Comment by specproc
5 days ago
I've got a bunch of artistic side projects and regularly need DTP.
I switched to Linux a few years back, and pretty much the last remaining pain point is DTP software. Is there anything out there in the FOSS world at a similar level to Affinity? I'm yet to find anything.
I know there are approaches through Wine, but a native solution would be ideal.
Your thoughts on scribus?
https://www.scribus.net/
I am not in the industry and am unqualified to comment on it's qualifications. But it does appear to be trying to be a professional sort of DTP.
Yeah, I didn't enjoy Scribus. Horrible UX, which probably has its roots in "professional" DTP from the nineties. Like, one does not simply just paste an image into Scribus.
I'm sure it's possible to do plenty with it, but it doesn't make things easy. Something I really miss from Affinity, for example, was the Artistic Text tool, which made it easy to fit text to arbitrary heights and widths -- think the Run DMC logo.
Ok, it's not open source, but it's cheap: https://www.pagestream.org/?action=Store
I'd have to do some reading around, but from first glance it doesn't look like it'd compare well to Affinity.
Not free, but maybe you can try VivaDesigner: https://viva.systems/designer/
I never tried it myself, since Scribus is good enough for me...
Cheers, I'll check it out