[scribus-dev] Editable Master Pages

"Christoph Schäfer" christoph-schaefer at gmx.de
Sat Aug 2 16:46:10 CEST 2008


In reply to Louis:

"Quark allows any changes to the Master Page once it is applied to any page
and vice versa. What people miss here cruelly is a way to find out what
object came from the Master Page and what didn't. And when they make a
change on the wrong "page" (ie, the Document Page instead of the Master
Page) not only those changes will not apply to all related pages but that
very page they modified by error will not be affected by the Master Page
changes while the user expect the opposite. Once the link to the Master Page
is broken, there is no way back. Also, linking text boxes from within a
Master Page is possible but the procedure is not obvious and for this reason
many people prefer to do this by hand...

ID tried to solve the Quark dilemma and offers the possibility of making the
Master Page and the page it applies to in a sync way or in an un-sync way. I
am not familiar enough with ID to give a full explanation of how it works
but I fully trust it's also a bit complicated... (outside the theory, in the
real life, that is!)."

I really think the implementation of master pages in both programs is ugly (especially Quark's). That's why I tried to find a way that's more transparent. 

"The result of all this is often only power users make a proper use of Master
Pages and even then they get mixed up sometimes. This is why I say it is a
work in progress. The concept of Master Pages might be simple to be
expressed in a few words, but when it comes to implementation, it is not
that obviously simple."


We shouldn't look at any commercial program, but find a way that's user-friendly and as simple as possible, but also flexible.

"Sorry to repeat myself but I do believe a summarizing table would help here.
Once we have put that together and get our ideas straight, it's going to be
a matter of choice and because of this, we will not make everyone happy."

Maybe a graphic would help even more to visualise the issues... ?

"I think we have a couple of things to do. First, complete that documentation
so people know what is going on and how to use this feature the way it work
now."

DONE ;)

"By the way, when duplicating pages, if we could at the same time manage the
text frame linking, it would solve another 5% of the cases where editable
Master Pages are necessary... (should I file a bug report for this one?)"


Yes. Please do.

Christoph




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