Scribus or OpenOffice - what to use???

[calutateo]

Dear all,

I would like to write a book. About 60 short chapters of 4-12 pages each. No graphics, just at the start of each chapter there will be a watermark.
I am familiar with Interleaf and Framemaker, however, I would prefer to use open source. OpenOffice would do, anyway, it is the only open source tool I know.
Would somebody recommend Scribus to write such a book?

Regards, Carsten

[jdagna]

I would do the writing in OpenOffice.  For the writing itself, you'll want something that's specialized as a word processor and something that you're familiar with.

You might consider Scribus for doing the layout work after you've got it written, but it sounds like your overall needs are pretty simple.  OpenOffice might do just fine for you.

[Vaxalon]

I'm working on several projects in OO and I'm very satisfied with it.  Don't get the beta version unless you're seriously into filing bug reports... it still does weird stuff from time to time.

[rrr]

I use Open Office for all my home word processing.  It's a great package.  Aside from being free, one benefit it has over Word is the built in ability to export a document as a PDF.  Always handy if you're planning on making something available over the web.

Just remember that if you are sharing the actual word processing documents that OO's default file format is not readable by Word.  As a result many users will not be able to open them.  You can easily save as a MS Word .doc however.

Drew