would need to go back to the InDesign 
booklet, which would give Rogan less time to work on this year's report 
on his own

- We could also decide to keep things as they are for now as it has been 
successful in generating a nice annual report.

I'm sure there are other options we can discuss during today's meeting.

Thanks Rogan for all of your work on this!
Kathy

On 12/29/2017 07:47 AM, Rogan Hamby wrote:
> Another quick follow up.  In looking at moving the work on the annual 
> report to Scribus Kathy and I both did some research on migrating the 
> file format.  My experience has been that the print layout world of 
> software is fundamentally different in terms of exchanging data 
> between applications then graphics and this is bearing out to be 
> true.  Both of us found the same set of suggestions and neither are 
> working for me in a way that would be useful.  The postscript export 
> is per page not document and does not export embedded data.  The xml 
> output is not parseable.  I'm still waiting to see if Kathy had any 
> better luck but at this point that does not look like a viable option 
> to me.
>
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 7:39 AM, Rogan Hamby <rogan.hamby at gmail.com 
> <mailto:rogan.hamby at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Good morning,
>
>     There has been a little discussion off list about printing of the
>     annual report.  Last year we printed 250 saddle stitched trimmed
>     to bleed with a cover at 8.25x 5.75 with 100# gloss at full
>     color.  Terri, at Equinox, was kind enough to get me an updated
>     quote for this year from the same printer we used last year and an
>     estimate for increasing the book size.  The reason for the
>     increase in the book size is that there have been questions about
>     increasing the font size of the report without decreasing the
>     amount of content.  The only way to do that is to increase the
>     paper size.
>
>     A new printing at last year's specifications is $985.55
>
>     Increasing the paper size to 8.5 x 6 (which is a very small
>     increase) jumps to $1,228.60.  The cost has to be considered of
>     course but it's not my greatest concern.
>
>     While I'm very sympathetic to the access issues it's necessary to
>     point out that we have attempted to keep labor time under some
>     constraints by reusing the same basic layout.  Print layout
>     software isn't quite like responsive web design and you can't just
>     tell it a new paper size and have everything re-adjust.  If we do
>     go the route of a new paper size we need to finalize this very
>     soon and it will be a great deal of labor to implement.
>
>     Just to make it clear I am _not_ in favor of doing this.  We
>     produce a web friendly PDF so that it can easily be scaled and a
>     limited print run for the conference.  We can certainly increase
>     font sizes an average 25% but I don't think it will make for an
>     attractive product.  However, I would much rather do that than
>     change the printed format of the report.
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

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