How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?

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MarkPaulson

Is there a way I can bring text in and retain its formatting, but not have it limited to just one page? Apologies if this is a remedial question, but I have tried searching!

I've written a book that contains multiple character styles throughout. In particular, there are a ton of italics and superscript numerals for citations. I already have an e-book done up in another program and I want to use Scribus to export a PDF for the print version of the book.

I can create a text box on a page and then import text from LibreOffice and it will retain its formatting well. However, the text is limited to just one page. I'd like to bring in whole chapters at a time.

I've looked for tutorials, but all the ones I've found show the text being imported with no styles at all, then adjusted with master pages. Unfortunately, that won't work for my book, due to the very large number of citations and italicized words.

I'm on a Mac running El Capitan and Scribus 1.4.6.

Thanks!

utnik

hi mark

Quote from: MarkPaulson on September 21, 2016, 08:04:52 PMI can create a text box on a page and then import text from LibreOffice and it will retain its formatting

you can import paragraph styles but afaik you'll lose your character styles.

QuoteHowever, the text is limited to just one page.


there's no such limitation in scribus.

here's how i would import such extensive masses of text:

       
       
  • when you set up the file adjust the page margins to fit the area for the text, 
  • tick the box for 'automatic text frames'. (scribus will create a text frame inside the margins on every document page. the frames are linked.)
  • generate your file (with as many pages as you like...)
  • unlink the frames where your first chapter begins
  • set the cursor in to the first frame of the first chapter
  • import this chapter
  • unlink the chain of text frames after this chapter.
  • follow with the second chapter in the next frame...
you can resize individual frames, insert more pages between the existing ones, link and unlink the frames as you like – but be aware of the fact that long connected text chains may slow down the program...

utnik

MarkPaulson

#2
Hi, Utnik. Thanks so much for your quick reply. Even if some of it was tricky to read.   :D

It worked! Yay!

You're right that the character styles didn't translate for the italics. However, the superscript came through fine and that's the biggest issue. I don't suppose there's any way to force the italics to come through?

ETA: It looks like italics come through as well, so long as the font in the original document is supported in Scribus. It didn't come through when the font was changed during import.

You wouldn't believe how much time I wasted on this, watching YouTube tutorials without finding the answer. Thanks again!

midiguru

Quote from: MarkPaulson on September 21, 2016, 09:23:27 PM

ETA: It looks like italics come through as well, so long as the font in the original document is supported in Scribus. It didn't come through when the font was changed during import.
This is not working for me, even though the font I'm using (Constantia) is supported and visible both in OpenOffice and in Scribus. Imported text -- that is, cut-and-pasted text -- is losing the italic.

I have half a dozen novels to lay out in Scribus, and I really don't want to have to find every instance of an italic word by hand. Can anyone offer a more concrete tip on how to get large blocks of pasted text to retain their italic words?

GarryP

Unfortunately, as I said in my answer to your other question on the same subject, the short answer is that you can't.

Scribus currently (as of 1.4.6) doesn't handle character styles during import to the extent that everything will come over as you might expect. There may be work-arounds but they're probably a pain and would need a lot of checking.