[scribus] How to move the very first character of a line leftwards

[Gregory Pittman]

On 05/30/2017 05:54 AM, ZASKE Martin wrote:
> Dear list:
> 
> In summary: What is the best way to horizontally move the leftmost
> character of a line of text in a text-frame?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> background, for those who want to know more detail:
> 
> Making a book, trying to make it nice.
> 
> The main text is printed in 16pt. The first letters of each chapter are
> styled as Initial Caps in 36pt. (What is the singular of Initial Caps?)
> 
> Text is aligned as Justified, even using the Optical Margins feature on
> both sides. I am using it for the first time and I like that optical trick.
> 
> Now our Initial Caps, being very big, are showing a too wide distance
> from the left text-frame border. It is very ugly for example on a
> capital E. I believe the gap is caused by the inbuilt values of the
> characters for each specific font. I need to hack it, to align better.
> 

A way that seems to work after a fashion is to create a Paragraph style,
and set the line indentation for the body of the paragraph a few points,
maybe 1.0 to 3.0 as needed, then create a negative indentation of the
first line by the amount needed to line up the drop cap with the rest of
the paragraph. You will see that the negative indentation of the first
line cannot be any larger than the positive indentation of the body.

The only other thing I would add is that I see drop caps overused quite
a bit, or created with parameters that interfere with reading the text
and aside from that are unattractive. So as with many embellishments,
they should be used sparingly.

Greg