Good Publishing Tool

I am looking for a good publishing tool to write articles. I saw the book "Head First Python" from O'Reily Media and found it really interesting, the way they present things in the book.

I am looking to organize my articles in similar fashion. I am looking for a similar publishing tool in Ubuntu or Windows. I would prefer a open source alternative.

Regards Kiran

Scribus is the most popular open source desktop publishing application, it is available from the software center.

That O'Reilly series of books uses lots of illustration, diagrams and fancy fonts. You need a full-blown DTP application for that - only Scribus comes to mind. Chances are O'Reilly use the proprietary InDesign application. For a full book, Scribus might not be powerful enough (although it is worth a try). Something simpler might be accomplished with OpenOffice.org.

Less graphically complex documents can be typeset with LaTeX. With LaTeX, some things - like good-looking type - are easy, but some other things - like pixel-perfect tables - are hard to get right without lots of programming. This is an example of a whole book with all the tools required to turn it into a PDF ready to go to the press.