[scribus] First Line Offsets

[Gregory Pittman]

On 05/05/2017 08:49 AM, ZASKE Martin wrote:
> I am making a book with 200+ pages and have just auto-created all pages
> and all linked text-frames.
> 
> I set my baseline grid and defined my default style and main style for
> the main text.
> 
> 
> Now I noticed that for each text-frame the First Line Offset was
> automatically set to Maximum Ascent. Which might be best for most users
> but which I hate, because it creates rather random visual results,
> depending on what happens to be written in the first line of text:
> 
> If my left page text frame starts with "ooooo" the text will end up
> higher on the page than a right page text with "ahhhh".
> 
> Line Spacing might be a default for new text frames which would be more
> intuitive for new users and would produce nicer results for all users
> who are not using the baseline grid.
> 
> I have found no official way to set my preference (Baseline Grid) for
> each new text frame nor for the automatically created text-frames for
> new documents. I looked at preferences, item tools, text-tab and at
> default styles etc.
> 
> I also found no way of manually fixing this, like selecting more than
> one text-frame and change all First Line Offsets to Baseline Grid. (So I
> opened the .sla file with a text editor and changed all FLOP="0" to
> FLOP="3" and hoped that this was the right place to tweak.)
> 

I don't have an exact solution to this, but there is something of an
interaction between the settings for linespacing mode and the first line
offset. If you set linespacing mode to Align to Baseline Grid, you will
get a first line offset equivalent to the setting that to baseline grid,
even though the actual setting for first line offset might be Maximum
Ascent. You can of course set your default linespacing mode to Align to
Baseline Grid.

The downside is that if you change the linespacing mode to something
else, then the first line offset changes to the setting the First Line
Offset tab.

Greg