[scribus] Change bar

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 5 May 2009 08:09:10 -0600
Steven Dayton <daytonmeister at gmail.com> dijo:

> I thought maybe I could control the vertical position of an anchored rule to
> a paragraph by changing the baseline offset but it doesn't work with the
> anchored rule even though it is treated as a character. I can change the
> leading of the paragragh to even out the space before and after the rule but
> that only works if the rule is in it's own paragraph.
> 
> It would be nice to be able to control where the anchored elements sits in
> realation to the character ie. baseline, cap hight. And also be able to
> raise or lower the item with baseline offset (baseline shift).

I succeeded! 

Well, sort of. It works well enough, anyway. Here's how I did it:

1) If you use automatic line spacing, create a paragraph style with
fixed leading that matches what you get with automatic. My main font
for text is Junicode, 12 points and, with automatic line spacing, the
leading is 15 points. (I normally prefer automatic to fixed.) So I
created a style I called Change Bar that is based on my "Body Text - No
First Line Indent" style, but set to 15 points fixed. I also set a tab
at the same distance as my "Body Text - First Line Indent" style.

2) Take the text you want the change bar in front of and go to the end
of each line, then hit Enter so the text won't word-wrap. If you are
justifying your text you will have to set your Change Bar style to
forced justify.

3) Create a vertical line that pleases you for your change bar, and
make it the length of your leading. In my case I used 15 points
"wide" (because it is rotated 90 degrees), and 3 points thick. Place in
the Scrapbook.

4) Make a copy of your line in (3) above and change it to 8 points
"wide." You will use this line for the first line of your text because
15 points will be too tall due to the fact that it is sitting on the
baseline. You will have to experiment with how tall it needs to be to
match the height of your font. Place in the Scrapbook.

5) Copy the short (8 point) line to the clipboard. Double click on the
frame to get into edit mode. Place the cursor at the beginning of the
first line of the paragraph you want the change bar in. Insert a thin
space, then paste in the line, then hit tab.

6) Repeat (5) with the 15 point line for the rest of the lines in the
paragraph.

7) Print the page to be sure there are no gaps in your change bar. If
there are, go back to (3) and make the line a bit taller.

You are correct that it would be much better if we could control where
the line sits with respect to the baseline. My method works fine except
for the very last line of the paragraph - it does not cover the last
line's descenders. You can make an even shorter line (say, about 3
points) to cover the descenders, but it has to sit on the baseline of
the line below your "change bar" paragraph, and it will sit on that
line's baseline. I suppose you could adjust the leading for that line,
but that will throw off the line spacing for the rest of the page. I
decided I didn't care enough to fiddle with it any more.