[Scribus] some concerns / making scribus better

[Emanuel Schwarz]

Hi All,

Iam the layouter of an local non-profit youth-magazine. In the past i did
this in Adobe InDesign which i really like. But since iam really
interrested in open-source now and finally hopped over to the Linux world,
Scribus took its place.

A week ago i finished the first issue completely in open-source software,
and what should i say - iam never going back to windows. The first steps
with Scribus where surprisingly easy, i like the look and feel of it.
Everything is allmost self-explaining and the workflow nearly hits
InDesign. Also, like every linux/open-source prog the community seems
quite nice and willing to help those who are in need. 

And to contribute to this great project, at least i could tell you which
things could be made better, what decreased my workflow or what simply is
a pain in the neck.

1.: In the "Property"-Window is always "X, Y, Z" selected after
deselecting the current object.
which is very annoying if you have to change many objects of the same kind.
It would be better if it stays in the menu you leaved it or if you could
open more than one menus at the same time (Form, Text, Lines,..)

2.: When you move or scale an object by clicking the arrows, or use the
mouse wheel, the value always goes up/down by an whole millimeter (or what
units youve selected).
I think it should first make an integer and then goes up/down by an whole
unit (75.19 mm > should first make 76.00 mm and then 77.00 when you raise
it stepwise)

3.: I want to paste text directly on the workspace, not to first make an
textbox and paste it in there.
it should use the standard font and font size selected.

4.:There should be an right-allignd-justification. (i know this is
allready mentiond before, but its really important)

5.: the justification algorithm dont seems to be the best. it should alter
the distances between letters automatically if i want to.
right now i have to manually edit it, what really costs time when
layouting a newspaper.

6.: It might be my computer, but if the layouting document gets big,
scribus can slow down quite a bit.
I never had this problem in InDesign, which i thought must be way slower.

7.: when marking the whole text in a textbox its hard to mark the first
letter. in general its often a problem to mark exactly the letters you
want.

thats it for now, ill posting some more issues if i find them ... or if i
can remember what should be changed. i hope i could be a little help to
make scribus a better programm. I wait for the moment when scribus is that
good that i can forget about my InDesign :)

wishes / emanuel