[Scribus] Problems in Scribus

[hovergo at net-tech.com.au]

Hi
  I have inserted some comments into the text below. as I too initially
had difficulties until I realised the  - advantages - of  Scribus / DTP
as different to word processing.



>>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,..)

I find the properties dialog a bit awkward but once you get accustomed to
using it - it's very fast and efficient.



>>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).

To get micro movement hold <shift> and <ctrl> keus down while tapping
the arrow key.
An alternative is to enter the position into the x and y distance value
boxes - believe me, getting acustomed to double clicking and entering
the actual values for positioning is faster than tapping and holding keys.
One suggestion is to remove (set to 0 ) the left and right, top and
bottom  distances of text from the frame the defailt of .353 doesnt help
me in my layout work.

Use the x,y,z for lines too, you can set accurate positions and line
lengths, its very fast.



>>3.: I want to paste text directly on the workspace, not to first make an
>>textbox and paste it in there.

what you ask, is like pasting into outer space, there would be no
reference for how and where you want to place the object. A text or
image box is a very convenvient container.

You are talking about freedom versus constraint.
In Sctibus you are free to create what you wish as you wish, with few if
any limitations.

With proprietary Word Processors, there is no such freedom, you are
(deceived) constrained into a narrow field of pre defined operations
where the page is 1 big text box with all the limitations of a text box.
Control of individual text boxes in 3D space makes DTP and Scrbus  the
better tool
we do not contend with  some one elses idea of what it should be.

With respect, if you want to do placement of images and text in a
proprietary word processor you still have to use text and image boxes -
but -- They simply do not stay on the page, they move uncontrolably,
even disappear as you change text and layout.

In my instance I save 3 weeks layout work for every publication, by
initially
taking a week to learn and understand scribus.


>>it should use the standard font and font size selected.

Some fonts are not truly universal and  Scribus  seems to use
universally accepted standard commercial printable fonts.


> 
>>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.


Try the settings that set distance between letters, in version 1.2.4 I
set the distances (in the text editor) at -0.3 to -0.5 and got perfect
justification, in version 1.3.3 those do not work the same  so I use 0.7
to 0.9 to get near the same result.
You can also in 1.3.3 vary the font width, this combined wit the above
works for me.


>>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.
>>
Is the Grid on  and is the grid spacing small, the green grid slows my
machine to a crawl so I use it sparingly
Switch it on to get placement on vertical lines and then off.
Use Base Line grid for placement of horizontals, it doesn't affect the
computer speed.



>>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.
>>  
> 
> Try Ctrl+A, or hold down Shift and use arrows.
> 


Alternatively,  edit in a text box only if there is no other way.
(Text Box edit) is  not necessary in Scribus
Once you get acustomed to doing your text editing and basic layout in
the editor the problems will go away.
Another consideration would be that you store your text in files and
folders as plain text, which makes it available to any word processor,
text editor and pretty much any other software and it uses very little
disk storage space. what coule be better and more efficient than that.

Hint - make yout text editor window the same '  word width  ' as the
text box so you
have the same number of words per line as in the frame, it makes
sentence, paragraph and centering layout in the editor much easier.



My 2 wishes for change would be:
a save button which does not close down the editor, its a pain having to
re open it for every change and there could be a dozen changes in one
text frame.
and <Save to File> which automatically knows which text file I am
working on. Often I have several versions of the same text file  for
various publications of the same newsletter  and find it time consuming
to have to search for the corrrect version before I can do a save to file.

Hope this helps
Roger