[scribus] story editor.

[Craig Bradney]

> On 16 Mar 2017, at 18:19, Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> wrote:
> 
> On 03/16/2017 12:00 PM, Chas Good wrote:
>> The thing that would improve the story editor would be to strip it of features and de-clutter the Story Editor window. As it is it does many things but poorly. The one thing that people extol is that they can access any portion of long text faster and easier. Why not make a sprinter out of the Story Editor.
>> 
>> I just don't use it myself. I do all work in the text frame and prefer to be able to truly see what I am getting with no wasted clicks. The story editor is one more place where a task is done via remote control and way too many clicks.
>> 
>> My point is not to suggest the removal of the Story Editor, but to say that what I hear people say it does best is a simple function - text review and editing. Why waste all sorts of developer time making an involved wysiwyg story editor? I'd say push its feature set back to a text editor that preserves but does not try to show formatting.
>> 
>> I cannot see the true effects of formatting outside of the true text frame. I don't see the point of trying to create and control style in one place by looking somewhere else.
>> 
>> It would be a better use of scarce developer time to de-feature the story editor than to create an overloaded remote control tool.
> 
> I don't think anyone is suggesting making it wysiwyg. It does have an
> advantage of being able to edit a block of text that might link through
> several frames. There are times when you simply want to apply existing
> styles without needing to see the results instantly, and certainly at
> the paragraph level, SE does this efficiently. It lacks an ability to
> apply Character Styles.
> 
> Greg
> 

Ok, I have reverted the context menu change, but renamed it Edit Text with Story Editor.

I’m going to add a few answers to the combined thread…

- I don't think anyone is suggesting making it wysiwyg.

I would like this to be an option. It was in my vision for SE originally. Basically, just a canvas in a window. Therefore fully compatible with canvas editing methods and formatting.
I would also like tag based editing to be possible.


- The need for updating SE has been talked about for a long time.

But not worthwhile until complex text capability was in there. Right now, vertical text languages are not fully supported so we need to decide if that is required before rewriting SE.

- Why sad? Be happy people love this program so much, they really try to find a solution which comforts (more or less) everyone. This is open software: Though most of the folks are "only" users, they are much more engaged in developing the project than with commercial software. What would be our chance of discussing this "problem" in an Adobe forum? 

Very true!

- When the Text tool is activated, clicking once inside a frame enables in-frame editing. Clicking anywhere outside an existing text frame and dragging creates a new text frame. Would that be reasonable and comparably easy to implement? (It's how e.g. Inkscape works, too.)

Quite possibly the way to go. We’ll review as a part of 1.5.4.

- i see people who feel disturbed in their habits by a software that evolves

These people have their old OS and their old versions of Scribus that will last forever until they, sadly, get destroyed by some malware or hacker due to not being up to date. Sad but true.
However, every other program and OS out there adjusts to demands and changes over time, there is no reason Scribus should not change as well.

Craig