[Scribus] Suggestion for Frames

[Louis Desjardins]

>Louis Desjardins wrote:
>>  You're absolutely right, there is no room for confusion while using
>>  the styles. When in the Style Manager, the user can apply a keyboard
>>  shortcut to any style or leave it like that. If the user choose not
>>  to apply any keyboard shortcut, the only way to access the style will
>>  be through the Style Manager dialog (or palette) with mouse clicks.
>>  One click, one style. When a keyboard shortcut is applied, then this
>>  style can be applied with a keystroke. Whether the keystroke will
>>  have an effect or not depends on the context. One shortcut, one style.
>>
>>  Case:
>>  1. You have set 3 Paragraph Styles for Main Title, Lead Paragraph and
>>  Body Text, Main Title.
>>  2. You have given these 3 styles keyboard shortcut 1, 2 and 3 on the keypad.
>>  3. You have set 3 Frame Styles for Main Title, Lead Paragraph and 
>>Body Text :
>>  a) Large Frame that covers the width of the page, with a height of 3
>>  cm within the margins, one column.
>>  b) Frame covering 2 column width plus the gap, for Lead Paragraph,
>>  with a height of 6 cm, one column.
>>  c) Large frame covering the width and height of the page, within the
>>  margins, set to 5 columns.
>>  4. You give Frame Style a b c the following keyboard shortcut 4, 5
>>  and 6 on the keybad.
>>
>>  Now, when you're on a page with no object selected, if you hit keypad
>>  1 2 or 3, nothing will happen. If you hit keypad 4,5 or 6, a text
>>  frame correspondind to your Frame Style will be created.
>>  In order for styles attributed to shortcut 1, 2 or 3 to work, you
>>  need to first select a Text Frame.
>>
>>  
>I think the "nothing happening" is consistent with other features of
>Scribus which depend on a frame being selected. One other question might
>be whether there should be an indicator on the toolbar that shows when
>the feature is active (frame selected), then greyed out when a frame is
>not selected.
>>  We could also set other Frame Styles for Images. Say for instance you
>>  have a magazine with 3 columns. Pics can be 1-column wide, 2-column
>>  or 3 column. For each, you can set a Frame Style with these
>>  pre-defined coordinates. Attribute to these the shortcuts 7, 8 and 9.
>>  You expect Scribus to create an image frame once you hit one of these
>>  3 shortcuts.
>>
>>  To create a Frame using the Style manager follows the same rules that
>>  you have to follow to draw any frame. You need to have a page in
>>  front of you. A Frame can be created on the page, within another
>>  frame or beside it. It doesn't matter.
>>
>>  Same goes for Line Style or for any style. There cannot be any mix up
>>  because the same keystroke cannot call two different styles. If you
>>  need more keys, then you need to have a combination of Shift+Keypad
>>  or CTRL+Keypad, etc. Of course a power user will prefer to set the
>>  first keys available to the more repetitive tasks, leaving the other
>>  for less used styles. Provided the context is favorable for the Style
>>  to be applied, then the shortcut works. It's like hitting any key on
>>  the keyboard: it works only if the working conditions are met.
>>
>>  If we are to have Image Style, this could only apply to an existing
>>  image within an Image Frame. If you hit the shortcut that is
>>  connected to an Image Style when you are editing text, then nothing
>>  will happen.
>>
>>  In my office, we use those keypad shortcut everyday. In Quark, we are
>>  limited to Text Styles (paragraph and character styles). The keyboard
>>  is the fastest way to get things done (the mouse is really slow, we
>>  all know that). I can only see that implementing this in Scribus will
>>  definitely make it a very robust production tool. Expanding it to
>>  many other styles (Line, Characters, Frames, etc.) will make Scribus
>>  roar! :)
>>
>>  
>One of the things that keeps me using Wordperfect is macros. There are
>many things in which it is convenient to assign a name to an arbitrary
>series of operations. I'm not sure if you still can, but you used to be
>able to assign a keyboard shortcut to a particular macro. This might be
>something else to weave into this frame styles concept.

Yes. This is what I had in mind when I used the word "script". I was 
thinking of a way to easily do successive operations in one 
keystroke. What you describe is exactly that. Thanks!

Louis

>
>Greg
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