[scribus] TeX and render frames

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:50:50 +1100
Andrew <akroiter at tpg.com.au> dijo:


>>>>> There is a LaTeX exit and LaTeX has table creation tools. I will
>>>>> experiment a bit.

>>>> I realized several months ago that tables could be created in a
>>>> render frame with LaTeX, and I started to try to learn enough
>>>> LaTeX to be able to do tables that way. But then I discovered
>>>> that render frames are rendered as raster images and I lost
>>>> interest.

On Sunday 13 February 2011 03:25:05 a.l.e wrote:
>>> render frames can be rendered as vectors... there's a checkbox for
>>> it in the pdf export dialog.

>On 14/02/2011, at 5:35 AM, John Culleton wrote:
>> Aand I would remind all and sundry that LaTeX is not the beginning
>> and likely not the end game for TeX. When time permits I will
>> describe table layout in the original Plain TeX, in TeXsis, and in
>> Context (several versions available.) I use the TeXsis flavor
>> because it is pretty simple.

>Maybe I'm wrong, but surely there are mailing lists or whatever for  
>'TeX'. This is a Scribus list.

Scribus uses TeX and LaTeX in render frames. 

>And wasn't this thread about someone joining the Scribus programming  
>team?

Fine. Now you have a new thread.

Now back to render frames and LaTeX and tables.

1)	Some time ago I asked here how one could edit the config file
	for LaTeX so it would automatically display particular fonts in
	the render frame drop-down box. According to the Scribus wiki
	it can be done, but the instructions failed to state what the
	config file was called or where to find it, let alone exactly
	what syntax to use or add. I received no reply to the question,
	so I ask it again. It is important to me if I am to make the
	effort to learn how to do tables in a render frame, because I
	must use a particular font for projects in linguistics. None of
	the fonts that are available for TeX have all the glyphs that I
	need. Using the drop-down box is much faster, more intuitive,
	and less error-prone than adding syntax to the code.

2)	Do I understand correctly that when you render a render frame
	the frame is rendered as a bitmap, but then you can check the
	box on the PDF export dialog window to render the frame as
	vectors. Does Scribus then somehow convert the bitmap image to
	vectors on the way to PDF? Or did I misunderstand this and the
	render frame can be rendered directly as vectors from the
	beginning?

3) 	At one point I saw some instructions on the web for how to
	create tables in LaTeX, and the code was rather daunting. Could
	we have a simplified instruction set that would include *just
	examples* of a couple dozen tables with the code required to
	create each one? I am thinking that once I have the kinds of
	table I usually want I can just create the render frames and
	save them in the scrapbook, then drag them in as needed,
	adjusting the values for the cells to whatever I need. 

	An even better solution would be to have some way to take
	tabbed data from OOo and automagically create the LaTeX syntax
	necessary to render the borders, fills, etc. Then I could
	create the table in OOo, convert to text (which will create
	tabbed data), then paste into the render frame.