TheMagPiLayout

Introduction
Scribus is used as the standard layout tool for the magazine, it is relatively complex so the sections below detail the templates and formatting to be used for all MagPi articles. At the end of the page is an overview of additional Scribus resources to assist those new the application.

Scribus Page Layout Templates
All page templates are now stored within TheMagPiGit in the magpi-templates repository

Article title
The article title area is 180mm wide and 30mm deep.

Page margins
-

Outer margins

 * The paper size is A4.
 * The units are set to millimetres.
 * The outer margins are all 10 mm (earlier issues had a spine margin of 20mm)
 * Document bleeds are all 3mm

Author credit
In the new templates, authors should are no longer credited at the end of the article (they have a photo credit instead).

Standard fonts
If the document is converted with a non-LINUX version of Scribus, the FreeSans font set is typically not available. This results in PDF files which contain the wrong fonts.

Information_for_new_volunteers contains full details of where to obtain and how to install the standard fonts.

Title fonts
The title font should be taken from one of those present in the standard version of Scribus.

Section headings
Section headings should be FreeSans Bold 14Pt and underlined.

Body text
Normal text within the body of an article should be FreeSans Regular 12pt.

Fixed width text
Programming code or instructions that must be typed in as part of a tutorial should be Courier 10 Pitch Regular font 10pt.

In some instances, (C or C++ code) Courier is too wide to prevent multiple line wraps. In these cases, Monaco 10pt can be used instead of Courier.

Articles of a given type should preserve this choice from the first instance onwards.

Next page
For articles which are longer than two pages, there should be

at the bottom of the even page number in FreeSans Bold Oblique 14pt.

Page numbers
The page numbers should be FreeSans Bold Oblique 16pt and black in color.

Resources for new Scribus users
Scribus is a relatively complex program, so make sure to take some time to familiarize yourself with it before diving in to far.

Here are some useful tutorials and other resources about Scribus:

The Scribus Wiki

Scribus Wiki HowTo

A Scribus Tutorial on Scribd

Getting Started With Scribus

A list of Scribus Video Tutorials