What apps can make a poster?

drxdev said:
At the beginning I use LaTeX, then I switched to Inkscape to do all my scientific publications. It is great to draw scientific infographics and enough text functionality to put text. However, now when after reading about scribus it seems like a good (better ?) alternative.
Click to expand...
(La)TeX, Inkscape and scribus are three different programs for different kind of tasks.
They could complement one another, they could in some cases solve the same task, but they do not substitute one another.

Annalesa said:
the poster
Click to expand...
How? With what app? You can tell us about your experience, then we also want to learn.
 
drxdev said:
At the beginning I use LaTeX, then I switched to Inkscape to do all my scientific publications. It is great to draw scientific infographics and enough text functionality to put text. However, now when after reading about scribus it seems like a good (better ?) alternative.
Click to expand...

Scribus is good but is not as much flexible as Inkscape to design. Most of the time I design in Inkscape and then I redesign it in Scribus; the way Scribus works is not very handy especially if compared with proprietary software on the same space.
 
Scribus is a layout package, much like InDesign and QuarkXPress of old. It's really good at putting all sorts of elements on pages and flowing text around them in sensible ways. Very useful if you want precise control over what goes where on each and every single page. Scribus is not an illustration or design package. The idea is that you take the output of things like Gimp and Inkscape as well as your text, and you combine all of those elements in Scribus. You could do that in LaTeX as well, but Scribus and LaTeX are philosophically different approaches to the same problem.
 
bvdw78 said:
The idea is that you take the output of things like Gimp and Inkscape as well as your text, and you combine all of those elements in Scribus.
Click to expand...
One could do it also by coding directly in postscript, perhaps with little AI help. I am coming to the conclusion that that is the best solution if one does not like bloat.
 
Coding in postscript.. intriguing. And well, ok, doable. In all my years I've never seen *ANYONE* do that outside some really interesting LaserWriter demo pages and it's not a very human-friendly language in my personal opinion. I wouldn't bother unless someone zipped me straight back to 1986 or something like that. Bloat just doesn't hit the same on modern hardware like it did back then.
 
bvdw78 said:
Coding in postscript.. intriguing. And well, ok, doable. In all my years I've never seen *ANYONE* do that outside some really interesting LaserWriter demo pages and it's not a very human-friendly language in my personal opinion. I wouldn't bother unless someone zipped me straight back to 1986 or something like that. Bloat just doesn't hit the same on modern hardware like it did back then.
Click to expand...

I do my letterhead and business cards in Postscript directly. I also generated Postscript from a table-making C program.
 
The Asymptote language seems quite interesting....
Asymptote is a powerful descriptive vector graphics language that provides a natural coordinate-based framework for technical drawing. Labels and equations are typeset with LaTeX, the de-facto standard for typesetting mathematics.
A major advantage of Asymptote over other graphics packages is that it is a programming language, as opposed to just a graphics program.

You can even run it in your browser without installing it, using the Asymptote Web Application. Just enter the code
Click to expand...

Here is a gallery of what it can produce! And there is a port: math/asymptote
 
It doesn't make sense coding in postscript, this is not a language to design but to make a file printable.

In terms of design and coding I recommend ConTeXt and Metafun, however the problem is:

- I am not a designer, I don't know how to design
- I don't know the $DESIGN_SOFTWARE

When the two are combined the task can be very challenging.

I am not a fan of Canva (I actually hate it) but it has tons of template already made, or you search for template already made for LibreOffice Draw.

My recommendation is find or generate something that matches more or less what you need and then use the software you know better to redesign it. But if you have time I recommend to learn Inkscape.
 
Sometimes I forget where I'm participating.. of course people here code directly in PostScript. ;-) I've been aware of the fact that PostScript is a programming language, I just never really treated it as such. I worked in graphics design and professional printing for roughly a decade. From that time (mid to late 1990's) I recall PostScript as a pretty heavy-handed file format that got fed into RIP's, which would then control a photographic plate making machine. It's Turing complete, so interesting possibilities to make printers do funny and unintended things.

I do wonder how topic starter's academic poster is coming along.
 
I just made an experiment. I gave Claude.AI a tar archive with 4 files and asked:

Write a simple postscript, human readable file including the files in
a DINA4 paper, the file wolf.jpg as header, selfie.jpg and mars.jpg at
the right and left, text.ps at the center. It is meant to make a
poster. You may resacle the images, but not the text-file text.ps.
Click to expand...

It offered me the file to download, and since it embedded the content of my files in it, I asked again:

Please, not embedding the files into your result, but linking through the
file names.
Click to expand...

Then I got a "poster" that did what I asked, its aspect could be improved in a further dialog with claude.
Claude did explain the program it wrote (I do not bring here the big text). Here is the result, note that commentaries
begin with %:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 595 842
%%Title: Poster
%%Creator: handcrafted PostScript
%%Pages: 1
%%EndComments

% -------------------------------------------------------
% Procedure: DrawJPEGFile
% x y dest_w dest_h src_w src_h (filename) DrawJPEGFile
% -------------------------------------------------------
/DrawJPEGFile {
/fname exch def
/src_h exch def
/src_w exch def
/dest_h exch def
/dest_w exch def
/dest_y exch def
/dest_x exch def
gsave
dest_x dest_y translate
dest_w dest_h scale
src_w src_h 8
[ src_w 0 0 src_h neg 0 src_h ]
fname (r) file /DCTDecode filter
false 3
colorimage
grestore
} def

%%Page: 1 1

% =========================================================
% 1. WOLF HEADER (x=0 y=619 w=595 h=223)
% =========================================================
0 619.1 595 223.1 960 360 (wolf.jpg) DrawJPEGFile

% =========================================================
% 2. SELFIE (left column: x=0.8 y=172 w=198.3 h=274.4)
% =========================================================
0.8 172.2 198.3 274.4 800 1107 (selfie.jpg) DrawJPEGFile

% =========================================================
% 3. MARS (right column: x=396.7 y=253.7 w=198.3 h=111.5)
% =========================================================
396.7 253.7 198.3 111.5 610 343 (mars.jpg) DrawJPEGFile

% =========================================================
% 4. TEXT.PS (center column, unscaled)
% BBox: 27 483 199 762 -> translate so lower-left = (211.45, 170.0)
% =========================================================
gsave
184.4500 -313.0000 translate
(text.ps) run
grestore

showpage
%%Trailer
%%EOF
Click to expand...

I know a little of postscript. Of course this is doable by hand, without AI.

I generated the file text.ps with TeX, typography with postscript would be more difficult. compiled it with:

tex text.tex
dvips -E text.dvi
(-E to generate encapsulated postscript)
 
Annalesa said:
Dimensions and format: 90 cm × 134 cm, landscape orientation. Include a 3 mm bleed (so the document size becomes 90.6 × 134.6 cm). Mark a 4 cm safe area (background graphics should cover the entire canvas, while text, charts, and other elements must not extend beyond the safe area).
Click to expand...

Previously when I made a poster for poster presentation, I was given a PowerPoint template which is 48 inch x 36 inch (120cm x 90cm).
I have not tried it on Unix, but I would try LibreOffice Impress. Impress's slide size can be changed for that purpose, and the setting is in "Layout > Format Slide" in tabbed user interface. Also, according to my previous PowerPoint file, the main title uses 63 pt, each explanation text uses 32 - 36 pt and tables use 28pt size fonts.

I also know people who use Illustrator for this task, so Inkscape would work. Scribus also should work fine.

I remember Powerpoint worked a little slow to render a lot of objects on the slide. I do not know how performant opensource software can deal with this task nowadays. Also you need to take care of what file format your university printing service deals with and whether your software can output the format precisely.

Hope this helps!
 
Just take the time to learn a dedicated desktop publishing package like the repeatedly recommended "Scribus" and you will be equipped not only for the present one, but also for future poster tasks.

In my opinion, yes you can make a poster by using a lot of the other options offered, but they remain sub-optimal for repeated use (and will demand a similar long learning investment).
 
Another factor to consider is the graphics format of any illustrations you intend to put in the poster. I recently generated patent drawings from FreeCAD and put in the arrows and Labeled the figures in inkscape. This kept everything in *.svg format which could then be exported to *pdf. It was easy to go back and edit while in svg. If I converted the svg to a jpg or png in GIMP and then exported, the file size was several fold larger.

On the other hand, if I were going to put in tables and graphs and potentially generate web content, I would look strongly at LibreOffice. You can link to databases, generate tables and spreadsheats from the databases.
 
The request was to make a poster for a medical conference. I’ve been making posters for medical conferences for almost 20 years. I’ve used Scribus for this multiple times. It’s not always the easiest to work with, but it will get the job done.

It can flow text across multiple frames (which is important when you’re constantly moving things around to get the balance right — you don’t want to lose an important section when constantly copying and pasting around), and can do different types of wrapping around other objects.

It’s a powerful tool, but like many powerful tools, it requires a bit more work. But for laying out a poster, I (still) think it’s your best option on FreeBSD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top