0006830: "In-Text Line" feature - Mantis Issue Tracker for Scribus

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0006830	Scribus	Story Editor / Text Frames	public	2008-03-01 20:32	2008-03-01 20:49

Reporter	louisdesjardins	Assigned To
Priority	normal	Severity	feature	Reproducibility	always
Status	acknowledged	Resolution	open

Summary	0006830: "In-Text Line" feature
Description	We have inline graphics which are great. One specific need in typography is ot be able to easily set lines with text. There are various ways of doing this. Add lines manually, use tabs with fill characters, anchor lines into text. All this stuff is fine when you only have a few lines to deal with. What we need is a robust feature that would allow a variety of controls and yet remain simple to use and to set, but in a more automated way. One real-life case scenario is school publications. Exercises for kids. List of words that have to be rewritten by the kids, with the appropriate variation (plural for instance, or list of irregular verbs that one has to complete) followed by a line where it is actually possible to write. You could also have a text in which some hidden words are replaced by lines of various widths, into the text. How do you do this with today's tools? Hit the underscore key as many times as needed to reach the line length you want? Don't laugh! Lots of people do that. Here is my first draft for this "In-Text Line" feature I envision: 1. Being able to determine the amount of space before and after a line. 2. Being able to determine the type of line and its width, length, color, shade and opacity. 3. Being able to determine how the lines align horizontally and vertically and if they are a) dynamic width or b) static width. a) Example of dynamic width use: You want to fill the remaining of the line of a list from a specified space after the text to the end of the text frame or to a specified point in that text frame. Doing this is very clumsy at present time. b) Example of static width use: You need to put an in-text line into an exercise book. You will want to be able to adjust quickly the length of that line but you could also use a simple copy-paste to place the line. We can think of better ways to implement this. Or based on the previous word length, for instance. 4. We have to find a convenient way of selecting with ease those in-text lines in order to modify them. 5. These in-text lines must be made part of a stylesheet. 6. There could be an "insert line" character. Something like a tag that we could ask people to use into their favorite word processor and that Sribus would recognize once the text is imported.
Additional Information	A similar feature somehow exists in both ID and QXP but they lack the ease of use and efficiency I am looking for. There is too much manual work to do in order to accomplish entire pages of exercises like the ones described here.
Tags	No tags attached.

Patch

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2008-03-01 20:32	louisdesjardins	New Issue
2008-03-01 20:49	christoph_s	Status	new => acknowledged
2015-09-17 20:08	Kunda	Category	Story Editor / Text Frames => Story Ed/Txt Frames
2015-09-17 20:12	Kunda	Category	Story Ed/Txt Frames => Story Editor / Text Frames