Importing formatted text and applying styles in Scribus

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nkdawe

I am a journal production editor and am considering switching to Scribus. However, one problem is occurring that I can't seem to overcome.

I receive formatted manuscripts with usually standard character formatting, e.g. scientific names in italics, but with a variety of paragraph formats depending on the word processor the author has used. Most manuscripts are in Word (*.doc) but I convert them in LibreOffice to *.odt and then import them into Scribus where all the character formatting appears as it should, i.e., all italicized words are still in italics. However, the paragraph formatting needs to be changed to match the journal's formatting requirements and, of course, when I apply a paragraph style to parts of the document I immediately get the paragraph formatting I want BUT I lose all the character formatting, such as italics.

Does anyone know of a way to apply a paragraph style without losing the mixed regular font/italics font that often occurs in the same paragraph?

It seems it should be such an easy task to accomplish. And it would be if the paragraph style in Scribus wasn't tied to the character style or if it at least had an option to not modify characters when the paragraph style is implemented.

Any work-around suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Nermander

This is well known problem, the reason is that the italics etc is made by direct formatting, and direct formatting is lost when you apply a paragraph style.

The "workaround" is, if I remember right, to change the direct formatting into character styles. However the current importer does not handle that automatically. I think there is some work in progress, but I'm not sure of the current status.