[scribus] skewed text frame & text distances

[Gregory Pittman]

On 11/26/2016 09:06 AM, ale rimoldi wrote:
> hi greg
> 
>> On 11/25/2016 10:45 AM, ale rimoldi wrote:
>>> hi vaclav  
>>>> I am creating a leaflet with skewed text frames -- the verticals
>>>> are all rotated by 10°. I would like to flow text into those frames
>>>> keeping 5mm clearance on both sides. I tried to set paragraph
>>>> leftskip/rightskip, but it seems to be effective relative to the
>>>> text area bounding box, not the actual shape on that line; the same
>>>> happens with Text/Columns&Text Distances (as suggested in 
>>>> http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/2015-April/051695.html), 
>>>> where a thin line appears in that distance from the bbox vertical, 
>>>> again, not skewed.
>>>>
>>>> Is this something expected? For me definitely counter-intuitive.
>>>> Is there some workaround? I could move text frame nodes by those
>>>> 5mm, but it is a bit tedious in the absence of rotated guides.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for suggestions, cheers!  
>>>
>>> i can confirm your observation...
>>>
>>> looks like a bug to me...
>>> can you please submit it to the bug tracker?
>>>
>>> ... at the end, yes, creating text frames of the correct size seems
>>> to be the simplest solution...
>>>   
>>
>> It might be more of a feature request than a bug. For example, if you
>> took a star shape or circle and converted to a text frame, you
>> wouldn't necessarily expect star-shaped or circular Text Distances.
> 
> euh, i would...
> 
> i don't see in what context, calculating the distance from the bounding
> box could be useful...
> 

The answer to that is easy, in a non-skewed rectangle.
The text distances have a limited application. I don't see the sense in
wasting the programming time to cover all instances. You have to have an
entirely different concept. For a circle or a star shape, what is Top,
Bottom, Left, and Right?
Instructing people to use a second frame or perhaps the contour line
makes a lot more sense.

If there is some answer to it, I think it would come from changing the
mind set of the contour line. If you look at an SLA file in 1.5.x, we
now have PATH and COPATH variables, which I take to describe the shape
of the frame and contour line. A contour line will do everything Text
Distances now does and much more. One of the things to overcome is that
the contour line editing is so far hidden that you don't expect users to
find it on their own.

Another idea: why not, instead of these text distances, be able to
shrink the frame shape while leaving the contour line alone? This is in
effect what text distances are doing.

Greg