InDesign sucks, got anything else?

September 9, 2007 11:08 PM

We (my ESL company in Beijing) are looking for a cross-platform (the person in charge of editing is using a mac, which...I...never...NO! and thus stems our problem), open-source, multi-lingual publishing software to support an in-house magazine we're trying to get started. It's gotta be something similar to InDesign, but it also has to be something we can train staff on who aren't, y'know, proficient in English. Any ideas?

And even better, if it's possible to import templates, our gratitude will be everlasting and mighty, and you'll have free ESL training for life.

posted by saysthis to computers & internet (7 comments total)

IMHO, you're outta luck. There is nothing more powerful for page layout than InDesign.
posted by roderashe at 11:18 PM on September 9, 2007

Scribus isn't quite as well-designed as InDesign, but it is open source.
posted by thisjax at 11:54 PM on September 9, 2007

Consider getting over your mac-dislike? Pages is built for this.
posted by mmdei at 1:09 AM on September 10, 2007

Having been an exclusive-Linux user since 1994 until last year, when I got a Macbook Pro, I can attest that -- contrary to popular belief -- OS X does not give you Herpes.

At least try it, after calmly repeating "specialization is for insects" over and over. Compare its tools (Pages I've used, not InDesign) to Scribus, the only Free software I know that is pretty good for that.
posted by cmiller at 6:03 AM on September 10, 2007

There are those of us who never got into InDesign and are still hardcore QuarkXPress fans. A lot of people say the learning curve for Quark is steep, but I never had any troubles with it.
posted by jferg at 6:05 AM on September 10, 2007

Why not use InDesign? It's cross platform and available in Chinese and English.
posted by doctor_negative at 7:57 AM on September 10, 2007

InDesign is about as cross-platform and international out of the box as you're going to find. Not at all cheap or open source, but you get what you pay for.
posted by letitrain at 10:58 PM on September 10, 2007