[Scribus] lively debate

[Mardigrafe - Louis Desjardins]

? (At) 11:14 -0500 09/01/04, Bob White ?crivait (wrote) :
>With reference to spell checking, I'm doing a document that has a text
>box for a heading, a small box with "normal" text, a couple of pictures,
>captions in a text box for the picture, another header, etc.
>
>In other words, there are 6 or 8 text boxes per page.  Importing text
>only imports one box at a time, so using another application for spell
>checking is severely painful.  I could get by if there was an export
>of the whole document to a text file.  Then I could run a spell check
>elsewhere and manually transport the corrections back, but a spell
>checker would be ideal.

This is a very interesting discussion. Let me share my working experience : DTP with Quark for over 15 years now (and so many white hair!).

On the production side, what you want is THE definitive text (which, obviously, is wishful thinking but anyway!). In our view, the spellchecking and text editing must be done upstream. Then, the text arrives in our caring hands for a shape-up, along with the pics and logos and so on. What one would expect, at that stage of the work, is a normal proof-reading that would lead to identify small corrections, typos, etc. Nothing that will bother too much the layout. All this to say, when in production - and I mean "production" where you have to deal with hundreds of pages everyday - there is not much room (time) for spellchecking by that same worker. This is done, usually, by another team of specialized workers, the proofreaders, whose job is not to identify some typos but to identify the typos!

HOWEVER!!!! ...

On the other side of production, some people (and there may be lots of people!) are going to edit the text and organize the layout in "one" single step (in some way).

QuarkXPress is not a renowned program for its spellchecking capabilities. Over the years, other vendors have come up with mature solutions. Some are connected to Quark (through XTensions) some are confined to the word processor...

It is a matter of how you see this work. From my point of view, I wouldn't ask for a spellchecker in Scribus. But if there was one, I think it would be useful anyway, to a fair percentage of the users, maybe more on the "bureautic" side of the editing planet!

Does that sound fair enough!?

By the way, I missed a few ones on yesterday's wishes (but it might be there already) :
- tracking/kerning (so useful)
- horizontal scaling of fonts

Also : if there is to be such thing as bullet/numbering function, please let us control the settings! We like much more using tabs and positive/negative numbers to set properly any kind of hierarchical information (than the automated and so hard to cope with automated settings that are in some word processors...).

Good day to all!

Louis Desjardins

>
>This is the first document I've done with Scribus, so I'm still
>learning.  Maybe there is a better way to format the document.  I will
>say that Scribus is the best program I've ever used to get the layout
>the way I want it.  I started this document in StarOffice. Initally,
>everything goes much faster, then the automatic stuff starts getting to
>you.  Pretty soon, there is a jumble of stuff that is impossible to sort
>out.
>
>Keep up the good work, and I vote for a spellchecker.
>
>Bob White
>
>- - - - - - -
>http://www.bob-white.com
>N93BD - Rotary Powered BD-4
>
>_______________________________________________
>Scribus mailing list
>Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
>http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus

-- 

MARDIGRAFE INC.
T?l 514.934.1353
Fax 514.934.3698
<http://www.mardigrafe.com>