[scribus] 1.3.5 Windows spelling checker ?

joseph harris smilepoet at vfemail.net
Thu Aug 21 10:19:50 CEST 2008


From: "Frank Cox"
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:11:03 +0200 (CEST)
> "Peter Nermander" <peter at nermander.se> wrote:
>
>> I would also want the story editor to be possible to run as a 
>> standalone
>> application, so you can send it to people and have them write 
>> the text in
>> it (and then just drop that text straight into text frames in 
>> Scribus).
>
> Isn't the stand-alone story editor (with a spelling checker and 
> everything)
> currently called OpenOffice?
>
> -- 
> MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ 
> http://www.melvilletheatre.com
>

;-)

I am reminded of earlier discussions. In the days of hot metal 
the barriers to changes were quite strong, and often an error, a 
misspelt word or the need to shorten an article or story in the 
newspaper world was achieved by chipping the lead word(s); which 
did not look nice on the page.

With cut and paste from the early digital systems for typesetting 
again emergencies had to be handled in a variety of ways that 
would leave untidy gaps, or strange layouts.

DTP generally changed that by enabling changes to be made 
relatively easily to the last moment, without unsightly evidence 
of a problem. This has led in a very greatly expanded area of 
publishing activity to late correction.

So the objective of spell check in the layout frames seems to me 
a no-brainer; of course there may be problems getting there. But 
while agreeing with John B. about this I would point out to him 
(referencing our earlier discussion) that indeed this is possible 
in Serif PagePlus, maybe others.

I am not now sure if Scribus aims to be 'all things to all 
users', or to serve the high end where layout issues are very 
important. I say this because I get a hint of workflow issues 
being decided without research into needs or wants.

It is desireable, as the developers point out, not have a bloated 
basic program, a fault with serif and others. Noting the 'hidden' 
nature of  many of the abilities of the program (from a lot of 
queries and answers) might there not be a need to create a more 
intuitive interface?

Joseph Harris 





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