Hi Kari (and everyone), Thanks for this great information on publishing software. I have heard very good things about Affinity but have yet to try it. I think I should! I have used LaTeX for so many years and published a lot of books (a "lot" is relative) using it. I can get it to do precisely what I want and the finished output is really high quality. This comes at a cost, of course; and that cost is time. I have no doubt that in the end the tools you mention are much, much faster. (I am familiar with Overleaf and so on, but again I've been with LaTeX on Emacs for literally decades. I even now produce covers with LaTeX, which is pretty extreme if not obsessive.) However I only publish a couple of books a year (two, typically) so taking more time is less of an issue for me. Again thanks for the ideas and Affinity will be the next thing I try! Bob Newell Honolulu On Sun, Feb 1, 2026, at 03:03, Kari Eveli wrote: > Hello Bob, > > While Scribus has made some progress, it is not easy to use by any > measure. In the Windows arena, Affinity is the Indesign killer app. It > can be installed on Linux (e.g. > https://github.com/ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer) or run on a > virtual environment. Affinity has master pages and many features a > publisher would need, and it is free. Personally, I still prefer the > Windows-only Xara Designer (https://www.xara.com/designerpro/v20/). They > have discounted it (due to Affinity price pressure). It does it all > (bitmaps, vector, page and web design), elegantly and in one interface. > There is also a 20 years old free Linux version of Xara > (http://www.xaraxtreme.org/download.html) but it is badly dated, of course. > > To overcome OS problems, there are net applications that are very > powerful, like Overleaf (https://www.overleaf.com/) or Typst > (https://typst.app/), and an open-source Typst compiler > (https://typst.app/open-source/#download). > > Best regards, > > Kari Eveli > LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland) > lexitec@xxxxxxxxxx > > *** Lexitec Online *** > Lexitec in English: https://www.lexitec.fi/english.html > Lexitec English and Finnish dictionaries: https://sk.lexitec.fi/en/ > Home page in Finnish: https://www.lexitec.fi/ > > Bob Newell wrote: >> I know some major applications are Windows only and if they are critical to your work, you have no choice. As a (very) small-time typesetter and publisher, I for one thing can't use Adobe InDesign on my Linux systems, and that's an essential tool in larger operations. (I typeset with LaTeX which would be far too slow for busy houses, although Scribus is more and more an option. InDesign is also kind of expensive!)