[scribus] Spell check and word processing in Scribus

[Steve Herrick]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 8:47 PM, Roger <hovergo at net-tech.com.au> wrote:

> It, however circumvents and at the same time enhances  the Unix, Linux, etc,
> concept of one tool for one job.

Well, yes, but....

> I have wondered why the team bother with the Story Editor at all, wouldn't
> it be
> easier to open a package like say, abiword or some other light weight word
> processor with basic tools and sent the text to that.

Well, because -- and I'm basing this on unverified assumptions --
there would still be the requirement to keep mark-up intact. For
example, if kerning varied within a paragraph, and edits to the raw
text crossed the point where it changed, how does Scribus handle that?
Or for that matter, even more trivial things like italics? If such
things aren't manifested in the text editor, how does it know how to
re-manifest them back to Scribus?

> To me the Story Editor has basic use, - to apply changes to text, line and
> paragraph styles and add line breaks, simply because
> editing in a text box is so slow and inaccurate.

But wouldn't it be even slower and less accurate if it were a standalone app?

> For me Scribus is often the tool of choice for letters and pretty much
> everything else I do textwise, I use gedit (notepad) for plain text , don't
> often use OpenOffice.

I don't use OOo much, either (though I refuse to use Word, even at
work). I try to do all text edits in a text editor, and then apply
DTP. That works at a coarse-grain level, but not a fine-grain level.

> To sumarise. for me Scribus should be the layout tool of choice, adjusting
> text
> could be in another capable piece of software so the developers can
> concentrate
> on Scribus and not text manipulation within in a text box.
> </end of rant>

I see that working if, and only if, form and content are *completely*
isolated (a la CSS), and frankly, that's just not gonna happen in DTP.

-- 
Steve Herrick

Sustainability is security.
- Kent Mesplay