[scribus] Change bar

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 4 May 2009 15:26:37 -0400
Jeffrey Silverman <jeffrey.d.silverman at gmail.com> dijo:

> You can (and should, and probably are required to, to get anything
> done in Scribus) use Paragraph Styles. I don't know, though, if you
> can independently style the borders for a single paragraph.

Yeah, I've been using paragraph styles as my main formatting tool for
20 years. It's not only faster, it enforces consistency. Yet at the
same time paragraph styles do not hamper creativity because you can
either override them or just create a new one.

> Nope, I can't find it. At least not quickly. You can create an
> indented paragraph style, but not style borders around the paragraph.
> 
> I'll bet Scribus 1.3.5svn lets you do it, though...

Well, I am using 1.3.5svn, April 19, and I can't find it either. 

One thing I can think of is to create an indented paragraph style,
then place a line on top of the text frame. By zooming in I can eyeball
it well enough to get the line positioned properly with respect to the
paragraph. But this workaround really sucks because the line won't move
with the text. I know, I know - place the line after I'm through
editing the text. But that doesn't work for me because "editing the
text" is never completely finished. Even a year from now I'll discover
a line that needs to be rewritten. Bear in mind that I do short run
textbook publishing, so I'm always slipstreaming changes into a book
every few hundred copies.

Since it's just one paragraph at a time that I need the change bar on I
thought of just hitting enter at the end of each line (no text wrap)
and then putting the pipe character at the beginning of each line. By
finagling the size and other attributes of the pipe character I could
simulate a solid line to the left of the paragraph. Pretty
unprofessional, but at least the "change bar" would move with the
paragraph.

On a brighter note, searching all over for how to create a change bar
has made me find a bunch of other features that I was unaware of. This
is my first big Scribus project, so I have a lot to learn.