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I don't know if this is really necessary. That's some of the automagic word processors provide. Since DTP apps use frames, there's no real need for it. I agree with the background colour, though. But what would be foreground colour? The colour of the font, I suppose, but that's already there. |
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Agree with Christoph. This is a good example why we need a "case scenario" in the feature requests. From the DTP point of view, this suggestion seems to fit no real need, but it is always a pleasure to discover a new and better way of doing something. On the "background" color: doesn't this belong to the text frame (could be a part of a style for text frames)? The foreground color: we can only guess with the info we have. |
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Louis, I think there's a little difference between the background colour of a frame and simple text background colour. The latter would be only applied to text, e.g. a paragraph or a line, whereas the former would be a frame property. |
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OK. I see what you mean. In Quark, this is dealt with the line above/under option. You can set the line to any width and give it a color and an offset value. With these simple controls you can apply through a stylesheet any background color, tint, width, height. If we'd do that in Scribus from the background point of view, I guess we would achieve the same result but from a different perspective. We'd need the same kind of controls. We could add rounded corners, alternate color for each line of text, etc. |
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Let me explain closer: What it's all about is the possibility to use styles for almost all work. This way you can work so fast and easy once you've learnt it! Breaks for example: take a phone list, you want the name or title or whatever in bold, the rest in regular. Without break control in paragraph style you have to manually change the first word of each line. Put them in different frames instead, and you'll have quite a lot of work to do linking all frames, or typing text in each one of them. And then, if you need to change font size or family you'll have to do it all over again. Break control is so useful, I can think of many features that would be nice to have - but break control it's really difficult to live without! Foreground/background colour: Louis, in your second reply you've got a good idea. Again, using paragraph style instead of frame simplifies work - also as Christoph says it's a slightly different thing. (And yes, foreground colour is there already = font colour.) I never used Quark or Pagemaker, instead I used Ventura Publisher earlier for many years. I think it's the DTP-app which has the most options in paragraph styles, (pretty natural as it was once mainly intended for manuals and such.) But I can tell you this: No matter what you want to do, you can work really faster with Ventura where almost everything is done with paragraph styles! |
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2006-04-28 09:28
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demo.txt (1,987 bytes) |
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2006-04-28 09:35
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Since this is so utterly important to me, I'm uploading 2 files: one pdf created in Scribus, one text-file with my comments. I realy hope I can convince you! |
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pingu, I'm copying your demo.txt into this note, it will be easier to follow for everybody: -------------------------------- Look at the file demo.pdf, taken from a real production. 1. Second text-column and text-column below the picture (not visible): This is one way to mark when someone is talking, still keeping text together - thus making it easier to read, and also saving space. 2. Adresslist at the bottom, football-coaches: Using bold for teamname makes it easier to find the coaches you want. Also, it looks better. (This is actually a kind of bullet-list, where you easily define your own bullets.) For these two, the people writing the text are instructed to use: /Body for normal text (Paragraph-break before and/or after) /BodySp1 for someone speaking, begin line. (Paragraph-break before) /BodySp2 for someone speaking, end line. (Paragraph-break after) /BodyNob for normal text in between (Paragraph-break off) /PhH1 for phonelist Heading /Ph for phonelist Normal (Paragraph-break after) /PhB for phonelist Bold (Paragraph-break before) Get the text into the frames, use text-filter - and Voil� The text is formatted with almost no effort at all! Today, I mark every word I want in different style and change it. Lots of work, no control. 3. The ad "EMMAUS": Made exactly as customer wants it. Paragraph style: "EMMAUS LOPPMARKNAD" Nimbus Bold, Left-align, Paragraph-break before. "Gryttby, Vendel" Nimbus Regular, Right-align, Paragraph-break after. 4. The ad "PIONER": Also made exactly as customer wants it. Same idea as above. Without the break-control, today I need to mark text and specifically set the font for the selection. This means I have to carefully read every piece of text in the entire document. And then, if for some reason I need to change the font, I have to carefully read the entire document again, searching for any occurrences of text handled this way. In both cases, most likely I'll end up having missed something. Maybe you begin to understand why I find break-control of such importance? (Column-break & Page-break is nice, but not the same importance.) |
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pingu, from your description I already assumed you come from a Corel/Ventura Publisher or FrameMaker background, because that's what is typical for this kind of program (and OO.o as well, I may add). I wonder if at least some of your demands can be solved with "depending" styles, which are planned, i. e. define a paragraph style that will be autmatically be followed by a second. For instance, you define a style "first paragraph". In the style sheet you can now have set the style of the following paragraph as "regular text" without indentation. As for the rest of your needs, I wonder if that couldn't be achieved with extended table and tab options. |
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I'm not really sure about that "depending styles", don't quite understand what you mean by "following paragraph as "regular text" without indentation." Isn't it that you are creating a very special solution for a very specific problem, instead of supplying a usefull toolbox? But then, I guess I have to see it to fully understand it. You also say: "As for the rest of your needs, I wonder if that couldn't be achieved with extended table and tab options." Well, that's correct - actually, everything can be done today, without any styles at all. Mark text and pick your font; add a few frames to create a bullett-list etc.etc. But what it's all about is control. Control and ease-of-use. Think about it: Why are there paragraph styles at all? Why page templates/master pages? There is a reason, a very good reason for them. Think about it for a second: use styles for a few things, extra text-frame for some other, draw your own lines wherever you want them etc. The problem with this is that when you need to change something you need to do it over and over again, searching your entire document for those extra frames or highlighted text or whatever. Also maintaining a ... (what do you call it? look? concistence?)... throughout the publication is pretty difficult. (Hope you understand this one...) Instead I speak of a solution where you sit in your control-room and give orders - they are carried out through-out the entire document. Now there's a difference, depending on what you're doing: if your production is small (like an ad, an invitation-card or a small poster) - well, then the controls I'm talking about is not that necessary. 2-3 pictures and a few sentences, that's easily controlled by just using your eyes. But what I'm doing is a 28-page brochure with lots of ads, photos, presentations, phone lists, articles etc. Not before I'm finished do I know exactly how much space one article can use, for example. (And that phone-list, I didn't make the first word (teamname/position) in bold this year as I wanted to. 39 lines - that's simply too much for working that way.) That is why I want (almost) all controls in one place! (Sorry my posts are pretty long, it is difficult for me to put into words what I mean - please remember english is not my native language. An explanation in Swedish would be half as long...) |
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I think I understand what is your point. I think you are asking for "character style" on top of "paragraph style". This feature would allow you to assign to any number of glyphs within a paragraph a specific stylesheet. On top of this, what you are also looking for is the possibility to apply styles to data from a database at import time. This would allow to format at once huge amounts of data. This is also planned IIRC. What Christoph is saying about "depending styles" is just that, a style that depends on another one. So, after paragraph "style_one", [ENTER], then apply automatically "style_two" ... If I understand correctly, these are the general features you are looking for. All planned, again, IIRC. |
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Louis, that "character style" was an interresting approach! It might very well solve the problem! Importing data with styles applied - I thought that's allready possible? Haven't tried it though, just recently discovered the Text-filter. Depending styles, however, the way you describe it, is not anything I wanted. The feature "break-control" is about the possibility to have more than one paragraph on one single line, depending styles is something else. All planned you say! Including the "character style" -solution I hope? |
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<quote>Louis, that "character style" was an interresting approach!</quote> Hmmm... or is it? Will it not be unneccessary complicated to have both paragraph and character styles? If you only allow for more than one paragraph on one line, you don't need to add character styles. On the other hand, character styles might be more useful in some cases... Hmmm, don't really know... |
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pingu, paragraph styles and character styles are different. Character styles will do what you want to do, namely apply given style to one or more characters. Once you change the style, all "styled" characters change. Paragraph styles work on a per paragraph base, which is especially useful for long texts. Even better, paragraph styles can inherit character styles, so if you change the character style, the paragraph style will change as well. |
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My personal situation is changing, meaning I will not have any spare time - and probably no internet - before winter. That means for now I'll have to "lay down my arms". But don't feel too safe - I _will_ be back! (And by that time maybe the character styles are published, as well as some other rewritten features, makes it easier to discuss further when I've seen it in action.) |
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If there were votes, this would get mine. Character styles are exactly what I was looking for in order to have some words at the beginning of a paragraph in italic but the rest in regular, or xyz: in bold and the rest of the line in regular. Further it could allow to add items before or after the style, like in CSS. Then you could create an email-style and have a little icon put in front of every email-adress, or a small arrow in front of every link. |
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I used Adobe InDesign and I think those break options in paragraph styles are not crucial but would be nice to have them (because why not??). |
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demo.png (240,766 bytes) |
- Anonymous
