[Scribus] How to place text in a box

[Timothy Boyden]

In HTML terms, what's being described is essentially a fieldset:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_fieldset.asp

Where most Scribus documents are destined for PDF documents, I'm not aware
of an equivalent element in PostScript or PDF, so I'm not sure how that
would/could translate. So even if there was an element or style that would
produce this effect in Scribus, it would be converted to lines/text when
exported to PostScript or PDF and lose it's relationships.

Currently the best way to achieve the effect would probably be to create two
text frames, and apply border and background styles to the text frames to
achieve the desired effect and then save them as a scrapbook item. This
would give you a consistently styled element throughout your document.

But perhaps this isn't what the original poster is looking for?

Just my $.02

-Tim



On 3/24/08 7:18 PM, "John Beardmore" <John at T4sLtd.co.uk> wrote:

> Chris Bergstresser wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 7:56 AM, John Beardmore <John at t4sltd.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>    You know, I'm going to say any typographic convention in common
>>>> usage in Victorian times counts as a "basic typesetting function".
>>> 
>>>  It may have been common, (quantify ?), but that doesn't mean that it's a
>>>  'primitive', or 'basic to', modern type setting practice or algorithms.
>> 
>>    Sadly, the British Library's archive isn't publicly accessible,
>> which would be the best resource for this sort of thing.  But I'm
>> browsing through the online Brooklyn Daily Eagle for December 1, 1902,
>> and in 20 pages I've found maybe a dozen examples of what I'm talking
>> about -- text set apart in boxes (decorative and otherwise) that needs
>> to flow with the text both before and after it.  And that's not
>> counting the dozens of tables, which suffer from the same problem.
>>    Note that I'm *not* referring to the title inset in the upper
>> border; that's also something I'd like but without the ability to have
>> boxes that flow it's kind of moot.
>> 
>>>  More to the point, if I pulled a hundred books off my shelves, I dount
>>>  more than 1% would use text in a box in quite the way you describe.
>> 
>>    I'll certainly agree it's not as common in typesetting books
>> (although more common in modern books than before).
> 
> Maybe, but the question I guess is 'how much decoration do you want ?'.
> 
> 
>>>  ... the feature you are requesting could be implemented in
>>>  vast number of styles, or alternatively have highly configurable style.
>>> 
>>>  That either means that a less general purpose, but more specific to your
>>>  needs, tool is produced...
>>>  ...or that the type of feature you want is added in a highly
>>>  configurable way, in which case it needs a lot of user interface, and
>>>  becomes a voluminous task, even if not algorithmically challenging.
>> 
>>    I don't disagree, if you wanted to do it *right* you'd have to
>> allow things like decorative spacers, individually configurable sides
>> (show borders on all but the right side), specify if borders should
>> appear between paragraphs as well, set the inset margin for each
>> border separately, specify if you want text to appear over the borders
>> and the style of that text if you do, etc, etc, etc ...  Word has a
>> serviceable interface for about half of this, and Illustrator has a
>> serviceable interface for roughly the other half.
> 
> Unlucky !
> 
> Is OO any help ?  It certainly seems to support anchoring a frame to a
> page and flowing text around it.
> 
> I find OO an uphill struggle for large complex documents though.  I'm
> co-authoring "Solar Water Heating and Dairy Farming ? Potential in the
> Peak District National Park, Review of technology & issues" and am
> getting very pissed with OO Writer.  If only we'd know about Scribus
> when we started this one !  The next work in progress on liquid biofuels
> has already begun in Scribus.
> 
> 
>>    But really, just allowing you to draw a line border around a given
>> paragraph style, and specify the line weight, is most of what you
>> need.  I also kind of need the inset font on the top border, and
>> that'd be a nice feature as well, but I'll concede it's an
>> idiosyncratic need.
> 
> Yes -  and I suspect that the level of decoration you want is perhaps a
> bit of a niche too.
> 
> 
>>>  I guess you could submit a feature request, but as you think it "doesn't
>>>  seem like a specially difficult", and the source is open, why not have a
>>>  go ?
>> 
>>    Because I program Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, and a
>> slew of statistical languages.  Also Pascal and Visual Basic, if those
>> count.  But I *don't* program C++.  I literally wouldn't know where to
>> start.
> 
> OK -  I'll concede that the learning curve may be a bit steep if your
> time is short.  The guys who are writing Scribus sure are doing us a
> huge favour !
> 
> 
> Cheers, J/.