[scribus] Story Editor thoughts

[Gregory Pittman]

Roger wrote:
> I dont remember if I already posted this so here revised are my 
> thoughts on the Story editor.
> My apologies if it's already been attended to.
> ------------======================------------------
>
> I would like to make a proposal for revising and simplifying Text 
> manipulation processes in Scribus.
>
> Single click in a text box the software should preempt that you wish 
> to manipulate the text box location and its contents. Brings up the 
> navigation -- position-on-page tools.
> Double Click in the text box you wish to manipulate - to brings up a 
> zoomed(200-300 percent)/zoomable version/image of the text box or a 
> simple borderless panel with the text displayed. Mouse wheel 
> vertically scrollable.
> Highlight a sentence or word in this panel and it zooms that 
> selection, click off the selection to revert back to the panel.
>
>
> Editor panel has:
> -- Same aspect ratio  as the text box. (eliminate the necessity to 
> zoom the whole page to get one text box or a bit of text).
> -- Same fonts as the text box.
> -- Same layout and design attributes but in edit mode
> -- No font manipulation tools, only style placement tool as now.
> -- Tab tools and ruler visible and operational.
>
> A narrow Text modification menu containing all the manipulation tools 
> as icons, not words, from the story editor and <Properties><Text> 
> appears beside the editor panel --  Or in preference appears in the 
> empty space at the bottom of the Scribus window where the scale, page 
> selection and Layers now display.
>
> Encourage general text insertion as plain font, egs helvetica, verdana 
> or BS Charter unfomatted and spellchecked.
>
> To place unformatted text in a text box, either drag and drop or have 
> the text file open, select/highlight  the portion of text and 
> cut/paste <Ctrl C V>the text to the text box. I sort of do this but it 
> requires the Story Editor to be open, adding an unnecessary level of 
> complexity.
>
> Perhaps the text box, image box, drawing tools etc  could be 
> considered separate entities. Where Scribus becomes another type of 
> desktop on which borderless windows (text or image boxes) are placed.
> To do all this would require a rethink of DTP and the programming 
> involved. I hope I've explained this well enough.
one of the reasons Story Editor exists is to speed up text entry. If you 
use Edit Contents mode, you can see how slow text entry can be when you 
are showing the correct font, linespacing, etc.
In the Roadmap here:
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/1.3.x_Roadmap#Text_Frames
you can see that some work is being done to improve the performance of 
Edit Contents.

Greg