Having frustrating time Editing & Changing Text - please help

Previous topic - Next topic

Tam

Hi

I'm new to Scribus, ( though have used a variety of DTP tools & Graphics Applications for 20 plus years. I have installed Scribus today, from here https://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/scribus/1.4.7/ ( 64 Bit vers)  and Ghostscript.

I have a number of projects I need to 'prepare for press', so I decided to give it a try, having read so many great reviews online. However unfortunately I am having a number of crazy issues which may or may not be 'bugs', trying to do a few basic things including altering the Page Setup, AddingText/Editing Text & the Story Editor,

I've spent a long time this afternoon fiddling with this trying to get it to work. After much trial and error, and googling I came to this forum and read a number of people had had the same frustrations with the Story Editor, and if I understood correctly  that the 'Story Editor' is not designed to be used for 'editing text' in the way someone might at first expect, when trying to get the various options within it's tools ( none of which seemed to work)  .

It also seems, that most Scribus users don't useit  to 'edit' text. It seems the popular way is to double click on the text frame to edit the or use the properties box.

I've been playing with that and strangely sometimes it works perfectly others well basically it does NOT do anything.. As a result I find myself doing exactly the same steps multiple times, in order to try and get the thing to work.

Re page, as crazy as it sounds I am trying to get landscape . I am trying 'File/Document Setup/Orientation Landscape'

I have tried
clicking on OK and nothing happens - my page does not change from portrait
clicking on Apply and nothing happens

So I can try to ascertain whether this is bug related, PLEASE could someone tell me the following ridiculously simple steps, 'step by step' ..I will follow these to the letter

1. Change page from Portrait to Landscape
2. How to enter text into a document ( as in sev lines approx 25 pt on the front of a greeting card)
3. How to 'Group' that text as one object
4. Scale that 'object' block of text ( larger or smaller)

My apologies that these are such simple things to ask.. but I cannot waste any more time fiddling, and I really need to know whether I need to uninstall Scribus & start again.

Other info:

I am running Win 8.1 (64 Bit )

Thank you so much in advance for your time & assistance

Regards

Tam

a.l.e

Hi Tam

Scribus has its issues, but it *does* work.
And you should be able to do what you're looking for.
Can I suggest you, that you might go through a tutorial like http://write.flossmanuals.net/scribus/hands-on/ ?

Concerning your questions:

1.
The orientation of the document concerns the pages you will create in the future.
You can change the orientation of each Page > Manage Page Properties.
2.
I don't know why so many people come in here and bitch about the Story editor not working correctly.
The Story editor is *not* the preferred way to put your text in Scribus.
Just don't use it, except for jobs where it is really needed. ( You should not meet those cases during your first steps).
For editing text: create a text frame and double click on it. It does work. Really. It's that simple.
3.
You can use Item > Group to group frames. It's not easy to edit grouped text frames but it's possible (use the alt key to select one frame and the e one to enter the edit mode).
But, probably, you don't want to group the frames, but link them to get the text to flow from one to the other.
4.
You can scale the frame with its content by holding down the alt and ctrl keys why resizing the frame. It mostly works.
But I'm not sure if this is what you want to do...
And, generally speaking, it's better to resize the frame and then resizing the text with the appropriate field in the properties palette.

Just ask, if you need more instructions!

Good luck
a.l.e