[scribus] How to move the very first character of a line leftwards

[ZASKE Martin]

On 30.05.2017 14:22, Gregory Pittman wrote:
> On 05/30/2017 05:54 AM, ZASKE Martin wrote:
>> Dear list:
>>
>> In summary: What is the best way to horizontally move the leftmost
>> character of a line of text in a text-frame?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> background, for those who want to know more detail:
>>
>> Making a book, trying to make it nice.
>>
>> The main text is printed in 16pt. The first letters of each chapter are
>> styled as Initial Caps in 36pt. (What is the singular of Initial Caps?)
>>
>> Text is aligned as Justified, even using the Optical Margins feature on
>> both sides. I am using it for the first time and I like that optical trick.
>>
>> Now our Initial Caps, being very big, are showing a too wide distance
>> from the left text-frame border. It is very ugly for example on a
>> capital E. I believe the gap is caused by the inbuilt values of the
>> characters for each specific font. I need to hack it, to align better.
>>
> 
> A way that seems to work after a fashion is to create a Paragraph style,
> and set the line indentation for the body of the paragraph a few points,
> maybe 1.0 to 3.0 as needed, then create a negative indentation of the
> first line by the amount needed to line up the drop cap with the rest of
> the paragraph. You will see that the negative indentation of the first
> line cannot be any larger than the positive indentation of the body.
> 
> The only other thing I would add is that I see drop caps overused quite
> a bit, or created with parameters that interfere with reading the text
> and aside from that are unattractive. So as with many embellishments,
> they should be used sparingly.
> 
> Greg


Thank you Greg

For discipline and efficiency I am working entirely with styles. Our
book only has got three chapters and one introduction, so we have got
four initial caps only: "E", "Ʊ", "A" and "B". Each of those letters
needs a unique "kerning" to align properly with the left border of the
text frame. Our alphabet has got 33 letters, so I am hesitant to use a
style approach (and many styles) for something I would like to tweak
visually.

Yes, drop caps may be overused, but definitely not for our minority
language, since this will be the first ever real book. First use ever.
For teaching the population we are including many elements of real books
like an index, page numbers, drop caps (in our case they are not
dropping into the second line but raising upwards for better
readability), illustrations with captions, introduction of author and
illustrator, glossary of foreign words, back-page-blurb, ISDN, bar code,
etc.


I was expecting that Scribus has got a well hidden trick how to move
leftmost characters sideways. Since the list has not yet discovered that
hidden trick, I will keep using my own workaround, even though I see it
as a hack. At least I can look at the page, while I move the drop cap
until it looks right.

Maybe I am the first user ever to want this?

I noticed that certain punctuation does not work too well with the
left-hand side of the Optical Margin tool. I am talking about the "Left
pointing double quotation mark" (for example)(U+00AB) Its right-hand
twin is being placed more nicely by the robot. This is one more example,
where I have got so spoilt by the awesome "total control" in Scribus,
that I would not mind having Manual Tracking, even for the leftmost
character of a line.

thanks anyway, I had to ask, because most of what we need is already in
Scribus, if we can find it,

greetings,

Martin





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ZASKE Martin
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