Scandinavian-Canadian Studies

A poster is also required, and we can do that on 11 x 17 paper. We had one before, done in Inkscape, so I've revisited that, and made a better job of it, including the URL and some tweaks to layout, as well as adding HT to the credits. Test-printed at small size on our new printer -- everything works great except that you can't duplex.

Made some corrections to the text based on feedback from JT, and then started reworking the layout for clarity and better spacing. I've determined once and for all that the Scribus Story Editor is not up to serious work; a far simpler approach is to create a document in Open Office, and edit the contents there, then keep saving and using Get Text in Scribus to import the results into text frames. It's just as quick, and the editing actually works well. Printed lots of samples, tweaking as I went (I'm saving to PDF and then printing from the Windows VM to get proper duplexing). Added a single vertical divider line to help with the folding, when we come to do it.

Got the French version of HT's title and included her on the front panel graphic, and also indented the address in the main text.

JT and HT need to take flyers to a couple of upcoming meetings, so after some back-and-forth about what they should contain and look like, we settled on a 3-column folded flyer printed on two sides of letter-size paper; this will allow us to produce the flyers in-house using the ETCL printer.

Since I don't have Illustrator on Linux, I decided this would be a good opportunity to learn the open-source DTP package Scribus, so I installed it, along with a package of additional templates from its website. I found it was easier to start from scratch than it was to use any of the templates available. Setup is all pretty straightforward, and these are some key points I discovered:

• Scribus will import SVG directly, so you can bring an Inkscape graphic right into the application, and it remains a vector (or, better, a collection of vectors; it seems to maintain their separateness). However, for simplicity, I found I got better results if I created a graphic carefully, at precise size, in Inkscape, then exported it as a high-resolution PNG, then brought that into Scribus in an image box.
• To flow text between text boxes, you have to click on the first box, then click on the correct toolbar button (I couldn't find any menu command for this), and then on the next text box (and presumably subsequent ones -- I only did two at a time). This works fine, but you have to find that toolbar button.
• Editing text inside Scribus is a bit of a sod. There is a "story editor" which allows you to edit the text, and inside that you can define and apply styles, but they're not displayed as you work, so you have to remember exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you italicize a block of text, it doesn't actually change; although the font combo readout will change to show the italicized font for the whole paragraph, even if you only selected part of the paragraph. In short, it's not wise to try and style/edit your text inside Scribus; do it in Open Office Writer, then save as ODT and import.
• Export to PDF works great, and is the best way to print; I printed from Adobe Reader and got good results.

Got a new four-page review and marked it up.

Following clarification over the weekend about the division between the forthcoming two volumes, both due to come out this year, I re-assigned the existing three new reviews to vol 19 (18 will be the special issue on cinema, dated 2008).

Then I marked up the latest review, which is quite long. Posted it on the site for proofing, along with the corrections to the other reviews.

Marked up and posted Trish's review, then fixed a couple of typos she found in it. We've now standardized on "2008" as the year for volume 18, with 19 being 2009; both should come out this year.

Two book reviews came in from H. Marked them up and posted them for proofing.

One of the authors of a vol 17 article wrote with a change to her email address.

The print version of volume 17 came back from the printers the other day, and is to JT's satisfaction, so I've removed the "proofing" label from the vol 17 articles, and added the page numbers to their metadata. They're now showing on the main contents page of the site. Volume 17 is now officially done.

I also fixed a bug on the author list page, caused by the first-time phenomenon of multiple authors (the first was showing up three times instead of all of them showing up).