[Scribus] Ideas on collaboration

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Alex,

>>Would you make a definite statement that you are considering the text frames
>>> to be an adequate level of abstraction? Would there be a need to become more
>>> granular and go to text blocks within the text frames? As we transition to
>>> character styles, every contiguous block of text that belongs to the same
>>> character style becomes a separate entity that can be referenced and
>>> substituted in its entirety. I would really like to arrive at a consensus
>>> about the "editable text block" granularity if possible.
> 
> If you have use a  textframe as entity wouldn't that make a problem in the case 
> of connected frames if the amount of text in the editable frame increases? What 
> to to with the overflowing text? For me your approach with a paragraph as 
> "editable text block" seems more logical. But this is just a thought of me.

Let me put it that way: I considered the frame based approach (including 
linked frames) useful for large projects like books. In such projects, 
authors will work on their text without any connection to the final 
layout (that's how it works at the moment anyway). Ralf-Diether's 
objection concerning large amounts of texts won't be solved by more 
granularity, because the problem remains, even if text can be edited on 
a per paragraph base. This is a problem of discipline and clear 
instructions.

However, I think it might be useful to have the opportunity to directly 
edit the text per paragraph for smaller projects (newsletter etc.). So 
why not prepare the file format to allow both, per frame as well as per 
paragraph editing? Whether scribus or any other software will make use 
of the oppurtunities isn't something one should care about at the 
moment, as long as the file structure allows for them.

Christoph