[Scribus] Scribus and WYSIWYG

[Mark Kimsal]

Lukasz [DeeJay1] Jernas wrote:

>Dnia Mon, 03 Jan 2005 09:52:28 -0500 w e-mailu od Mark Kimsal
><mkimsal at conduit-it.com> przeczytano:
>  
>
>>You know what's really annoying about the story editor.  It doesn't 
>>render text with the proper font nor font size, but it does render the
>> font color.  So if you have white text on a colored section of page -
>> or 
>>on top of an image - it will show up in the story editor as white on 
>>white text.  I vote for getting rid of font colors in story edit mode.
>> 
>>Don't try to represent any of the text styles - colors, fonts, size, 
>>etc... - or do all of them.
>>    
>>
>
>IMHO the color of the text should be represented - working with
>multicolored text frames is easier with it. The lack of every possible
>funtionality in something isn't the excuse to completely abandon all
>functionality. Following that rule you should remove nearly any option
>for which a user lacks a feature (like why do we have to use color if we
>don't have Pantone? When there's no Pantone support I don't need any
>color at all, etc...).
>  
>
I feel that's a bit of a slippery slope.  I was suggesting cutting out 
partial support for styles because the story edit mode isn't really 
meant to have full style support.  You're right, lack of full 
functionality is not an excuse to disband all functionality, unless 
confusion sets in from having only partial support with no plans to move 
forward.  Think of getting cable TV with only some of the channels that 
you are paying for, either get all your channels or quit paying the 
cable company.  Of course, this analogy doesn't apply to all situations 
and barely applies to Scribus or software in general.  I think it's a 
legitimate concern of where to draw the line on styles in the story edit 
window.

>I have just set up a neutral grey background in the Story Editor so
>nearly any possible color is visible.
>  
>
This makes sense too.  A gray background would probably show a lot of 
different colors.  I would think that using multi-colored text would 
benefit from different text frames, each with it's own text under one 
style, but I haven't done much with multicolored text in the same 
frame.  Dave Spangol agreed with me about the colors, but then said this 
about the fonts

I can see a point in rendering the font, though. There may be times when the 
glyphs are non-standard or you are using a symbol font, or maybe you are 
using a character that does not appear in many standard fonts. So maybe have 
switchable font rendering in the text editor, however, only at a standard 
size, not actual size.

I guess the story editor would be served very nicely if it could render 
glyphs in your chosen font, and dynamically pick a shaded background 
color depending on the HSV of your font color.  This would not detract 
from the simplicity or relative "quickness" of the story edit mode 
because it is much more handy to change text styles in the story edit 
window than in the regular text frame.  I guess the only other question 
is, font size and line height, should we represent those?  I don't know.

Of course, we wouldn't even be having these discussions if Scribus 
wasn't really good and Free in the first place.