Since I hate it when print designers attempt to do web stuff, so I'll likely make the inverse mistakes in attempting print.

That said, I've recently been using Apple's Pages, and am quite a convert. It's a cheap option if you have a Mac, though older versions apparently had problems with Lulu's POD printing.

I may attempt to do a Covenant PDF with it. We shall see.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

You don't need anything, there is no industry standard, just use whatever works for you and so on with other unhelpful platitudes!

I use Indesign CS and absolutely love it. After laying out my first book in Publisher, and finding it to be an absolute hog, I switched to Indesign for my second and found it works a treat. Very simple and intuitive to use, plus it's fully integrated with both Photoshop CS and Acrobat, for ease of manipulating images and making pdfs respectively.

But ... it is really quite expensive. See if you can pick up an old copy of CS on ebay for cheap - they're up to CS3 now but really I don't have any reason to upgrade as CS works fine. I shelled out for the whole package (a grand back in those days) when I set Steampower up and have easily got my money's worth out of it, but there are many reasons why you might not want to spend quite that much!

I'm about to learn Quark when I start my new job, so I'll see how that compares to and I'll report back what I find!

Scribus is Teh Awesome. And free. If you have time then going over the tutorials will get you the hang of the thing in a fairly short time.

Having said that, I think you're better off saving the money you would have spent of software and instead using that to bribe someone else to do your layout.

Rich speaketh the truth here!

I've used stuff on the Amiga 500, MS Publisher on a PC, Pagemaker on Mac and PC, and both Quark XPress and Adobe InDesign on a Mac.

Personally I use InDesign these days since I'm used to it and it has OpenType font support that I like. However, the skill in laying things out is independent of your software.

XPress, which I've not used since 4.11 (?) was fiddly but powerful. InDesign was easier to pick up, but only because I was familiar with Photoshop, Illustrator and had experience of many page layout programs.

Tim Gray is a big supporter of Scribus I think.

One option is to ask someone to create you a template, or lay it out for you.

The other option is to learnt it all from the ground up, which may take time and effort.

I would say that if it looks like crap then just ask someone to lay it out for you. That's better than putting out a poorly layed out book.

I use Quark Express 5.0. Because I got it free off the cover of a magazine with no restrictions placed on what you do with the results. It's flaky in several respects (especially tables!) but so long as you've got some good graphical applications to back you up it's a great way of doing layout on a strict budget.

Ash

...learn the lesson from Reign that you should check the PDF created for you before sending to print. Just so the pages are in the right order for sure.

I tried Scribus, having had a little experience with Quark and Pagemaker over the years and I found it amazingly clunky and resource-heavy when dealing with a simple 30-40 page document. That could have just been me though.

Personally when I look at a number of indie games I reckon I could lay them up in 95% similar quality using Word. However, usually that illicts baying hounds, pitchforks and flaming brands.....

Neil

Back when I worked in publishing (technical computer books) all the non-colour books had interior layout done in Word, so it is possible. There's some issues though, if I remember rightly, most of all it's fiddly to do things that are easy in DTP packages.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Worked great. Only slightly quirky. I taught myself it to do the layout.

Neil, it seems to work faster if you split the text into chunks. It it's trying to flow 40 pages of text, it's slow. If it's trying to flow 4 lots of 10 pages of text, it's fine.

I'd shy away from hiring someone to do layout, now. I have so much more control if I do it myself and it's cheaper. The overhead costs for Play Itself are about a tenner (for buying stock photos). OK, plus a bit for printer ink.

Graham

Nope. I always recommend Serif PagePlus. Full-featured and cheap.

If you go to www.freeserifsoftware.com I think you can get v9 for a tenner. Or look around at v11, which is what I'm on now - it has some irritating foibles but is better at PDF output than 9. The current version X2 is still a bit too buggy from what I pick up.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Yes, that's the one. It's just for PC though?

Yep.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

AFAIK, Scribus is the only full-fledged free DTP software package for Mac

http://www.scribus.net/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1

It's a bit fiddly to install, because you need something called Python and Ghostscript installed as well to run it.

I don't know how Windows and Mac versions of Scribus compare resource-wise - but hey, it's free.

Personally, I use InDesign CS, and in the old days Quark (which I still prefer over InDesign, but nobody uses Quark anymore, it seems.)

MS Word gets more and more DTP facilities with every new version - but to me it's still best for Word processing - I wouldn't layout anything in Word, even at gun point - but I'm old, and old-fashioned, so sue me :)

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

Incidentally, if you don't fancy doing layout yourself, I'm finished up on major projects for a while and don't mind pitching in. I work in Quark and can produce straight to optimised, low-memory PDF where necessary.

Ash

That's great Ash.

I could do the same using InDesign but I'm really busy right now, so I won't be able to help out for the near future.

And this is one of the ways that we can really help each other out on this site.

Thanks for all the advice on this one folks.

I've managed to wangle a copy of InDesign via work, but otherwise woul d have been seriously looking at the Scribus option (which I still may do).

Thanks Ash for the offer of doing Layout. But for the time being I'm going to have a crack at it myself.

Regards

;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company