Designing a book with lots of text and photos

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ele

Hello everyone  :)

I started designing a A5 book after watching some videos and reading some post of how to do things, but already notice some mistakes I made during the process.

While I still don't know exact margin and bleed marks are going to be (author wants text and photos in advance to see how it will look and how many pages will come from it) I found somewhere that you need to create a bit bigger version of the pages you want to work it, so I created 6 mm wider document in all the sides and left margin on 14,111, while still add 6 addition mm in bleeds which gave me even bigger size on screen. I have since set bleeds to 0 and try to put guides at those 6mm board to get "real" A5 page. Because if I try to set it in Document setup I get that look in an example bellow.

Questions:
1. Why text style for chapter name on page 2 isn't the same as on page 4 and how to change it.
2. Is it possible to change text boxes to be align with new "blue" line all at once or with few steps, because only first part of the book has 200 pages already.
3. How to make a bit of space at the beginning of page 3, maybe same amount as at the end of page 2.
4. From what I have read lately, it might not be possible for images to follow the text if design change or author decide to make some more changes?
5. What would be the best (or easiest) way to put text bellow photos and too keep same distance from the photo and text bellow.
6. Is it possible to keep a styles applied to the text formatting if I break a chain as right now it's one big one in both documents I'm working on.

Another issue I have are photos that goes over 2 pages, I tried placing them in the middle of the page, but then when I tried exporting to PDF I got some of the same text on left(1) and right side (2). Is it possible to have just half of it on same side. I'm also wondering if I should expend those further out of the box and maybe hide numbers on those pages. My only worry is that something wouldn't be cut out then, because some of those goes all the way, while others don't.

That's all the questions I have for now... I'm sure I forgot something and might ask later. Sorry for a long post.

I'm using Scribus 1.4.5

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GarryP

Welcome to the forum ele.

I'll try and answer your questions in order:

0(?). You need to understand what bleed is before you try to use it. If you use it incorrectly you'll just make more trouble for yourself later. Find a good article - it doesn't have to be Scribus-related - and try and work out what it does.

1. You can define Paragraph and Character styles using the Styles Editor - menu "Window -> Styles". Once you have created your styles you can apply them to the text through the Properties Palette Text tab Style sub-tab. (I have no way of knowing why the formatting is different in the case supplied because I don't have the original document.)

2. Once a text frame has been placed on the page the only way to change its size or position is by doing it manually. Scribus has no functions to automatically move things about depending on changes to the page. (Maybe in the future perhaps.)

3. If you want to put white space somewhere you need to size the frames to make the space. There are other ways of doing this but they depend on a lot of other things that have to be just right and they very much depend on exactly what you are trying to do.

4. Image frames don't move with the text. As with text frames, if you want them to move you need to do it yourself. (There are such things as inline images but you shouldn't use them.)

5. The easiest way to have text below an image - while keeping them together - would be to put a text frame below an image frame and then group the two frames. You can still edit the text in the grouped text frame by Alt-clicking the text frame. (Scribus 1.5.x has more functionality to do this easier/better but it's up to you if you want to try it - and it's important knowing that if you save a document with 1.5.x you can't go back to 1.4.x.)

6. If you create styles (as in answer 1) you can apply the formatting wherever you want and the style will "follow" the text.

7(?). To add "space" to an image frame so that text doesn't flow into that space you can edit the contour line of the image frame. Sselect image frame, Properties Palette, Shape tab, Edit button, then check "Edit Contour Line". Change the contour line so that it covers the space you don't want the text flowing into then OK the dialog. In the Shape tab - with the image frame selected - you will also need to set the text flow option to "Contour Line".

I hope this has answered some of your questions and put you back on track.

ele

Thank you for replay GarryP.

0. Will have to explore more about bleeds and those things then... here it says that setting up additional space when creating document is only good for photoshop, libreoffice and those kind of programs, and 6 cm size is ok, but need to put only 3mm on the each side of the page. Will have to watch some videos too, because only text and few photos doesn't help enough.

If someone has some good one please post it.

1. I attached original document with few improvements. First one is just .sta (don't know if things get included here and 2. is Collect to output option that I read on forum in the last few days. (Additional question how to check those fonts that are included, probably trough importing styles but aren't used in the document. - I only need URW Palladio L and URW Chancery L)

5. Sounds good, but I need to learn how to use groups of frames that are on different layouts, because I couldn't get it to select together to make a group. Are there any shortcuts for that? (I tried 1.5.1 in virtual box, it looks a bit different and for some strange reason I have much more space before titles there, opening same document as I worked on in 1.4.5, I might try 1.4.6 if there are some noticeable improvement if I upgrade my system, otherwise I don't really wanna do that in the middle of the project.)

6. Yes, I always liked styles and always use it even in LibreOffice or other one, but this things here are a bit more advance.

7. Somehow edit the contour line didn't work so well from what I have been trying so far, especially if the image doesn't fill whole part of the page (look into the file please on page 5) Is there a way to create straight line while dragging those out to the text border or some shortcuts? On first image on page 3 I used lines below the text, to got that extra white space that are not printable and on own layer.

8. If I want image without white border then I need it set up like that one on page 4? Or should it be on both sides and how will I know it wont go on the other page?

9. Should book cover be included in the same document as the rest of the book and how to do that if document starts with right page, how would you get last page in, because they probably shouldn't be separated?

Hope I'm not to demanding and asking so many questions, but I'm just learning Scribus and want to understand it in the best possible way, despite English not being my first language.

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GarryP

You're welcome ele.

0. The one bit of advice I can give for setting bleeds and other printing requirements - registration marks etc. - is to ask your print shop what you should be using. You can give them screen shots of the Scribus dialogs and ask them what values to use. They should know what they're talking about as they will use them every day.

1. Opening the SLA I was asked about substituting these fonts: URW Chancery L Medium Italic, URW Palladio L Bold, URW Palladio L Italic, and URW Palladio L Roman. These should be the only fonts that are used by the document although you will always "use" whatever font is specified by the default styles even if you don't actually use those default styles.

5. Once you have an object selected, use shift-click to select more objects then menu "Item -> Group" to create a group. Use menu "Item -> Ungroup" to ungroup. You can learn the shortcuts yourself from the menus. In 1.5.x some menu items might be in different places, you've just got to find them. Currently, you cannot have a group of objects that are on different layers. All objects in a group must be on the same layer.

6. Styles in Scribus are more advanced than in LibreOffice simply because Scribus can do much more with text. Unfortunately though there is no basic versus advanced settings, you just get everything at once. Just try and ignore the stuff you don't know about. You can always learn about it later when you need to.

7/8. Sorry, I don't think I've understood what you wanted to do. You have done what I suggested but it doesn't sound like it is what you wanted. Could you explain a bit more please? Or, even better, if you can attach an image of - or give a link to - an example in a web site or magazine article that might make things easier to understand.

9. Including the cover in the same document is something you need to discuss with whoever will be printing the book. They will be able to tell you what you need to do. You can change which side the first page is on by going to "File -> Document Setup" / Document / Document Layout and changing the "First Page Is" setting.

Do not worry about asking too many questions. This is mainly an English language forum but if you feel more comfortable writing in your own language then you can ask the same question in your own language and English together. Just prefix each version of the question with something like [French] or [English] and someone can answer you in the same way. It's not a perfect solution but you might get a more precise answer. (Personally I can't speak/read/write anything other than English but that's entirely my problem. I'm a typical Brit in that regard.)

ele

#4
0. That's the hard part... I don't yet know who will print it, but from what the author said it will be some smaller printer, if they can get a hold on them or if they are still in the business. Like the idea of taking screen shots to see and explain better.

5. Ah that's why it didn't work, because I have them on different layers. One is for photos and one for text (boxes), if they are not part of the text.

7. I originally done something like this (only clicking on download and then open works for me) with a border-shape on different layer then photo, because I have different size of photos and author doesn't want text around photos, so when trying to create (white) space needed it take lots of time to do each node separately and make lines straight so text don't go like on first attached photo and then showing how I have done in few steps on some different nodes/lines. I don't want to enlarge the size of the path by the shown value in all the direction the same, but usually on left and right side more, so I wonder if there are other ways to achieve it better?

8. If I want image without white border when printed then I need it set up like that one on page 4 of .sta document? Or should it be on both sides if I wanted to have no white space when printed on left/right of the photo on same page, for example on the left page like in .sta file and how will I know it wont go on the other page? Meaning that it wouldn't happen like on my previous example in the bottom of my first post

Hope that explain it better otherwise I will try to think in another way...

It would be much better, if I could talk with the printer person before putting all the images in and set stuff up, but the author want to see how much pages will be and have a printed version, before even going forward...

Thanks again for your time and help. Well my first language is Slovenian and isn't really something major like French/German and so on. Checking some local online printer shops none had Scribus mention at all. I did notice that in 1.5.1. it has much improvements and translations. Trough on the other hand it's harder to find things you are looking for, because mostly all the tutorials are in English (that I understand mostly, even if I have to read it several times) and if it's only text based you have many problems thinking where that is and how it's translated, I had to change it to English in process, that's why I prefer video or at least some photo tutorials, because then I know when I can find it.

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GarryP

5. I think that 1.5.x allows you to select "across" layers. See Mantis tickets: https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=10673 and https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=8631 (and I think there's a more recent one but I can't find it).

7. Unfortunately the Node Editor doesn't have snap or constrain functionality yet but it's been requested (https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13989). Snap functionality would help as you could use guides to put the contour line in exactly the right place and constraining (with the CTRL key) would help in general. One thing you could try is to drag a line rather than a node. It's not perfect but it might help.

8. I think I understand what you mean now. If I've got it right, you want to make sure that the image will go up to the sides of the page when it's printed without leaving a gap at either side. This means that you need to make sure that the image is extended to the edge of the bleed area. You can think of the bleed area as "the area that might be printed if the paper isn't exactly aligned in the printer". If you want to make sure that there will be no underlying page shown in that area then you need to make sure that you have something that will be printed on it. So you will need to extend the image (not just the frame, you need the whole image) to the edge of the bleed for that page. If you later change the bleed size then you will need to adjust the images also.

You really need to know what the bleed size is before making sure your images are correct as changing the bleed size means that those images you need to go to the pages edges may need to be adjusted, especially if the bleed is made larger.

One thing that's very important to know about when you're using bleeds is the way Scribus displays pages. By default Scribus displays a zero horizontal distance between pages. This means that if you have a bleed of, for example, 5mm, the pages will overlap by a total of 10mm (2 x 5mm). You would then need to increase the horizontal distance - menu "File -> Preferences", Display, Gaps Between Pages, Horizontal - in this case by 10mm to be able to see the pages fully including all of the bleed. It might sound confusing but try experimenting to see what happens. (You will need to set the new gap value and then close and re-open Scribus to see the effect.)

As I don't get any of my stuff printed professionally I'm getting to the extent of my knowledge in this area so if anyone else reading this can explain it better then please do.

I hope this helps.

ele

Thank you GarryP you are really helping me a lot. Just few more questions.

1. Question from the beginning. Why text style for chapter name on page 2 isn't the same as on page 4 and how to change it in included .sta file in my second post. 

5. I tried to select 3 items from different layers following 2nd note: Outline Palette, just do a CTRL-Click on the objects from your link using Scribus 1.4.5. on Ubuntu MATE 15.10 and it worked as I manage to move them all together on second page from third as shown on photo bellow, if anyone needs it later. Sadly grouping is greyed out but that's at least something, so thanks for that. :)

7. It's a shame it doesn't exist yet. While I tried your suggestion it would require a very steady hand moving lines. I tried also in 1.5.1 and it looks like it doesn't work at all there.

(bit off topic) I have seen you requested that, have you consider using Virtualbox if you have powerful enough pc and install either Windows on it or some Linux distribution that are free. I manage to install both Scribus (1.4.6) and Scribus NG (1.5.1) in Ubuntu MATE 16.04. I never used Win 10, but in Virtualbox you can make mistakes or try installing different programs without harming your main system, if you wanna have a go on 1.5.1 or some later version of Scribus.

8. Will see if some images will go that far, because most aren't really that good quality and they are very old.

OK so whatever the bleed is, if it's 3mm at each size then that's 6mm? I tried that and haven't notice any changes. What should have been different? Maybe I need to look more into it later on or should that also be set in advance?
While I was on that menu I also notice that I don't have right display size as I use 113dpi, so I also changed that. Now the text is a little bigger, trough author wants a bit bigger font, trough I wonder if they print it correctly when it was just text.

Any other comments/suggestion on layout or how things look or what else should I look for (in general)?

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GarryP

You're welcome ele.

1. I've had to substitute the fonts to get the SLA to load so what I'm seeing isn't exactly what you get but I can see that there seems to be a space at the top of the paragraph on page 4 which isn't there on page 2. Changing the style of both chapters to something else and then back again (which sometimes fixes things) didn't fix it. Strange. I'll need to look into this more. (I'm curious as to why you have so many paragraph styles in such a small document.)

5. That's a neat little trick. Thanks for sharing it.

7. One other trick you can use is to drag-select the nodes you want to move and then use the cursor keys to move them. SHIFT/CTRL/ALT changes the amount they're moved.

(Off topic) I've got Virtual Box but can't get the wi-fi to work in the guest via the virtual connected cable (or any other way) so I can't get internet access to download the software. It's a low priority so I'm not really looking at it.

If you change the horizontal page gap size you need to close Scribus and re-open it to see the difference.

The display size setting is only used to get your on-screen page to be the same size as it would be when printed. It doesn't affect anything else.

Unfortunately, the topic of "general suggestions for layout" is such a huge and varied area that I can't really give any comment.

ele

1. Aren't fonts included in collect to output in .zip file if I did it correctly. Well I can only think that on page 3 I used ctrl+enter to break page if that has anything to do with it. I only use about 5 styles in whole document so far, in this test file I use Naslov poglavja - chapter title, Tekst for plain text & Tekst ležeče - italic text and Slike opis - descriptions of photos. 

I notice there are many styles that I don't use, mainly just empty spaces of different stiles and they probably got imported trough libreoffice styles when I got text from there to my original document and maybe that could be imported trough Master Pages into that document? Does importing master pages from other document also include styles and layers used in that document?

5. You're welcome. It was in the link you provided, but it was written that it works in 1.5 and I tried in earlier version and it worked too :) So couldn't done without you pointing to that ;)

7. Alt+cursor keys < > work well with this in one image but takes lots of time. Is there a faster way to get that done when you have to insert 100+photos in one document?

(off topic) Have you try Bridged Adapter under Network before you run OS of your choice. I just played around Advance setting and there has to be a tick for Cable connected so VBox see it as wired connection even if you use wi-fi on your main OS. This worked for me even before setting up guest additions in any version of Ubuntu MATE i tried so far, but could be different to Windows, since I haven't use them for over a year and didn't even know about Virtual box back then.

I changed horizontal page gap and when I did page changes behind open settings window, but I have no idea what the difference is even when closing document and Scribus and reopen it.

Another question, should text be based on Baseline grid and what should the difference be between text size and those gaps? How much would it fit into A5 document? Or would automatic/fixed spacing be more practical for long documents like books?

Maybe I didn't explain well about suggestion for layout, I trough if by what you saw in test .sta document you have some suggestion if something doesn't work well or if I should change something in how it looks now. I try to make it as close to original as possible and I really don't have much design knowledge or what fit together and so on.

GarryP

1. Yes, the fonts will have been included in the "collect for output" file, I just forgot that you'd posted it. There's actually a space or some other strange character at the start of the line on page 4 that is causing the problem. Double-click the text frame, put the cursor at the start of the line and press Backspace. The problem should be fixed.

I think all of the styles starting with "P" will probably be imports from LibreOffice. I generally only use text from plain text files - to avoid possible problems with strange control characters and because most things need to be re-formatted properly anyway - and I don't use the import function very much so I can't really comment on how it works. I always recommend plain text files and doing all of the formatting in Scribus. It can mean more work but at least you know what's going on if you're doing it yourself.

5. I missed that one. Sometimes I don't see what's in front of me.

7. Sorry, I don't think there's a faster way. Even if you got one frame set-up just as you wanted it and then duplicated it - to put a different image in the duplicate - you would still have to mess around changing the image settings. There isn't much you can do about it. A script might be able to do it quicker but it might take longer to write than just doing the work in first place.

(Off topic) I'd already tried changing to Bridged Adapter but it didn't work. I've tried both ways on both OpenSUSE and Mint, both before and after installing the Guest Additions, but nothing seems to work. I've a feeling that my host (Windows 10) network settings need to be changed but that's probably a world of pain. Having said that, it's probably something simple that I've just missed.

Try setting the horizontal gap to a large size, like 30mm, and see if you can tell the difference. If you can't see a difference then something may be wrong. If you can see a difference, then adjust the size back to something that looks right.

I'd recommend using the baseline grid for the body text of any non-trivial document. There's no rule for what font size to use for a given baseline size as each font has a different x-height (the height of a lower case x, therefore - to some extent - the height of the letters, in general) so there is always a difference. You need to try different values and see what looks right for the document (each type of document will look better a different way). If the gap is too small then the text will look too bunched up and "claustrophobic", and if the gap is too large it will start to look like a children's book. It just depends on what your requirements and audience are.

It's difficult to know what to suggest layout-wise as I don't really know what you're trying to achieve. This article http://desktoppub.about.com/od/newsletterdesign/ provides links to lots of suggestions on how to use layouts and text and many other things. It says it's for newsletters but you can apply a lot of the techniques to many other types of documents.

Layout design is just something you have to learn by looking at what other people have done and then experimenting. One good way to learn is to find a magazine article that you like the look of and try to work out how to re-create it in Scribus. Magazines and books are created by people who have been doing this sort of thing for years and they know what they're doing, so why not copy the sort of things they do? Obviously you shouldn't copy things exactly (except for your own personal use) but practice - and feedback from your readers, of course - will tell you what is right.

ele

1. Well that didn't help as I then got whole last paragraph as title style and it broke "page break". But align to baseline grid kinda helped I think. Look at the first photo, first page is align, while after 2nd Title it isn't, I guess that looks a bit better, so pictures also can be align to that?

Yeah that will probably be better if I only import text and do styling later.

5. I think we are all like that sometimes ;)

7. Ah that's a shame, since I don't know how to write script that would take even more time.

(Off topic) A video on youtube suggest if Bridged adapter settings weren't showing an easy fix, just uninstall VitrualBoy, reboot, and install as administrator. Hope that helps as I don't really want to have any experience with Win 10, but tried OpenSUSE once and it worked there too.

I understand horizontal gap now, thanks for your suggestion to increase size, I was wondering when clicking on the pages that they were overlapping, but didn't know it was a easy fix like that :)

Already mention something above about baseline. I guess I should have done that from the beginning, but will do first part of the book after I get the Author opinion on other things and get everything I need to know about it as I really don't want to do things more times then necessary. But it's for older people mostly, so text need to be a little bigger, should there also be more space between letters/words or does that look ok?

I'm not sure what I want to achieve that clearly either, text and photos in between, but I will have to change some positions of photos, because for some Author just wanted them together and I'm not sure if 2-4 pages of scanned documents would look good together.

Doing a huge book at the start is quite a challenging thing as I don't really have experience with that, but I hope to learn a lot and hopefully then share what I learn and save others some time and frustrations.

Ah another question of something I came across in first part of my book, but then manually change it, because I trough that inserting pages done that and but now I notice it happen on my test book too, even if I didn't add anything after creation of document with 10 pages, when I clicked on Show text chain at the bottom one pointed to a grey space way down on the document and had some text (frames) gone there too, look at the 2nd photo as it's hard to explain. Why this happen and is there a way to prevent it?

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GarryP

The baseline grid is for the placement of text only. Nothing else can be aligned to it and you can't use it for anything else.

(Off Topic) I think I'll try uninstalling it all and trying again from scratch. I probably messed something up right at the start.

In general, if you have a font that is properly constructed, you shouldn't need to change the spacing between characters or words. You can change the spacing but you have to be careful that it still looks right. (Some fonts don't play nicely if you change the spacing.) Unfortunately, there's no way of telling that it still looks right except by how you feel about it. It's best to keep the spacing as it is unless you really have a good need to change it.

If your pages are A4 then I'd say that your text in the image is way too big. Most printed body text is between 8pt and 12pt. Smaller or bigger is okay in some cases but that's for specialist things. The easiest thing to do is to look at an existing book, count the lines on a page, then make yours the same with similar spacing between lines. Book printing has evolved to the state that they've got it pretty much right by now.

As for the chain that goes down to a non-existent page, it's a known bug: https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=8806 and, unfortunately, I don't know of any way of fixing it in a real document. Personally I wouldn't trust that document again as I won't know what else might have gone wrong "in the background". This is another reason why I don't recommend using automatic text frames. To me, if you need to use automatic text frames then you might as well use a word processor, but that's just my opinion. (I've added another use case to the ticket for the developers to look at but it was originally raised more than 6 years ago so I can't see it being a high priority.)

ele

So if you use baseline, you can't make smaller spaces between some of those lines, text will just skip one line and then continue to the next?

(off topic) Well in video it say if you don't install it as administrator you will have problems, but I'm not sure if that's on all Windows pc's now, because when I used Win7 I was always administrator there. So maybe reinstall is an option.

OK, I will leave the spacing as it is now and will see later if I need it somewhere.

No, they are A5. I trough it was a bit big too, so I tried to reduce font size. On the photo I change language to mine for better test results and on left side the fonts are 13pt (except italic font 12pt) on the right side fonts are 12pt. Not sure which one look better trough.
I try changing things a bit in second photo and make base line grid 0,50pt smaller and change the base line offset to get one more line in and got 32 lines in total. Have no idea if that is better. Will have to go to library to check some of more modern type of books and see how it's done there.

What about some of the shadows or outlines... I tried experimented a bit on chapter title, but mostly all came out to dark. Should those be in book or would it be better to avoid it?

Ah ok, nothing to do there then, the other text stayed the same, just last few frames tend to go off.

I wanted to express my gratitude to you Garry P for all the help you provided as I have much clearer picture of what I should/shouldn't do and how, so thanks again.



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Nermander

The line spacing within a paragraph can (if I don't recall wrong) be set to:

Automatic
Fixed
Baseline grid

Only those paragraphs that are set to Baseline grid will align to the Baseline grid.

ele

Ah right, thanks Nermander. Haven't trough of that...I guess I need to think a bit more outside of the box. There are just so many things to think about.