Thanks to Philip May and Perl5 software that generated text, it was possible to realise a double spread of a “Babels book”. Text is composed of the combinatory of the 26 letters of the alphabet, dot, comma and space, as described in Library of Babel, in Fictions Borges book. Those books are 410 page, 40 lines per page and 80 character per line. Capitals were added in the script. Those 2 pages were then set with Scribus.

See the pdf

Obviously, scribus needs a strong amelioration of its ergonomy. It took something like 3 hours to compose those 2 pages.
Here is a Scribus Bug Report, encounted during the exercice:

– No constrain line drawing (like with shift on other softs).
– No constrain movement when moving blocs.
– Leading not available in text box.
– Bloc always move a bit when selected.
– No hand to navigate in the document.
– in the Format size selection, custom format should appear first instead of last.
– Selection above/under object too complicated.
– annoying system of magnifying
– No indicator “+” / “-” when magnifying.
– When magnifying, view is always set in the upper left corner of the document.
– In Text bloc
– Impossibility to jump from one letter to another in the text box with arrows keys.
– No undo command

among other…

But the pdf generator seems to work ok so far, it was very easy to export.