[Scribus] Text import using tags - any progress?

[Peter Barnes]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Riku Leino" <tsoots at gmail.com>
> To: scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de
> Subject: Re: [Scribus] Text import using tags - any progress?
> Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2006 18:48:15 +0300
> 
> 
> Riku Leino wrote:
> > ps. My initial plan that i submitted to Coss was in finnish. I'll translate
> > it and post here for your comments and additional ideas that could be
> > included in my little project.
> 
> Here's the heavily edited English version. Please notice that it doesn't
> describe anything at a deep level but only gives the generic ideas over what
> I'll be doing during the project. So discussion on how you'd like to see all
> these (and whatever more, not present here) happen is much appreciated.
> For all our Finnish readers (do we have any?) here's also the original
> document: http://www.saunalahti.fi/rikle/ps_scribus.pdf
> 
> Project plan
> ============
> ============
> 
> Foreword
> ========
> bla bla bla
> 
> Project outline
> ===============
> bla bla bla
> 
> Plugin interface for text importer plugins
> ------------------------------------------
> Plugin interface is ment to be a simple api for coders to build
> file format importers for Scribus. It will be acting in between the
> plugins and Scribus' core text handling code.
> 
> Interface will allow two types of plugins to be written with it.
> The most common type of plugin is a regular file format importer
> plugin. This type of plugin will convert an external file format
> into a Scribus understandable format and will be used for example
> when importing text from a text file, OpenDocument Text file...
> The second type of plugins, the api will make possible, is plugins
> that will work on the formatting and text of the document
> that is currently being imported.
> 
> To make these two plugin types possible plugin handling system
> will need to allow piping of plugins. Ie. one can direct the output
> of a file importer plugin to a style/text handling plugin. One
> situation where this could be used is for example when removing
> all formatting from an ODT file. The flow for such a setup is
> presented in the following picture.
> 
> ODT -->
>    Scribus ODT importer -->
>      Style remover plugin -->
>        Scribus text frame
> 
> Another possible use case for a plugin chain like this is when the person
> responsible for the layout wants to remap the styles present in for
> example OpenOffice.org document to ones in the Scribus Document.
> Then one would direct the output of the ODT-importer to the style
> remampping plugin which is presented in the next picture.
> 
> [insert pic 2 here]
> 
> bla bla bla
> 
> Plain text files
> ----------------
> bla bla bla
> 
> OpenDocument Text files
> -----------------------
> bla bla bla
> 
> Text and Style Filters
> ----------------------
> Text and style filters will allow search and replace type of
> actions on the text and styles of the imported document. This
> plugin will only work when piped with a file importer plugin.
> The most important features it will offer are search and replace
> for text, search and replace for styles and style application
> based on user defined tags.
> 
> Rich Text Format files
> ----------------------
> bla bla bla
> 
> Documentation
> -------------
> bla bla bla
> 
> Process
> =======
> 
> Size estimation
> ---------------
> bla bla bla 6700 loc
> 
> Schedule
> --------
> bla bla bla

Riku,
I like the flexibility and modular approach in your proposal, providing as many opitons for the user as possible. We all work different ways for different reasons and software needs to accommodate these differences. I think this is especially true for professional users who often have to fit in with the needs of their companies, institutes, customers, clients and colleagues.

Personally I want to be able to import files with character styles but with tags instead of paragraph styles. In Windows and Pagemaker I found RTF provided the solution to this. I mapped each tag to a single keystoke in the word processor (WordPerfect) so that they could be inserted very fast. Unlike with paragraph styles, you can easily and quickly move tagged text around in a word processor document without the style disruption that occurs with paragraph styles. With Scribus I would be happy to import RTF or ODT (saved from OpenOffice) as long as I can also import the tags as above.

Having said that I want to import the character styles, that raises one comment. I have just started  trying to learn Scribus again and note that it has "proper" italic fonts. My OpenOffice has only the more common "imposed" italics. Are there any issues with importing these italics from OpenOffice to Scribus?

Peter



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