[Scribus] Import of ODT file into Scribus.

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Freitag, 3. August 2007 21:57 schrieb John R. Culleton:
> As an experiment I am trying out a novel in Scribus. I converted the
> client's half dozen .DOC files to ODT format in Open Office, and I
> imported the first one (prologue and 10 chapters) into Scribus.  Here
> are some problems.
> 1. Every step I take is so slow that I could almost take a coffee
> break between request and completion.

John, please don't resent this, but you are an active member of this list, and 
I really think you should know by now that Scribus is _not_ the ideal tool 
for a project like yours, at least not yet. ;)

>
> 2. The novel text is in a uniform style. However Scribus managed to
> generate 28 different styles for essentally identical paragraphs. Is
> there something I should do as part of the importation process to
> reduce the number of styles? Or should I just go through and change
> the style of each such paragraph to a common one?

There is an option presented to you during import called "Merge Paragraph 
Styles" which will prevent the creation of multiple identical styles. It is 
described in the Scribus manual, and the manual is shipped with Scribus to be 
actually read ;)

>
> 3. Paragraph indentation is excessive, but when I edit the style it
> shows nothing on the indentation graphic. How do I globally create a
> smaller indentation? This relates to comment 2 above I suspect. In
> hte sory editor the indent deletes as if it were a tab character.

I advise you to follow Louis' hints here.

>
> I will probably typset this novel in LaTeX. 

Good idea, at least for the time being.

> But I would like to work 
> toward a viable methodology for using Scribus in similar projects.

You're not alone :)


Cheers

Christoph