[scribus] scribus Digest, Vol 34, Issue 35

[Tony Hamilton]

> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 11:23:08 -0500
> From: Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [scribus] Creating paragraph styles
> To: Scribus User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net>
> Message-ID: <4D29E0EC.2080303 at yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 01/09/2011 11:07 AM, Tony Hamilton wrote:
> > After playing around at the edges with it, I finally used Scribus
> > (Stable) to create a real document and found it gratifying to complete
> > it successfully. On the way I found a number of questions were raised to
> > which I couldn't find answers on the www (that must be a failure of
> > Google, right?). I would like to pose these questions to the Scribus
> > mailing list, if I may, 1 question to an email (to keep things simple).
> >
> > The first question is about paragraph styles. The document I needed was
> > first produced using Open Office Writer. This was a nightmare, because I
> > was using multiple columns, with the left most column used only for
> > headings. But I was able to create the text appearance I wanted in the
> > body of the document, using Writer - especially the ability to create a
> > paragraph style with a border on  a single edge of the paragraph, acting
> > as a paragraph separator (using a 'top' border). I can find no way of
> > adding borders to a paragraph in either Stable (or the NG version, even
> > though it does have a little more function).
> >
> > Can borders be added to paragraphs in Scribus?
> 
> The first question is, what do you mean by "border"?
> 
> The border of a frame is the line denoting the edge of the frame, by 
> default having the color None.
> 
> Do you mean a space between the margin of the text in the frame, or some 
> visible item like a line?
> 
> You may be better off not assigning such things in oowriter and 
> modifying your Paragraph Styles in Scribus as needed. You can specify an 
> additional space above or below paragraphs as part of the Paragraph Style.
> 
> You can create gaps at the top, bottom, left, and right edges of 
> paragraph in the Shape tab of Properties (this has moved to the Text tab 
> - columns and text distances in 1.3.9).
> 
> If you want to add a line separating paragraphs, this might be done with 
> an inline graphic...
> 
> Greg
> 
Firstly, apologies for having drafted a poorly worded question.

By 'border' I mean the visible lines (i.e. color = not-none) that can be
drawn around a paragraph  within the Open Office Writer context. If you
have access to that application you will very quickly see what I am
referring to by selecting a paragraph at random and the following the
<Format><Paragraph><Borders> menu sequence. 

This sequence gives me the option of showing a line on any or all of the
4 sides of the rectangle which forms a boundary or border to the elected
paragraph. For example, If I choose to use a visible continuous line of
0.05 pt width on the top boundary of the paragraph then I create the
appearance of the top line of text in the paragraph as having been
'overlined', rather than underlined. In my opinion this looks  an
attractive way of separating this para. from the preceding one.

If I create this appearance while defining or modifying  a style in OO
Write, I can now very quickly apply the effect of  para. separator at
will throughout my document by applying that style to any para. I
select.

I want to do the same thing in Scribus, but can find no way of doing
it. 

Creating gaps is not what I want - I want a line.

Adding an in-line graphic is not satisfactory: using a style means
(almost) a 1 click amount of work to create the para. separators, via
styles. To do it any other way is to ignore the whole concept of styles.
And I'm not really interested in creating some sort of 'macro'
(script ?) which would allow a productivity gain. For a start there is
then no real connection between the paragraph and the line above it.

I can't do it by writing a line on the frame boundary, because I have
more than one paragraph per frame.

In general the functions available for paragraph style definition in
Scribus seem to be less than those in OO Writer (no border, less text
flow control, no outline numbering) - is this because I am looking in
the wrong place?

Sorry, I've wandered off my topic: how do I set paragraph borders in
paragraph styles in Scribus?