[Scribus] Scribus Feature Requests and Discussion

[Jon Phillips]

Isn't there markup that is already sufficient. What about Microsoft' new
DOC format that is XML and SXW which is XML. Maybe it is better to just
parse pre-existing formats, rather than build another format.

If I remember better from my Quark days. Editor A would create a DOC and
and update it, and then Designer A would work on the layout and when the
copy is affected by Editor A, the designer A, updates.

But, now I'm vaguely recalling that all the style was removed from these
COPY documents, but maybe this is an area where we can innovate rather
than imitate, right?

SCRIBUS rocks. Although, for my book, I've found that it is easier in my
case that I wrote a PDF script to process all the various submissions
and put page numbers and title/url on each page. Its not that complex,
but works. If I wanted more control, then would use SCRIBUS.

Jon



On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 07:54, Craig Bradney wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 16:19, Craig Ringer wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 19:41, Louis Desjardins wrote:
> > > ? (At) 12h30 +0800 24/05/04, Craig Ringer ?crivait (wrote) :
> > > 
> > > [...]
> > > 
> > > >  > I think Quark and Indesign have
> > > >  > this implemented in a similar manner.
> > > >
> > > >If Quark does it, I'd love to know how. Maybe it was added in Quark 5 or
> > > >6 (but that'd mean getting something for your upgrade money, so I'm not
> > > >convinced), but all I have been able to find is the usual linked image
> > > >ability.
> > > 
> > > Actually, what Quark has done within 6.0 is a dynamic update of text 
> > > content within "user tagged" text boxes. Say you have a book title on 
> > > the front page, and that title is repeated in various pages in your 
> > > document, and on the spine and back cover (that could all be part of 
> > > the same "cover" page), you could tag this text so any change would 
> > > reflect wherever it is used in the document, keeping the specific 
> > > styles and text enrichments for each use.
> > 
> > I take it that Quark 6 does this tagging in such a way as that the
> > master text is stored within the Quark document, rather than an external
> > file? That's nice, but not really what I'm thinking of, as the key idea
> > in my case is to get the copy editors away from Quark.
> > 
> > Here's what I'm thinking of:
> > ----
> > Author: Lesley
> > Section: Community News
> > Heading: Dog eats man
> > 
> > Body text here blah blah blah blah
> > ssdf blah bsdasdf a kbj bkah blah
> > 
> > Caption1: The dog, looking guilty
> > ----
> > 
> > The above is what I'd be looking for in the end - a way to keep all text
> > content in a single file, and be able to "update" the page in the DTP
> > app to pull in changes. Changes in the DTP app could also update the
> > data file. I strongly suspect some form of markup would be required to
> > achieve this, however. XML, inevitably ;-)
> > 
> > I'm actually wondering if I could do this with a Python script. That
> > raises the interesting possibility of pulling the text out of a database
> > instead of a marked up file, too. Drat - yet another thing goes on my
> > long TODO list.
> > 
> > The difficulty would be tagging the text fields with the record ID and
> > field. Is there any way for scripts to attach extra data to objects like
> > textboxes?
> 
> No.
> 
> > When looking over the Scripter API docs, I also didn't spot a way to
> > create linked text boxes. Is this possible?
> 
> Yes.
> LinkTextFrames(name1, name2)
> Create the linked text frames. Parameters are the object names.
> UnlinkTextFrames(name)
> Remove the specified (named) object from the text frame flows/linkage. 
> 
> > Oh, and guys: Thanks again for all the wonderful work. I know I usually
> > come forward with issues, but that's all in the interest of ironing out
> > things I think make it harder to use Scribus in my particular field of
> > experience. I definitely appreciate all your work, and I love watching
> > the way the app develops.
> 
> Its a lot of fun.. just takes time. Things are getting there.. and
> closer to 1.2.
> 
> Craig
> 
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-- 

Jon Phillips
Graduate Researcher
Visual Arts Department

PO BOX 948667
LA JOLLA, CA 
92037
USA

cell.858.361.2811
jon at rejon.org
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