Coming from InDesign: paragraph rules (decorative lines)?

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GrantCee

Newbie to Scribus, but not page layout...coming here from InDesign.

I have several books which I've laid out in ID, and for the most part have found the transition to Scribus fairly straightforward. There is one feature in ID, however, that I have not been able to duplicate in Scribus: paragraph rules.

By 'rules', I mean solid lines above and below the text to set it off. For chapter titles I use Futura Medium Condensed (with tight tracking), along with a 3-point black rule above and below and spanning the width of the text. I have that set as a paragraph style to make the formatting fast and easy.

So far I have not found a way to duplicate this manually, let alone in a paragraph style, in Scribus. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

a.l.e

welcome to scribus!

paragraph decorations is something that has been added only very late in scribus, it's only in development version and few deocrations have been implemented.

and there are no lines yet.

if somebody wants to work on it, the code is on github! : - )
https://github.com/scribusproject/scribus

there are a few tricks for making it easier to work with lines, but which one applies to your case, depends a bit on what exactly you're trying achieve...

generally speaking, you will want to put a group with lines and text frame in the scrapbook and use it as a "template".

you could also paste the line in the text frame...

do you have a screenshot of the page with the lines drawn on it?

ciao
a.l.e

GarryP

GrantCee, there's a bit of a trick that you can use to get what I think you are after.

* First select the text and turn the "underline" on in "PP / Text / Colour and Effects" (or "Basic Formatting" if you're making a style). You can change the displacement and width by long-clicking the Underline icon.
* Then turn the "Strike Out" on in the same place. Long-click the "Strike Out" icon to change the displacement (press down to get 100%, which looks fine) and width as appropriate.

You can experiment with different displacements and widths to get things as you want them and you should get something like what's in my attached examples.

This isn't quite a "proper" way of doing this but it works well enough for most purposes.

Edit: P.S. This only works for single-line paragraphs. It doesn't work to "top and tail" multi-line paragraphs.

[attachment deleted by admin]

GrantCee

Quote from: GarryP on March 16, 2017, 10:05:26 AM
GrantCee, there's a bit of a trick that you can use to get what I think you are after.

* First select the text and turn the "underline" on in "PP / Text / Colour and Effects" (or "Basic Formatting" if you're making a style). You can change the displacement and width by long-clicking the Underline icon.
* Then turn the "Strike Out" on in the same place. Long-click the "Strike Out" icon to change the displacement (press down to get 100%, which looks fine) and width as appropriate.

You can experiment with different displacements and widths to get things as you want them and you should get something like what's in my attached examples.

This isn't quite a "proper" way of doing this but it works well enough for most purposes.

Edit: P.S. This only works for single-line paragraphs. It doesn't work to "top and tail" multi-line paragraphs.

That looks like it will do the trick! Thanks!

GrantCee

I spoke too soon...that produces a line with hash marks at every letter. (Now that I zoom into the example, I see it there too.)

That's the look I'm going for (would actually prefer the rules to be thicker), but the they have to be presentable (solid).

GarryP

I think that's just an issue with the way Scribus renders things on-screen. I think the screen renderer is different to that which produces the actual output. Try exporting to a PDF and see if it goes away. (I tried this with my example and even at 1200% I can't see any problems - see attached.)

[attachment deleted by admin]

a.l.e

if you want the line width to match the content width, garry's hint is a hugly hack but might work for you (it does not seem to work in 1.5 anymore, though)

if you want he line to have a fixed width, it might be (much) easier to copy paste the lines into the frame.

two limits:

- you (probably) cannot make the line as wide as the frame
- the line will have fixed width and won't match the width of the contents

ciao
a.l.e

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GarryP

a.l.e is totally correct, using this sort of trick is a complete hack and should only be used if you have confidence in what you're doing. (I wonder why it's not possible with 1.5 but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because it's not supposed to be done.)

Another trick might be to use an em-dash as explained here: http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,2314.0.html but, again, this is using one function of the software to do something it wasn't designed to do so should be used with caution.

Another trick, and this one is pretty horrible so I only give it by way of showing how versatile Scribus is, would be to use a table with a single cell:
* Insert a single-cell table;
* Alt-Click the table to edit the cell;
* Go to PP /Line;
* Check "Line at Top" and "Line at Bottom";
* Go to PP /Colour;
* Change the colour to whatever you want;
* Go back to PP / Line;
* Change the line width/formatting as appropriate;
* Double-Alt-Click the cell to edit the text as appropriate;
* Click the table to select it as a group;
* Go to PP / Group;
* Set Text Flow as "Bounding Box" (or whatever you prefer);
* Move the table into the text at the appropriate place (see attached).

The above technique has many pitfalls - for instance, the table has interior "margins" - so I personally would not recommend it, but someone might find it interesting.

a.l.e's idea of copy/pasting the line into the text frame is also interesting but, as already said, it has its own problems.

So that's four techniques, none of which are particularly good for what you want.

If I had to do this sort of thing I would probably just draw the lines separately - as normal lines - and then move them over the text wherever they should be. It's not a perfect solution by any means but it's probably a lot less hassle in the long run. If in doubt, just do it the low-tech way until something better comes along.

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utnik

Quote from: a.l.e on March 17, 2017, 09:54:28 AM...garry's hint is a hugly hack but might work for you (it does not seem to work in 1.5 anymore, though)

it still works with the latest scribus1.5.3 (r21825) – at least on macOS.

utnik

a.l.e

utnik, in my test i could not get the lines to render of the baseline and the ascender, which might mean that it works or that it does not work... depending on the goal (and on the font).

utnik

hi ale

Quote from: a.l.e on March 17, 2017, 03:13:04 PM
utnik, in my test i could not get the lines to render of the baseline and the ascender, which might mean that it works or that it does not work... depending on the goal (and on the font).

you're right. i just tried it with different fonts and some of them didn't allow to put the upper line where it belongs. but with most of the tested fonts it works well...

utnik