View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007164 | Scribus | Templates | public | 2008-07-23 08:07 | 2015-08-31 12:33 |
| Reporter | Nik777 | Assigned To | |||
| Priority | normal | Severity | minor | Reproducibility | always |
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Platform | intel | OS | Fedora Core | OS Version | 4 |
| Product Version | 1.3.3.8 | ||||
| Summary | 0007164: Problems editing and managing existing scribus document templates | ||||
| Description | There is no way to edit an existing scribus template document that correctly updates all information. Directly editing the document is made difficult by the document being stored in a hidden folder. And saving the changes does not update the template thumbnail, confusing users. Creating a new document from the template, editing that and then overwriting the original template using "save as template" results in duplicate entries in the templates index and hence the browse window, along with other confusing problems with document and image files. The only reliable way I've found is to manually delete the template, which involves deleting files from the hidden folder, and editing the templates.xml file, and then saving the updated document as a template. Not only is this cumbersome, but it is error prone, with the possible result that the template is completely lost. My suggestions are as follows: 1. Provide some way to delete an existing scribus template document from within scribus. 2. Provide a way to manage scribus template documents. This would include listing them, editing them, deleting them, and viewing their properties. Other operation such as fixing image links would be useful, but can obviously be addressed with regular scribus features if tempates can be edited. | ||||
| Steps To Reproduce | I've tried two different approaches to editing an existing template, both of which produce a useful result, but both of which also have problems. 1. edit the template document itself: 1a. select "File | Open" and select "~/.scribus/templates" (eg /home/nik/.scribus/templates) and open the desired (template) scribus document 1b. edit merrily away and then save. 2. edit a document based on the template and overwrite the original template: 2a. select "File | New from Template" and select the desired template 2b. edit merrily away, and save (just to be sure) 2c. select "File | Save as Template", enter the original template name and click OK. I can't make either approach work in a way that I could give to a non-expert computer user. Problems with approach 1: The first problem with option 1 is that it is *not* at all easy to open a file in ~/.scribus. Being a hidden directory it doesn't show in the file browse windows, and I have to enter ".scribus" manually in the browser. Once I'm there, it's pretty easy to find the correct template document. The second problem is that saving the updated template file doesn't seem to update the template thumbnail, nor does it seem to handle any newly added images properly - meaning that an image that was added to an existing template shows as missing in any document created from that template. Problems with approach 2: The main problems with approach 2 involve issues with template management. The first problem is that even when a template is saved to the same name as an existing template, a new definition is created in the template index (".scribus/templates/templates.xml"). So each time I update a template in this way, I get an extra (duplicate) entry show up in the template browser. The second problem involves newly added images. I haven't yet established exactly all the things that don't work, but newly-added images would show as "missing" when a new document was made from the modified template. In the end I copied all the images into the .scribus/templates folder manually. I tried doing this with the "File | Collect for Output". This copied all the images to .scribus/templates, but changed all the paths in the template document to ".", which causes any document created using this template to fail to find the images. In the end I just copied the images to .scribus/templates *but* set the template document to link to the the images from some *other* folder, because any images that I linked to "~/.scribus/templates" were ignored. The only reliable solution I found for the new images was to *delete* all files related to the original template before saving the new template (this is why it's a *really* good idea to save the file in step 2a above). So, my process for editing a template this way is: 2a. select "File | New from Template" and select the desired template 2b. edit merrily away, and save (just to be sure) 2c. delete ~/.scribus/templates/<original-template-name>.* 2d. edit "~/.scribus/templates/templates.xml" and delete the entire <Template>...</Template> entry for the edited template 2e. select "File | Save as Template", enter the original template name and click OK. This results in a newly saved template with the correct thumbnail, and all images functional. | ||||
| Additional Information | At one stage in my trial-and-error process I ended up with a template that could not be changed. I would save the template document, and yet when I created a document from that template, the changes would not be there. In the end I found that I had both a "template-name.sla" and a "template-name.sla.gz" in ~/.scribus/templates, and my changes were going into one, and Scribus was reading back from the other. This was solved by steps 2c. and 2d. above. So back to my original question: To clarify my original proposals: P1: From my experiences with this, it would be very helpful to have the ability to delete an existing template. This not only helps solve problems in editing templates, but allows users to remove old templates that are no longer used and are just cluttering up the templates folder. P2: From proposal P1 above, it would seem that a "Manage Templates" window would be really handy, allowing users to see their templates, delete unused ones, get info and properties on them, rebuild the thumbnail, and perhaps even check the image links, etc. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Patch | |||||
