[scribus] some user interface issues

[Manuel]

Dear Scribus developers and users,

Some days ago, I started my first "serious" book layouting project in
Scribus. Being a passionate bug reporter, I took note of every user
interface issue that I came across. So here is that list.

My work environment is OSX 10.6.8, with Scribus 1.4.0 (stable version
of January 12 2012).

***

1) Selection of paragraphs and wrong style information

Generally, when selecting a piece of content of a given paragraph, the
Properties window shows the Text Styles (font, size) that apply to
this paragraph. This works fine when:
- The cursor is placed at some point *inside* the paragraph.
- The whole paragraph is selected with Cmd-double-click.

But the behavior is different for the following cases:
- When the cursor is placed at the end of the paragraph.
- When a selection is drawn from bottom-right to top-left (with the
mouse / trackpad, or using the arrow keys) in such a way that the
cursor is positioned at the beginning of the paragraph.
In this case, some properties (font, size) show the default document
style, while others (linespacing) show the actual style of the
paragraph.

***

2) Details that make it hard to draw selections with the mouse / trackpad:

a) Clicking on an empty line: does *not* place the cursor on that
line, but rather places it on the next line that does contain text.
The only way to get the cursor on an empty line is to use the arrow
keys.

b) Extending a selection by moving the mouse outside the current text
box (with shift key): as soon as the mouse leaves the text frame,
movements are not taken into account. For instance, extending a
selection to the left border of the frame requires extreme precision,
since as soon as the mouse leaves the frame, it has no influence
anymore.

***

3) Typing after inserting a string

Copy-paste some text string into a paragraph, then immediately start typing.

Expected behavior: the typing should start *after* the insertion point.
Actual behavior: typing *deletes* the inserted string. It is needed to
undo the selection first (for instance, moving one step to the right
with the Right-Arrow key, or clicking somewhere).

Note 1: this issue occurs when copy-pasting from another application.
It does not occur when copy-pasting from inside Scribus.
Note 2: most word processors will add a blank space at each end of the
copy-pasted string. I think that's a helpful feature, considering that
the main usage is for litterary type of text (it's different for text
editors targetted at writing code).

***

4) Closing a document requires mouse usage.

A typical sequence of keystrokes when closing a document: Cmd-S for
saving the project, then Cmd-W for closing.

The issue: when the cursor is placed inside a text frame, simply
pressing the Cmd key seems to produce an invisible modificiation in
the document (the title bar gets a * appended, indicating a not-saved
state).
This means that every use of Cmd-W for closing a project triggers a
modal window that asks for "Dont' Save/Cancel/Save" (the highlighted
option being "Cancel"). The use of the mouse/trackpad is therefore
necessary to "Save".

If the highlighted option was "Save", (the default behavior in OSX
applications), the user could hit the return key, not requiring the
usage of mouse/trackpad.

***

Please let me know if I should file any of those issues at
bugs.scribus.net. I searched already for duplicates with no success.
I'm sure those must be known issues, so I prefer to post them here
before cluttering the database. I didn't try the 1.5 SVN version, so
some things may be fixed already (does anybody provide OSX builds of
1.5?)

Best,
Manuel // greyscale press