[scribus] Newspaper workflow

[ale rimoldi]

hi stefan,

thank you very much for your input!!!!

> Streamlining scribus.
> 
> First, streamlining the whole user experience in scribus itself, esp.
> in-canvas textediting. This is very very slow & awkward with large
> documents (as in 24 pages, many linked frames). Scribus has a
> different approach to font settings and line spacing than other DTP /
> wordprocessing tools. Often, fonts or spacing switch back to some
> defaults just if a letter is deleted. Weird, esp. on large projects.
> 
> Streamlining the properties palette.

it's in the workings!

smaller widgets, no more tabs, everything on screen everytime...


> Streamlining the color palette. All colors from imported SVGs clutter
> it up, its a huge timewaster. Do not list colors from SVGs there. I
> converted vector art to bitmap for use in scribus just to avoid that.

fully agree. i think that the best way to do it would be to have a way
to put SVGs in frames and only convert them to scribus shapes when
exported to PDF (or directly converted to PDF? in both case there
should be a way to cache the code produced)

> Allow multiple objects to be chanced at once (recolored, resized ...)

yes!

but i don't think that it will be done before 1.6... the first goal is
to get the refactored properties palette in...

i'm not even sure that there is a feature request for it... but it's
certainly something that we will have to work on soon!


> Streamlining Bitmap Import and resizing.

any details?


> Streamlining styles. Its kind of weird, that line spacing is not
> controlled together with font size.

it's indeed strange, but also correct: the font size is defined on a
per character basis, the line spacing on a paragraph basis.

while fully i agree that somebody should be able to tweak at the same
time, i wonder how the configuration optino should be presented to the
user. on top of it, it would be good to be offered a way to set the
baseline grid when setting the font size...




> More Key Shortcuts.

the typographical control is on the roadmap... which shortcuts are you
also missing?
a feature request is the best way to make sure that the shortcuts you
want are there!

> Text Import: easy text cleaning option for typesetting, eg.
> Autoquotes. I know there is a script, but it must be a oneclick or
> better noclick solution. Make it not hardcoded, but with user-editable
> rules.

in 1.6 it will be possible to attach shortcuts to scripts and put them
in the menus...
for an integrated solution, i think that we will have to wait for
somebody to contribute it...

> Maybe there could be lightweight versioning of pages: a use case might
> be alternative headlines, alternative pics.

any idea how this should work?
alternative pics would not be very hard to implement, as long as the
frame containing them is of the frame size...


> More PDF output options than only one (one for proofreading, one for
> printing). FTP-Upload/Mail-Send/... support for pdfs.

certainly a good idea... but at the end, i wonder if it's easier to
work with one complex program with hundreds of settings or delegate such
taks to a couple of programs that you already use for your projects.


lot of ideas and good ones!

just as a reminder to the people reading this list: if you want to work
on any of this topics, you're very welcome to contribute your efforts!
and we don't only need people doing programming...


thanks for sharing your thoughts and have a good weekend!
a.l.e