[Scribus] A few questions (gradients, styles)

[Grzegorz Staniak]

Plinnell [scribusdocs at atlantictechsolutions.com] writes:

> Making  gradient filled text is quite simple, actually easier in Scribus than 
> other DTP apps I have done it in:)
> 
> 1. Make a Text Frame
>
> 2. Select your font and increase the font size to 36 pt, just for ease of 
> manipulation.
> 
> 3. The select the frame and choose: Item > Convert to Outlines.
> 
> 4. Then drag around all the text and choose: Item > Combine Polygons
> 
> 5. Then in the properties panel, choose the fill color and select the drop 
> down box where the gradient options are listed..Play away. :)
> 
> The key thing is combining the polygons treats the fill color as one unit. You 
> can then even turn the combinded polygons into a picture frame or a text 
> frame.

And that was the step I was overlooking. Thank you, and thanks also to
everybody else who responded, I really appreciate your help. I've been
playing with Scribus for the last week or so, and I must say I'm
impressed, that's one heck of a good job. Especially the PDF export 
capabilities are truly impressive. Hats off. 

Since I see that Scribus developers are subscribed to the list, I'm
gonna pester you a bit about the second question: do you think it would
be possible to add ad hoc style groups to Scribus in the future? That
is, e.g. a context menu option on objects "Add to style group" with
names of defined style groups and a way to create a new one, and a way
to edit styles for all objects in a group (from main menu perhaps)? I haven't
got much experience in DTP, perhaps that's not a good idea, or perhaps
that's already possible to do in Scribus. So far I've tried to group all
the objects I'm interested in, but in this particular case they span
multiple pages (subtitles under graphics in an exhibition catalogue), 
and I haven't been able to select them to form a group. Also, when I grouped i
two text frames on one page, I could only edit the location properties (X,Y,Z)
of the group. Perhaps that wouldn't make sense for objects of different
types, but I think it would be useful to be able change e.g. background
color of all text frames in a document (or a group of them) at once.

Anyway, I have one more practical question: how can I define the amount
of space between text content and a frame this content flows around? 
I created a big text frame with three columns, and now I would like to
insert a smaller text frame with a "paragraph highlight" quote inside
between two of the columns. When I choose "Text flows around frame" for
the small frame it looks OK, the small frame pushes the content of the
columns apart, and I can set the _internal_ margin between the frame and
the quote, but when I set the background color of the small frame to
other than default, I can see that the text that flows around touches
the frame. I'm not sure I explained well what the problem is, but is there 
a way to set an _external_ margin on the small frame? 

Thanks,

> Cheers,
> Peter

-- 
Grzegorz Staniak <gstaniak _at_ wp [dot] pl>