Scribus can do multiple page newsletters. But for smaller, faster jobs in Inkscape try this tutorial. And as cool as Scribus can be, I prefer Inkscape's interface.

ADDITION: HeathenX covers this in tutorial #77: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/episode-077/

Note: This tutorial covers a quick 1-page newsletter. Attached at the bottom is a link to a 2-page SVG file. Feel free to download it and review its various parts. It uses layers, some of which are hidden.

Let's begin. Start up Inkscape.
(For the sake of this tutorial I've made screen captures on a MacBook Pro using X-Windows, Mac O/S 10.4.11 and Inkscape 0.46. But this should work under GNU/Linux and Windows.)

The standard US Letter format was used.



, , , , Create as many objects as you please. They can be rectangles, stars, circles, kisses... They are displayed below in light grey for the sake of visibility. Please note: this illustration depicts standard rectangles and not text boxes. OK. Sorry to slow you down.



Sure, you could create simple rectangles. But OpenOffice can do that too. Inkscape allows for flexibility. Let's use it.

[To edit the shape of a standard rectangle select it with the Tool selector. (To select more than one object hold down the Shift key and drag a selection box around as many objects as you wish.) From the menu bar click Path > Object to path, or use this nifty keyboard shortcut: Shift Ctrl C

Now shape your objects according to your artistic needs. Use the Node tool to add nodes. Double-clicking an object's edge with this tool will add a new node you can drag around into cool shapes. This is useful when importing a photograph or various images that you may wish your text to avoid by swerving around critical points.

I've tossed in a lame title for good measure.



Open your plain text editor such as Text Edit, gedit, kate or Notepad... and compose the deep and profound prose of your newsletter. (I'm going to assume you know how to use some basic computer commands that are cross-platform such as Ctrl C for copy, Ctrl V for paste, that sort of thing. If not, please consult your O/S user manual.)

By the way: the profound prose in this "quick and dirty" tutorial example is the famous "Lorem Ipsum" quotation.



When you're finished composing, highlight and copy this deep wisdom to your clipboard. Now back to Inkscape.

Using the text tool: create a large enough box to house the contents of your clipboard. Do this by clicking and dragging the cursor with this tool across your screen somewhat away from other objects. Once your box is drawn to your satisfaction, consider selecting a reasonable font size that's right size for your newsletter, such as "11" shown here. "40" is a bit excessive.



Paste the contents of your clipboard into this newly created text box.

Click the Selector and your text box is "selected" like below.



While holding the Shift key click the last rectangle (or whatever design you used) first. Now both your text box and your last shape should be highlighted:



Good. While holding down the Shift key, continue selecting shapes until your first shape is selected last. So we're going backwards through our objects to do this correctly. The illustration below visually portrays my madness.



Good! All shapes are selected in backward order with my text box selected first.

Now from the menu bar:

Text > Flow into frame and you should see the following:



Feel free at this point to add images or drawings or whatnot. Of course, I put the horse in front of the cart. Normally you'd import an image and place it onto your newsletter first. Then shape your columns around it. Or one of those text boxes with the big quotation marks and large text that highlights the point of an article. Go nuts.



Warning: you can certainly delete your guide shapes. But any moving of your text will result in the loss of that shape. Sorry. Best way around this is to change your shapes to the color white for printing.

Your linked images for the tutorials are TIFF--most browsers (Opera, IE, Firefox) won't display TIFF images. You might like to convert them to an image format such as GIF, JPG or PNG so we can see them.

Sorry for the TIFFs. Mac's screen capture uses this format while Ubuntu uses PNG. So I've converted the images. Hope it makes a bit more sense now.

You can't hotlink images with MediaFire, so they are still not appearing You'll need to upload them to another hosting service that does allow hotlinking, such as ImageShack.

nice tutorial. Good work.

Thanks, Micro.

Thought I'd add a new link to the tutorial as HeathenX covered this idea in the 77th tutorial.

You, sir, are a rock star. I've been trying to figure this out for ages.

I do exactly what you say, but for some reason Inkscape turns my text "upside down" in the final result, what am I doing wrong?
I tried to select my objects in reverse order, and even flipping my text upside down before doing the "Flow into frame" thing. Nothing works.
Oh, also I'm running Inkscape 0.47 on Mac OS X 10.5.8, using X-Windows.

Whoa! Sorry for the delay. I didn't answer that last post in too timely a way.

I just gave my own tutorial a test run in Ubuntu using Inkscape 0.48. All success.

My Macbook Pro uses Tiger, O/S 10.4 with X Windows. As I created the tutorial on the Mac, clearly it worked for me. I believe the last possible version for Mac O/S 10.4.x = 0.47pre.

If my tutorial doesn't work for anyone, I suggest referring to HeathenX's version noted near the top of the tutorial.

BobSongs