[scribus] Editing Text in Text Box

Paul backpages1 at gmail.com
Sun May 4 17:33:50 CEST 2008


Good Morning,

In reference to this:

If there's one thing that bugs me about scribus, and it's bugged me
about Pagemaker and InDesign too, is that editing text in a text box is
so slow that sometimes it's hard to see what you've typed or selected.

I suspect that in some sense the developers see the 'righteous' answer
as to use the story editor, but then you can't see how the layout is
shaping up.  Generally I have a preference for editing direct in the
text box -  at least it's WYSIWYG.  Personally I'd be happy to dispense
with the story editor editor altogether, though that may mean that I'm
missing some tricks.

Could you briefly explain what you are talking about here? I had no problem
editing text within the multiple text boxes I used on my
Newspaper/Newsletter Template. Is there some other 'text box' that I should
be aware of before I continue development additional pages to my project?
Paul

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 3:38 AM, <scribus-request at lists.scribus.net> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re:  [Scribus] text with gradient (D. R. Evans)
>   2. Re:  Scribus on 'modern' machines (John Beardmore)
>   3. Re:  [Scribus] text with gradient (Gregory Pittman)
>   4. Re:  Scribus on 'modern' machines (Craig Ringer)
>   5. Re:  Scribus on 'modern' machines (John Beardmore)
>   6. Re:  Scribus 1.3.5svn on Debian testing: problems with
>      paragraph styles (Craig Bradney)
>   7. Re:  [Scribus] text with gradient (Thomas Zastrow)
>   8. Re:  Scribus 1.3.5svn on Debian testing: problems with
>      paragraph styles (Andreas Speck)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 06:20:55 -0600
> From: "D. R. Evans" <doc.evans at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] [Scribus] text with gradient
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481C58A7.8020006 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Gregory Pittman said the following at 05/02/2008 09:02 PM :
>
> >>
> > Do we need more here?
> > http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Text_Gradients
>
> My suggestions would be:
>
> 1. Make it a whole lot more obvious how to find that page. (What seems
> obvious to me: searching on "gradient" was no help at all, and led me to
> believe that the entire topic was absent. Doing it again, I see that
> actually it is there... at item #14, behind stuff like GSoC, and well off
> the bottom of the initial screen, so although "search" found the "Text
> Gradients" article, it's not actually likely that someone would have the
> patience to read down the list far enough to discover it.)
>
> 2. Detailed comments about the text on that page:
>
> The first thing to do is to select the frame, then click Item > Convert To
> > Outlines, or use the Context menu.
>
> [should be something more like: The operations are as follows:
>
> 1. Select the frame;
> 2. From either the Insert menu or by right-clicking, select "Convert To"
> 3. Click on "Outlines"
> ]
>
> In the middle example, we then click Item > Ungroup to separate the
> individual letters, then click each one and use the gradients in
> Properties
> > Colors as desired. If you do not ungroup, you can choose different
> colors
> for each letter, but there will be one kind of gradient possible for all
> letters
>
> [what does "one kind of gradient possible for all letters" mean? My
> natural
> reaction is: "well I want to apply only one gradient to each letter. Why
> would I ever want to apply more than one gradient to a letter?".]
>
> "use the gradients in Properties > Colors as desired" sounds fine...
> except
> that the way that the gradient works in Properties | Colours is very
> puzzling, and there should be a link to a page that explains exactly what
> the little red and blue triangles are, and why I get more of them if I
> click, and how to get rid of the additional ones.
>
>  Doc
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 16:39:31 +0100
> From: John Beardmore <John at T4sLtd.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus on 'modern' machines
> To: "scribus at lists.scribus.net >> Scribus User Mailing List"
>        <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481C8733.4000501 at T4sLtd.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Craig Ringer wrote:
>
> > Scribus is single threaded,
>
> In the long term though, is this because the algorithms can't be
> parallelised, or because that's the way things have evolved ?
>
> Mind you -  I can imagine that in a cross platform development
> environment, keeping things single threaded is one thing less to have go
> wrong.
>
>
> Cheers, J/.
> --
> John Beardmore, MSc EDM (Open), B.A. Chem (Oxon), CMIOSH, AIEMA, MEI
> Managing Director, T4 Sustainability Limited. http://www.T4sLtd.co.uk/
> Carbon Trust Consultant: Energy Audit, Carbon Footprint, Design Advice
> Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, (EEAS), Registered Assessor
> Phone: 0845 4561332   Mobile: 07785 563116   Skype: t4sustainability
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 12:13:47 -0400
> From: Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] [Scribus] text with gradient
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481C8F3B.3080600 at iglou.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> D. R. Evans wrote:
> > My suggestions would be:
> >
> > 1. Make it a whole lot more obvious how to find that page. (What seems
> > obvious to me: searching on "gradient" was no help at all, and led me to
> > believe that the entire topic was absent. Doing it again, I see that
> > actually it is there... at item #14, behind stuff like GSoC, and well
> off
> > the bottom of the initial screen, so although "search" found the "Text
> > Gradients" article, it's not actually likely that someone would have the
> > patience to read down the list far enough to discover it.)
> >
> There is this page: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Index
> I'll add some more pointers to it from HowTos and Tips and Tricks.
> > 2. Detailed comments about the text on that page:
> >
> Check again, see if you think it's better:
> http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Text_Gradients
> > [what does "one kind of gradient possible for all letters" mean? My
> natural
> > reaction is: "well I want to apply only one gradient to each letter. Why
> > would I ever want to apply more than one gradient to a letter?".]
> >
> > "use the gradients in Properties > Colors as desired" sounds fine...
> except
> > that the way that the gradient works in Properties | Colours is very
> > puzzling, and there should be a link to a page that explains exactly
> what
> > the little red and blue triangles are, and why I get more of them if I
> > click, and how to get rid of the additional ones.
> >
> I've also added a new, separate page (since this has more use than just
> your specific need):
> http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Color_Tab_and_Gradients
>
> It's also worth mentioning that our official Scribus manual is nearing
> completion, with proceeds from the sale of this printed manual to
> benefit the Scribus project.
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 00:44:56 +0800
> From: Craig Ringer <craig at postnewspapers.com.au>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus on 'modern' machines
> To: John at T4sLtd.co.uk, Scribus User Mailing List
>        <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481C9688.4010907 at postnewspapers.com.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> John Beardmore wrote:
> > Craig Ringer wrote:
> >
> >> Scribus is single threaded,
> >
> > In the long term though, is this because the algorithms can't be
> > parallelised, or because that's the way things have evolved ?
>
> A bit of both, and a large dose of "it's way easier to get it right if
> you do it in a single thread".
>
> There are definitely areas where using multiple threads would be useful.
> Many of them are *not* so much to permit the use of multiple cores for
> computation as to permit better UI responsiveness. However, using
> multiple threads in situations where the threads must coordinate in
> non-trivial ways gets incredibly complicated in a hurry, and may not be
> worth it.
>
> There are lots of tricks Scribus and other programs can use (some of
> which Scribus does use) to hide the fact that the program can only do
> one thing at once. For example, it can delay work and do it in small
> chunks, in between processing user input. This can be surprisingly
> complex, though, and may sometimes perform significantly worse than
> doing it all in one go. Scribus can also periodically explicitly check
> for user input during long-running batch operations - but if you want to
> act on user input, not just do things like UI redraws and progress bar
> updates, then this too gets very complicated in a hurry.
>
> You may notice that the common element here is "get[s] very complicated
> in a hurry". Any sort of non-trivial parallel operation is *hard* to get
> right, especially with the rather primitive tools available in C++ and
> most other languages. Qt4 helps a little bit, but its facilities were
> not around when Scribus was initially written and they are very far from
> a complete solution to the complexity anyway.
>
> If Scribus was able to use multiple threads, it could reserve one thread
> for the interactive user interface widgets. Theoretically things like
> complex text reflow, canvas redraws, image processing, etc could be done
> in other threads. In practice, though, synchronizing everything
> correctly can be so complex that you have to think carefully about
> whether it's worth doing. The easy synchronization methods leave you
> with multiple threads, but with only one thread actually doing useful
> work at any one time, so you're not gaining anything. If you don't use
> such strictly limited synchronization you open yourself to the risk of
> weird errors and deadlocks caused by an overlooked interaction between
> threads.
>
> If you let the user keep on doing things while the program is busy
> working on a big task, you similarly create complexity. If a user can
> continue working on one document while another is being prepped for
> printing, for example, you have to make sure they can do nothing that
> modifies the state of the document being prepped for printing.
>
> I'm sure there are a few areas where Scribus _could_ benefit from
> muli-threaded parallelism, though.
>
> PDF export comes to mind. PDF has a nice structure where many PDF
> objects are largely independent, with only relatively few contact points
> between different structures. Scribus could almost certainly export
> multiple pages at the same time using different threads. It'd have to
> have a synchronized resource manager for xref updates and actual disk
> write-out, and would need to do some work to handle shared images,
> fonts, and other resources, but it should be possible. It could also use
> separate threads for the processing big fonts and images without holding
> up the rest of the page export.
>
> This would, however, require a total rewrite of PDF export, and possibly
> significant amounts of work elsewhere in the code. It'd be a huge job,
> and wouldn't be a huge win if all it did was parallel export. As it
> happens PDF export can be improved in other ways (processing images in
> small chunks without loading the whole thing into RAM, for example) but
> those improvements can be made without rewriting the whole thing.
>
> Mostly, though, there's not much Scribus could gain from multi-threading
> without a ground up rewrite. Even then, it'd be hugely complex to gain
> much except in a few big batch operations.
>
> [BTW: I mention PDF export partly because I've been idly wondering about
> adding support for multithreaded PDF writing in PoDoFo if a C++0x
> compiler is available, so I've been thinking about how thread-friendly
> PDF is.]
>
> > Mind you -  I can imagine that in a cross platform development
> > environment, keeping things single threaded is one thing less to have go
> > wrong.
>
> The cross-platform aspect doesn't seem to be too bad so long as you
> stick to doing all your user interface in a single thread, stick to one
> thread for disk I/O to/from a particular file, etc.
>
> --
> Craig Ringer
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 18:35:55 +0100
> From: John Beardmore <John at T4sLtd.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus on 'modern' machines
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481CA27B.1060907 at T4sLtd.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Craig Ringer wrote:
>
> > If Scribus was able to use multiple threads, it could reserve one thread
> > for the interactive user interface widgets. Theoretically things like
> > complex text reflow, canvas redraws, image processing, etc could be done
> > in other threads. In practice, though, synchronizing everything
> > correctly can be so complex that you have to think carefully about
> > whether it's worth doing. The easy synchronization methods leave you
> > with multiple threads, but with only one thread actually doing useful
> > work at any one time, so you're not gaining anything. If you don't use
> > such strictly limited synchronization you open yourself to the risk of
> > weird errors and deadlocks caused by an overlooked interaction between
> > threads.
>
> Yes -  I suppose I was thinking of things like image processing, where a
> larch chunk of CPU use has relatively well defined interface to the
> calling code, and there will probably be other things that usefully be
> done while the processing is undertaken.
>
> It would be nice to address the general tardiness of the user interface
> though.  Maybe QT4 will bring some benefits there ?
>
>
> >...
> >
> > I'm sure there are a few areas where Scribus _could_ benefit from
> > muli-threaded parallelism, though.
> >
> > PDF export comes to mind. PDF has a nice structure where many PDF
> > objects are largely independent, with only relatively few contact points
> > between different structures. Scribus could almost certainly export
> > multiple pages at the same time using different threads. It'd have to
> > have a synchronized resource manager for xref updates and actual disk
> > write-out, and would need to do some work to handle shared images,
> > fonts, and other resources, but it should be possible. It could also use
> > separate threads for the processing big fonts and images without holding
> > up the rest of the page export.
>
> OK.
>
>
> > This would, however, require a total rewrite of PDF export, and possibly
> > significant amounts of work elsewhere in the code. It'd be a huge job,
> > and wouldn't be a huge win if all it did was parallel export. As it
> > happens PDF export can be improved in other ways (processing images in
> > small chunks without loading the whole thing into RAM, for example) but
> > those improvements can be made without rewriting the whole thing.
>
> OK.
>
>
> > Mostly, though, there's not much Scribus could gain from multi-threading
> > without a ground up rewrite. Even then, it'd be hugely complex to gain
> > much except in a few big batch operations.
>
> If there's one thing that bugs me about scribus, and it's bugged me
> about Pagemaker and InDesign too, is that editing text in a text box is
> so slow that sometimes it's hard to see what you've typed or selected.
>
> I suspect that in some sense the developers see the 'righteous' answer
> as to use the story editor, but then you can't see how the layout is
> shaping up.  Generally I have a preference for editing direct in the
> text box -  at least it's WYSIWYG.  Personally I'd be happy to dispense
> with the story editor editor altogether, though that may mean that I'm
> missing some tricks.
>
>
> > [BTW: I mention PDF export partly because I've been idly wondering about
> > adding support for multithreaded PDF writing in PoDoFo if a C++0x
> > compiler is available, so I've been thinking about how thread-friendly
> > PDF is.]
>
> OK.
>
>
> >> Mind you -  I can imagine that in a cross platform development
> >> environment, keeping things single threaded is one thing less to have
> >> go wrong.
> >
> > The cross-platform aspect doesn't seem to be too bad so long as you
> > stick to doing all your user interface in a single thread, stick to one
> > thread for disk I/O to/from a particular file, etc.
>
> OK -  Thanks for a very full answer !
>
>
> Cheers, J/.
> --
> John Beardmore, MSc EDM (Open), B.A. Chem (Oxon), CMIOSH, AIEMA, MEI
> Managing Director, T4 Sustainability Limited. http://www.T4sLtd.co.uk/
> Carbon Trust Consultant: Energy Audit, Carbon Footprint, Design Advice
> Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, (EEAS), Registered Assessor
> Phone: 0845 4561332   Mobile: 07785 563116   Skype: t4sustainability
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 23:26:36 +0200
> From: Craig Bradney <cbradney at zip.com.au>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus 1.3.5svn on Debian testing: problems
>        with paragraph styles
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <200805032326.37069.cbradney at zip.com.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="utf-8"
>
>
> > BTW - I noticed another small problem in the story editor, and didn't
> > check if it is already filed as a bug. When I'm in the story editor and
> > want to enter a '-', it evaluates it as a command to reduce th view of
> > the pages to a smaller size, but does not enter a '-' into the text.
> > That is pretty annoying.
>
> You are running with an old set of keyboard shortcuts. The default
> shortcuts
> for zoom are Control -/+ in current 1.3.5svn. Pressing these will still
> zoom
> the canvas while in story editor. You can either edit the shortcut in
> preferences, or nuke all your SHORTCUT entries in your preferences file
> and
> it will recreate them with the default settings.
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 08:40:56 +0200
> From: Thomas Zastrow <listen at thomas-zastrow.de>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] [Scribus] text with gradient
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <481D5A78.1080603 at thomas-zastrow.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> D. R. Evans schrieb:
>
> <snip />
>
> I also wrote something about gradients & Co., perhaps you find it useful:
>
> http://www.thomas-zastrow.de/readarticle.php?article_id=44
>
> Best,
>
> Tom
>
> --
> ----------------------------
> http://www.thomas-zastrow.de
> ----------------------------
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 10:34:06 +0100
> From: Andreas Speck <andreas.speck at tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Scribus 1.3.5svn on Debian testing: problems
>        with paragraph styles
> To: scribus at lists.scribus.net
> Message-ID: <20080504103406.7b412e3f at andreasspeck.info>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, 3 May 2008 23:26:36 +0200
> Craig Bradney <cbradney at zip.com.au> wrote:
>
> >
> > > BTW - I noticed another small problem in the story editor, and
> > > didn't check if it is already filed as a bug. When I'm in the story
> > > editor and want to enter a '-', it evaluates it as a command to
> > > reduce th view of the pages to a smaller size, but does not enter a
> > > '-' into the text. That is pretty annoying.
> >
> > You are running with an old set of keyboard shortcuts. The default
> > shortcuts for zoom are Control -/+ in current 1.3.5svn. Pressing
> > these will still zoom the canvas while in story editor. You can
> > either edit the shortcut in preferences, or nuke all your SHORTCUT
> > entries in your preferences file and it will recreate them with the
> > default settings.
> >
> > Regards
> > Craig
> Thanks, Craig. I'll try that.
>
> Best wishes,
> Andreas
>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > scribus mailing list
> > scribus at lists.scribus.net
> > http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
>
>
> - --
> Andreas Speck
> 30 Bisson Rd, London E15 2RD, Britain
> tel +44-20-85557017. mob +44-7973-683936
> mail at andreasspeck.info ?http://andreasspeck.info
> IM: Y! andreas_speck ?Jabber: andreasspeck at jabber.org
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
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