[Scribus] How best to import a list and apply styles

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Calum,

Calum Polwart schrieb:

> Thanks as usual for the quick reply,
> 
> Christoph Sch?fer wrote:
> 
>>> There would seem to be three options:
>>> Import into Scribus and apply all the formatting by hand in scribus - 
>>> which is a complete nightmare as this will wrap over several pages...
>>> Import column by column - but if an address takes up two lines then 
>>> everyhting goes out of kilter.
>>> Import into another package - apply formatting and then import to 
>>> scribus.  ooo-writer would be a good option (using mail-merge) - but 
>>> then how can that be imported in and keep the formatting?
>>>
>>> Anyone got any good ideas?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Why don't you copy'n paste the table into OOo Draw than export as SVG 
>> ... you know the drill. Another possibility might be to export as PDF 
>> and then import into scribus.
> 
> These were options I considered as you are of course right - I know the 
> drill!  However, they are quite restriuctive - I expect this year's 
> directory to be over 8 pages and they are talking about possibly16 pages 
> - that means creating 16 tables - all of which need to be worked out 
> what will fit on a page and so forth.
> 
>> A third option I can think of is exporting to HTML. I have never tried 
>> this before, but Scribus' HTML import works quite well, so you can at 
>> least give it a try.
>>  
>>
> This was something I only found last night myself - however - it works 
> well for importing the 'core text' but not any formatting <b> </b> 
> etc... also html doesn't have mark-up for <tab /> which would be needed 
> to make all the 'columns' fall into alignment...
> 
> Calum

Probably Scribus is simply not the right tool for what you want to 
achieve. From your description, it seems an office software will be 
better suited for your needs in this case. If OOo's PDF export options 
aren't enough for the printer (OOo 2 has lots of improvements!), you 
still can export your work to PDFs and import the resulting files into 
Scribus. This will require some careful preparations (page formatting 
etc.), but it should work.

BTW, if you were using Quark XPress instead of Scribus, your problem 
would exactly be the same.

Cheers,

Christoph