Why does Story Editor deselect the text after changing one attribute ?

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xlexil

I am new to Scribus. There is something I don't understand with Story Editor.

Let's say I have a text frame which needs some tweaking. I need to select a part of the text and change some attribute.

The change is not done in real time, and the selection is cleared after one change, which is really user unfriendly. Why is it so, and how can I tweak text attributes in a reasonable way ?

Thanks.

GarryP

Welcome to the forum xlexil.

Unfortunately the Story Editor isn't very good. Strange for an application whose main purpose is to do text-based things but it's what we've got. (I've heard that some changes may be coming in later versions but that doesn't help you at the moment.)

The Story Editor is okay when you want to change paragraph formatting but it's not good for formatting anything smaller than a paragraph. It's possible but, as you say, the selection disappears and you can't see what the changes have done. It's okay for getting an overall view of your text and making changes to the actual text but it's not good for formatting.

For formatting text I'd advise formatting directly in the frame. Double-click the text frame to go to "direct editing mode". In this "mode" you can select the text you want to change and use the Text tab of the Properties Palette to make any formatting changes you want and they are immediately shown on-screen. You can also change the text in there too. This sort of thing is more like what you would see in a word processor. (Remember that you can - and should - leave the Properties Palette open all the time so you have easy access.)

Once you're comfortable making the formatting changes using the Properties Palette I'd then advise looking at Styles. Using styles makes day-to-day formatting much easier.

In all, generally, I'd advise not using the Story Editor, unless you really have to, and do your formatting directly in the text frame.

xlexil

Thanks for your answer. I will use the properties palette from now on.