[scribus] Styles, grid and baseline

JLuc jluc at no-log.org
Wed Jan 15 20:53:55 UTC 2014


Hello,

I allways define and use styles for all element types,
and the simplest possible designs... when possible.
Generaly the basis of the design is : chapter title, subtitle,
introduction and text on 1 or 2 columns,
with inter paragraph titles of 2 levels
and images or other elements not important here.

In my last books, i tried to use the baselines
to align the last line of each pages
and to align the last line of each 2 columns too.

Having the "align to baselin" scribu's option was of great help
but it was not enough...
or it was very difficult to have the result globaly right.

Most of the issues arose from titles between paragraphs :
Chapter's titles, subtitles and inter-paragraphs titles of level 1, 2 and 3
all have various line-height, various vertical space after and before paragraph.
Sometime also, the introduction might have a different font size or line heigth...
and space after.

All these various vertical spaces and heights added together one after one
make it generally very difficult to fit any predefined baseline
and at the end of the page, it seems to me that generaly :
- either the baseline heigth is about one normal line height
and there is some parasite vertical blank space somewhere
in the page where the align to baseline jumps to next baseline
because of -say - a previous title.
- either the baseline is about half or a third of a normal line height,
and at the end of the column or of the page, the current baseline is
not aligned with other on other pages or columns.

As a consequence i have to tweak locally :
artificialy add some space before a paragraph, for example,
or add a blank line somewhere,
introducing some oddity to avoid an oddity.

So my questions is :
is there a general good practice or way of setting the parameters
to avoid these issues and define the perfect set of :
- general grid (position and size of frames)
- styles (line height, space before, space after)
- baseline height and offset
... (i think that's all ?)

Maybe a precise way, maybe even an algorythm ?
Or an heuristic and know-how on how to achieve a working set ?

Thanks in advance for your hints
JLuc








More information about the scribus mailing list