[Scribus] Two ideas from an earlier DTP app

[telkomsa3036 at telkomsa.net]

>> 1. Layers were indicated as frames in different colors around the
>> text/image boxes.
>
> cute. i like it.
>
>> 2. With a special key you could call a small input dialog, just 1 line
>> or so, for invoking special formatting codes. I think my friend
>> explained to me that these were the codes for a machine previously used
>> for layouting in the printing world (Linotype???). Anyway, formatting
>> was made ridiculously fast by just typing some codes, and the whole
>> paragraph or text was re-alined. (He admitted that hardly anyone from
>> the DTP world knew these codes anymore and he considered himself kinda
>> dinosaur still using them...)
>
> hey, now that could be useful... why should an exeprienced user have to
> point and clik all paragraph styles, when they get wirtten as text in the
> and anyway... one could even have history / presets of such 'lines'...
> i like it.
>
> regards, bostjan

If I, as a quiet lurker, may add my tuppence here:

In Tera IT's GN3 (GoodNews 3) newspaper production system on which I earn
my daily bread you don't even have to call an input dialog. You simply use
a function key to insert a command which shows up as >< in magenta or
colour of user's choice and you insert the formatting codes between the >
and the <.

A typical initial set of coding at the start of the story might look
something like this: >f 131<>h 8.7<>ld 9<>paj<>ql<>is 12<>ehyp
1<>global<>is< ... calling for font no 131, font size 8.7pt, leading 9pt,
justify both margins, setting last line left, indent first line 12pt and
enable hyphenation. The global command, of course means that this style
will be followed in each succeeding par unless countermanded within a par
by new code. In this case, following the global command is >is< which, for
the intro par, countermands the 12pt first line indent. This set of
commands, if they constitute the publication's default body text style, 
will usually be bundled into a single style code called, typically,
>text<, saving the hassle of keying in the full set of commands.

Rolf's friend is right ... it does make formatting ridiculously fast
compared to having to point and click on paragraph styles, as  Bostjan
points out. I play around with DTP at home (hoping soon to switch to
Scribus!) and I find the point and clck method rather tiresome after a day
at work zapping in commands all over the show to bend the type to my will
:>)

Leon du Plessis
>
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