[scribus] Check the size of a text box on Scribus

[Gregory Pittman]

On 11/11/2009 01:58 PM, Maumau wrote:
> Scribus shows me how many characters there. I need to know how many
> characters fit in the text box.
>    
I have done something like this for a script. What it amounted to was an 
approximation, based on some kind of average letter size. What I was 
doing was creating a single-line text frame, with the length calculated 
on the basis of the number of characters, so I created a formula for 
this based on experimentation.

Probably better than using standard lorem ipsum would be to use a sample 
text from your language.
Let's imagine you have a 150 pt by 300 pt frame. Choose a suitable font 
at the size you wish, with the linespacing you wish, enter some various 
passages of sample text, then take the average character count for 
several trials. You might try varying the font, varying the size, 
linespacing, other features, to see how these impact the character count.

You could also get more sophisticated, by not just counting letters but 
noting which particular letters are contained in the text and adjusting 
according to character widths.

In the end, it depends on your purpose and what your demands are. Is it 
to squeeze the maximum number of characters in a frame? Is it to adjust 
the size of an automatically created frame? Is it to decide the 
placement of different sized blocks of text in a columns format? Or 
something else? These will determine how much time you wish to spend on 
these kinds of diversions.

Greg