[Scribus] lists & border-art et al

[Louis Desjardins]

? (At) 23h46 -0400 9/10/04, Jeff ?crivait (wrote) :
>Thanks.  With this info I was able to get going on a "trial" of a 
>few pages for my program book.
>
>Coming from MS Publisher, I immediately missed bulleted lists, and 
>border-art.  Is there a way to get this kind of functionality in 
>Scribus ?

You can put up numbered or bulleted list with the help of Paragraph 
Styles. For this you need a left tabulator between the bullet or the 
number (you can place any number of characters before the tab 
provided your column's width) and the text. At the bottom of the Edit 
Paragraph Style there are 3 fields. Create a left tab position at 2 
picas. Then go the the Indent field and enter a value of 2 picas. For 
First Line put a negative value of -2 picas. Of course you can put 
other values if you find the gap between the bullet or number too 
wide or too narrow. Just try it! Set your other values for font, 
size, above, below, etc. Then, Save, OK. Apply the Style and voil?!

For bullets, you will then have to change the text font of the bullet 
to something else (Regular Dingbats for instance). Do this through 
the Edit>Search/Replace menu. Provided you have used a unique glyph 
(or combination of) for your bullets, this will take seconds. You 
will even be able to adjust the type size of the bullet though that 
dialog.

Using the same technique, you will be able to achieve lists with 
tremendous control. If another hierarchic level is needed, just 
increase the Indent and the Tab position, leaving the -2 picas value 
for the First line to get a consistant spacing.

I think "border-art" like borders are on the to-do list. In the 
meantime, you'd have to work this out another way, using picture 
frames and vector art, I guess.

BTW, QuarkXPress (all the way to and including 6.1) has no other way 
to create a bulleted list or a numbered list (no automatic numbering 
as well).

Note to all: this explanation (and more fine tuning on the same 
subject) will be in the updated tutorial, with screen shots, some 
time from now!

>
>Also, the lack of per-line interline spacing is a pain.  Doing it 
>with styles is not very convenient.. I'd end up with hundreds of 
>styles before the book was done.  I need a way to add spacing above 
>or below each individual paragraph to get a good "look".

There are two fields for just what you're looking for: "Above" and 
"Below". But you will have to work this out through the Edit 
Paragraph Style dialog box.

>
>Another thing that would be helpful would be to able able vertically 
>center text in a text frame.  For what it's worth, Quark 4 doesn't 
>seem to have this either.

This is not implemented yet. But there is a way to achieve this 
through the Properties Palette>Shape. You have 4 fields to adjust the 
"Distance of text". To center vertically, here's an easy trick. Use 
the measurement tool (little ruler icon) and measure the gap between 
the last line of text and the bottom of the text frame. Divide this 
value by 2 and enter the result in the Top field of 
Properties>Shape>Distance of text>Top. Your text will be vertically 
centered.

(Footnote: AFAIK, Quark does that from 4.x up.)

>
>Publisher may be crude for some needs, but for some tasks it's great.
>You can make all your blocks snap together at the edges, and control 
>alignment and margins from those edges.  Then you can move the edges 
>after the fact.

Have you tried the Distribute/Align function from the Item menu? I 
don't know Publisher but maybe this will help you.

Also, you can use the Page>Manage Guides to create useful guides to 
which items can snap from a customizable distance in 
Settings>Preferences>Guides>Guide Snap Distance field.

HTH ;-)

Louis

>
>Riku Leino (Tsoots) wrote:
>
>>Jeff wrote:
>>
>>>I can't seem to find any way to make them appear on every page.  I 
>>>tried saving as a template, them importing that template and 
>>>specifying the new template when creating new pages.  Nothing 
>>>seems to work.  How should this be done ?
>>
>>
>>Create a page template. Edit->Templates. New. Give a name. Drag 
>>those guides to the template page. Close the template. Now open a 
>>page palette (Tools->Page Palette) and there drag the just created 
>>template (it's name) to the document pages where you want those 
>>guides to appear and that's it.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Scribus mailing list
>Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
>http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus