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Scribus => Text and Typography => Topic started by: MarkPaulson on September 21, 2016, 08:04:52 PM

Title: How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?
Post by: MarkPaulson on September 21, 2016, 08:04:52 PM
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!
Title: Re: How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?
Post by: utnik on September 21, 2016, 09:00:52 PM
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:
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
Title: Re: How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?
Post by: MarkPaulson on September 21, 2016, 09:23:27 PM
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!
Title: Re: How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?
Post by: midiguru on December 02, 2016, 09:24:49 PM
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?
Title: Re: How to paste/import text for book and retain formatting?
Post by: GarryP on December 03, 2016, 11:10:57 AM
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.