Mantis Issue Tracking for Scribus
· Hosting provided by Anduin.net / Øverby Consulting ·

Viewing Issue Advanced Details Jump to Notes ] View Simple ] Issue History ] Print ]
ID Category Severity Reproducibility Date Submitted Last Update
0008396 [Scribus] Graphics / Image Frames minor always 09-Aug-29 00:01 09-Aug-30 02:41
Reporter pspencer View Status public  
Assigned To fschmid
Priority normal Resolution fixed Platform linux
Status closed   OS Fedora
Projection none   OS Version 10
ETA none Fixed in Version 1.3.6svn Product Version 1.3.5
  Target Version Product Build 1.3.5.1 Release
Summary 0008396: In-line text frames do not display on screen
Description If you try to create an in-line text frame (rather than the more normal in-line image frame) the frame does not show up on screen, although it appears fine when you print or export to pdf. The attached patch fixes this by removing a bounding box check; this is analogous to issue 0008030.

(Why in the world, you may ask, would anyone want to use an in-line TEXT frame rather than just including the text directly in the main frame? That's a long story; see "additional information" ).
Steps To Reproduce 1. Create a text frame.
2. Put some text in it.
3. Select the text frame and choose Copy.
4. Create another text frame.
5. Edit it directly on canvas (not in story editor).
6. Insert some text then click Paste to insert an in-line copy of the first frame.

Blank space is inserted but the contents do not show up on screen. If you print or export to pdf, they show up fine.
Additional Information <irrelevant_background_explanation>
The reason we're doing this is to be able to typeset newsletters (which need desktop publishing features like continuation on other pages, flow around images, call-outs, etc.), some of whose articles contain significant mathematical content.

At first we thought of using LaTeX frames for these articles. However, that won't work because:
   (1) No support for continuing a render frame into several linked frames on different pages.
   (2) No way to get the text inside the LaTeX frame to know about and wrap around other elements such as pictures and call-outs
   (3) Different typography between those LaTeX frames and regular articles, such as not being able to align them both to the same baseline grid, LaTeX producing kerning and linebreaking that has a significantly different visual feel to those done in plain Scribus, etc.

So then we moved to having the article as a regular text frame with inline render frames holding the equations. This works quite well; we have a script that scans text frames for mathematical content, pulls it out and replaces it with inline frame references, and sets the size and offset of the inline frame so that the formula's baseline exactly lines up with the surrounding text.

Now the problem is that's a lot of render frames, resulting in a document that, even with only one math-intensive article, takes over a minute to load into scribus. For most of the formulas, such as single italicized variables, it is a waste to call an external program when they could be easily rendered in Scribus itself.

However, to render such formulas in scribus itself, we run into the problem of the original mathematical intent being lost if the style of the frame is changed. If the text frame contains a sentence like "let a, b, and c be variables", and we render the a, b, and c in italics, that distinction is lost if the font of the entire frame is changed, and an editor would need to manually alter each individual item back to italics.

By using an inline text frame, we can preserve this formatting independently of the formatting of the surrounding text. Then, if a font change is made to the surrounding text, the next run of our math-harvesting script can pick up the change and apply it intelligently to the inline text frame too while still preserving the italics where needed.

If anyone has suggestions for a better way to accomplish this, they are welcome!
</irrelevant_background_explanation>
Tags No tags attached.
Attached Files ? file icon scribus-1.3.5.1-inlinetext.patch [^] (739 bytes) 09-Aug-29 00:01

- Relationships

-  Notes
(0022442)
pspencer (reporter)
09-Aug-29 02:10

Oops, I put this in the wrong category. Should of course be text frames not graphics/image frames -- sorry about that.
(0022448)
christoph_s (administrator)
09-Aug-30 02:41

Tested, fixed. Thanks!

- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
09-Aug-29 00:01 pspencer New Issue
09-Aug-29 00:01 pspencer File Added: scribus-1.3.5.1-inlinetext.patch
09-Aug-29 01:03 christoph_s Status new => assigned
09-Aug-29 01:03 christoph_s Assigned To => fschmid
09-Aug-29 02:10 pspencer Note Added: 0022442
09-Aug-29 09:55 fschmid Status assigned => resolved
09-Aug-29 09:55 fschmid Fixed in Version => 1.3.6svn
09-Aug-29 09:55 fschmid Resolution open => fixed
09-Aug-30 02:41 christoph_s Note Added: 0022448
09-Aug-30 02:41 christoph_s Status resolved => closed



Mantis 1.1.7[^]
Copyright © 2000 - 2008 Mantis Group
Powered by Mantis Bugtracker