Questions about Story Editor preview

Previous topic - Next topic

Antlab

Hi all.
I am following a course about Scribus, and I have some doubts about the features of the Story Editor.

As I understood, it should provide a good way to edit text directly in Scribus. But I don't understand why it doesn't create a real preview of the settings one can change in it.
To better explain the question, I attach one image.

In the Story editor I changed the font of the line to Garamond and the color to Blue. If I apply the settings, they are actually transferred to the text frame, but the Story Editor doesn't show them directly in its window.
I find this very odd, because in this way is not really comfortable to try different combinations.
Am I missing something or is the Story Editor still limited in functionality?

Thanks

[attachment deleted by admin]

Nermander

The story editor is intended to give a "plain" view of the edited content, thus it does NOT show the real fonts etc.

It has both positive and negative sides, today the recommendation is usually to edit text directly in the text frames. At least once it has been typeset.

Antlab

Hi Nermander,
thanks for the reply.
I am quite new to DTP concepts, so maybe I still miss some grasping of the whole workflow, but I think that  a real preview in the Story Editor would be really useful. In practice a sort of little word processor directly integrated in Scribus, to create text without need of external programs.
I also found this article that discuss the inconsistencies still present in the way the Story Editor handles styles:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/using-styles-scribus

I like Scribus, and hope this aspect will be improved in the next versions.

Thanks

utnik

hi antilab

why you don't edit your text directly in the text frame, like nermander recommended earlier? – i never use the story editor!

utnik

Antlab

Quote from: utnik on August 26, 2013, 12:52:17 AM
why you don't edit your text directly in the text frame, like nermander recommended earlier? – i never use the story editor!

Hi Utnik.
I am new to Scribus, but I would like to learn to use it quite well, mainly for self publishing. For this reason I am following a course about Scribus by Steve Czajka, and he presents the Story Editor in the section on Advanced Text, after having described the normal text frames.
If I understood correctly, the idea is related to the possibility to directly use the Story Editor for creating text, instead than importing it from external sources. But I am interested to also know the workflow used by other expert users of Scribus. Do you usually prepare the text with a word processor and then import it in Scribus editing directly the text frames?

Nermander

As far as I understand the story editor was initially intended to be "faster" than editing in i frame. Formatting the text for display is slow, thus the story editor was written to not show advanced formatting.

Today, editing "in frame" is fast enough to be used in most cases, but the story editor is useful in some situations.

Sometimes a text is written with a hard to read font, so using the story editor (that shows the text with its own font) makes it easier to work on such a text.

Other cases when the story editor might be useful is if you have rotated frames and similar where editing "in frame" is harder.

Also the story editor shows the whole text, if the text is split over several frames editing might be easier in the story editor.

But the story editor should be used to edit the content, not the design. For WYSIWYG edit "in frame".

utnik

hi antlab

Quote from: Antlab on August 26, 2013, 01:41:34 AMDo you usually prepare the text with a word processor and then import it in Scribus editing directly the text frames?

for larger texts i always import the text from a text editor!
for a simple poster or a flyer i often write it directly in scribus and edit it in the frame. (take a close look at the 'text' tab in the 'properties' window...)

afaik the entire story editor will be rewritten to make it really useful. at the moment i would use it only for some rare tasks (like those mentioned by nermander...)

utnik

Antlab

Thanks a lot Nermander and Utnik.
Now I have a much clearer vision of the differences between editing in frame and the Story Editor.
If I understand correctly, the Story Editor was already present (with its limitations) when the Property Window (F2) for text frames has been considerably improved, allowing a similar range of controls, but with direct preview. At least this is what I infer from your replies and also from a nice video I found today:

http://vimeo.com/23065842

Thanks for the clarification about the two different methods to work with text in Scribus.

Nermander

Well, if I recall correct, in the beginning editing "in frame" was not even possible (but I could remember that part wrong).

I have a faint memory that people worked with the story editor open and clicked "update frame" to see their changes in the text frame.

Antlab

Yes,
in the Vimeo video I cited before the guy says that some capabilities to edit text with the Property Window have been added starting from Scribus 1.3.5.