[scribus] Boxes at the Begining of Lines

John Ghormley KJ4UFG kj4ufg at sera.org
Wed Feb 20 18:01:11 UTC 2013


On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Ratofblades <swordrat at aol.com> wrote:

> Since I've been using Scribus, it sometimes puts a box around the first
> few characters of a line.  In Scribus the box is very thin red lines and
> barely visible, but when I make a PDF, the boxes are black and very easy to
> see.  It only happens at when a new sentence within a paragraph begins on a
> new line, but not every time.I was hoping that when I upgraded from 1.4.1
> to 1.4.2 it would go away, but it didn't.  Does anyone know why this is
> happening and how to stop it?
>
>
> Tim
>
>
Tim,

What you are seeing is a warning issued by Scribus telling you that Scribus
cannot find in the font file you chose a graphical symbol to substitute for
the binary code that is in that spot in your text.  That needs to be
resolved prior to creating your pdf output file.

I suspect that the problem is the lack of a character, or graphical unit,
in your font face which corresponds with the binary code you inserted.
Chances are the end of line codes used by various operating systems have
contributed to your issue.  Windows, for instance, using a different code
for a new line than does an Apple OS, or a Linux OS.

I have found the easiest way to create these circumstances, i.e, a red box
as you describe, is to use the method of highlight, copy, and paste from
the original document into the Scribus frame.  Further, I've found .rtf
files seem to be the worst offenders as an original document.  If you must
use .rtf files, try the multi-step process of copying and pasting into a
text editor, save, re-open the saved document with the text editor, and
then copy again and paste into the Scribus Story Editor.  This in not a
fool proof process as all text editors do not work alike when a
non-character is encountered.

In US English, most text editors can be directed to use only a US ASCII
font which my help in identifying the non-character codes.  A much easier
way to solve the problem would be to use the import process in Scribus and
choose your font face judiciously.  Plus this method will not work with all
languages.

Obviously, one must insure the font face used has a representative
graphical unit for the specified binary character code.  Not all font faces
have all the possible binary codes represented by a character, or graphical
unit.  Using the same text paragraph(s), experiment with various fonts to
find a suitable one that has the most glyphs in it and produces the least
number of red warning squares that you are seeing.

John Ghormley  KJ4UFG
Editor, SERA *Repeater Journal*
Walkertown, NC  USA
editor at sera.org
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