[scribus] My thought so far, on Scribus as a serious contender

Colin colin at madwolf.co.uk
Tue Feb 27 09:37:59 UTC 2018


Hi All

OK, some thoughts, comments and annoyances.

Firstly, I am not a software tester and I have not always gone back to repeat the problem to check whether it is persistent or not.  I am working hard to get this project converted from InDesign to Scribus in the shortest time possible.

I also am not a great one for 'reading the manual’ - when I can, I read one from cover to cover and generally three times.  But at the moment time does not allow, so this is a learn as you go project, I apologise in advance if there are topics already covered elsewhere.   These are just my own findings and some suggestions for future implementation.

Cheers
Colin

My System:
iMac 27” 5k 2017 running MAC OS 10.13.3

My setup:
Scribus 1.5.3   Appearance:  English (UK). Theme: Macintosh. Icon Set: 1.5.1. use small widgets 10pt font menus

What I like:  

1. Applying changes to all pages - that feature in some of the properties panes is an absolute boon

2.  Pasting is so much more intuitive, click the page you want the item on and it is pasted there - InDesign had a habit of pasting only on the page that filled the screen - often caught me out.

3. I love the implementation of editing Master Pages - so easy, thank you !

4.  I love the keyboard shortcut to see Preview Mode - so welcome !  

5. The strange behavouir when select dragging (where it continued to move after mouse release) was due to the Wacom tablet I use in my right hand - I use the Mac mouse in my left.  The driver is an out of date one.  

A nice feature of InDesign was when re-sizing a text frame or image frame, if you clicked and held before dragging, the text or image would move slowly with the frame reposition - allowing for very precise visual placement. In Scribus it stays in its original position until mouse release.

6.  I love the implementation of Tabs in the ruler bar, very easy, very sensible and speeds up the flow no end


Questions or What I hate:  

1.  In the save as dialogue box, you need way too many clicks as you drill down to find the directory you wish to save in.  In the Mac finder, as you click on a directory it opens to reveal the tree below, in Scribus you need to double-click - why?

2. Selecting text is a little bit quirky when you are dragging to select - and how do you select ALL text in linked frames - if you drag, it only selects in that frame, if you shift click beginning and end of text nothing happens ??   ‘Select All’, only selects text in the frame you are in - not all text in linked frames, which is no good at all.

3. When dragging a selection, part of which extends out of sight at the bottom (for example) of the page, does not set the document to auto scroll so you can complete the selection - it all has to be visible in the page

4. Character styles: apply style to a character, start typing immediately after and it reverts to default paragraph style - not what I expected.  If you select that character with style and type to replace the character it again reverts to default style.  I would expect a character style to continue as you type if the carat is after the character with the style.  Also if you select the character, I would expect the text propertties box to show the style of that selected character in the drop down for character style - it doesn’t, it shows ‘No Style’.

5. I can’t see if it is possible to change a master text frame to one that you can select and then add new text to.  Not a real issue at all, just something that was in Indesign - no need to implement as in reality it is a redundant feature IMHO.

6. My images sometimes have an exclamation mark in the box - I have searched the manual help file to no avail.  Clicking on it has no effect.  I have checked one file and it is larger than 300dpi and a greyscale.

7. Master Pages, if you have guides on the master page and you apply a different master page with guides in another position, the first set remains ??

8. The properties pallettes started to get in the way as I am working on a double page spread and need all the space.  So I changed the font size to 9pt - much better - except that I couldn’t make the pallettes narrower ? A restart of the program forced that and it is now very clean looking.  However, the ‘OK’ and ‘CANCEL’ buttons in the Edit Master Pages dialogue box are overlapping - they still work but not with 9pt, I went up to 10pt another re- start and it works now.  Some of the text in the drop down menu selectors overlaps to the left.

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