CV alignment

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questionesse

Hey guys,

I finally made it to give scribus a go and what can I say, I really like it, allthough I was a little scared before.
My first project is making a decent CV Layout as MS Word is really a nogo here.

It looks fine so far, but by now, I have inserted the different columns and rows in single text boxes and therefore it's a bit hard to align them all the same.
I was wondering how you guys would tackle a document like that.

It's basicly like that:

Column 1                                                                   Column2                                                       Column3
TITLE  for the section                                                 The individual steps                                     The corresponding dates
(such as 'experience', 'education' etc.)                       (such as work 1, work 2 etc)                       (from-Until)
Just Headline                                                              With Headline, Subheadline & Text             Just text


What should be in its own textbox, what should be in one?
And is there a best practice how to align the boxes?

Thx a lot!

questionesse

Noone got a hint for me?
Already tried a table as well as the alignment would be rather automatic, but I couldn't figure how to adjust them in size...

GarryP

You can apply tab stops to text frames to line up your text into columns in the same frame. Properties Palette > Text > Column and Text Distances > Tabulators.

However, personally, I don't like using tabs in Scribus. I keep having problems with them.

And tables are just grouped text frames. To adjust individual columns/rows you have to ungroup and then adjust them.

If I was doing what you want I'd put each column in its own frame and use the baseline grid (NOT the "normal" grid) to line up the text across the horizontal. Using the baseline grid means that you don't have to keep the text frames aligned vertically. The text is automatically aligned by the grid. (A very quick and dirty example is in the attached screenshot where you can see how the text lines up.)

I'm sure some people will disagree with me but I've found it quicker than messing around with tabs that don't behave themselves - for me at least.

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questionesse

#3
Thx for your reply Garry!
Looks like a very viable approach to make sure the frames next to each other stay aligned
I was also able to align them pretty accurate with a horizontal manual help line.
But where I'm even more struggling is how to keep the distance and alignment with the next text blocks underneath, let's say for the next Jobs?

If I put the next horizontal triple of frames underneath, I need a way to make sure the distances to the frames above and below are the same - any ideas on that?

Or would it make more sense to put the next text blocks into the same frames and work distances by line or paragraph distance?


p.d. one beginner question in addition as I don't want to open a new thread for it and haven't found anything yet. If I formatted text manually - can I transfer that formatting to a style as it is possible in MS Word?

thx!

GarryP

You're welcome.

If I was you I'd just use extra manual new lines to put space in between the text blocks and let the baseline grid line things up for you.

I know it's not very high-tech, and a lot of DTP purists reading this will have thrown their hands up in horror at the thought, but if you're only doing a CV - which probably isn't more than two pages - then why waste time experimenting; just do what works and get your CV out into the world.

I've attached two very simple screen shots and the SLA they came from to give you the idea.

On your last point, currently (with 1.4.3) Scribus can't create a style from some existing text unfortunately. You have to create styles from scratch.

One tip that I'd recommend for this is creating character styles first, then basing paragraph styles on the character styles. That way you can easily change a character style and all the paragraph styles based on it will automatically change. This is great for trying out different typefaces on a whole document.

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Arran

Have you already searched at http://scribusstuff.org/index.php?xcontentmode=642 for an appropriate template?
Have you first consulted the Manual? You can probably find the solution there.

Happy Greetings from Scotland's nicest Holiday Island

questionesse

thx for the helpful input once more, Garry!
You're right - I tend to theorize a bit too much here and should lean more towards action.

@Arran
No, I didn't - had no clue, this existed. Just did a general online search for scribus+CV which didn't come up with anything.
But unfortunately now that I had a look at it, also the collection you're linking to doesn't contain anything like that as it's more aiming at newsletters and flyers from what I see.

questionesse

I got ahead and I'm quite satisfied with my result so far.

what is giving me some trouble is the alignment to the baseline grid.
if I use this option, I can't assign different spacings anymore for the different styles, everything has the same line distance, no matter whats set in the paragraph style

I'm using for example three styles underneath each other:

Headline

Subheadline
Text

So the distances from headline to subheadline is different to the one from the subheadline from text.
So in this case alignment by baseline grid doesn't make sense I guess?
Any other advice on how to align my text boxes?

utnik

hi questionesse

the baseline grid is a concept with some limitations. you need to adyust your paragraph distances to something that looks good within this grid lines.
the good thing of this limitations is, that you can play with different distances and your text will always snap to the grid (line up with the text in the other frames.) – you'll soon get accustomed to this...

utnik

Nermander

One idea might be to just let the heading snap to the baseline grid.

It's "the items you want to line up" that should snap to the baseline grid.

GarryP

Some good advice from utnik and Nermander there - as usual - but you can also achieve different distances between different sorts of text by using paragraph styles.

See the attached screenshot and SLA for an example.

In the example I've defined a character style "Normal Typeface" which is the "base font" for all of the text.

Then I've defined three paragraph styles:
* "Normal Text" for normal text with baseline grid alignment.
* "Headline" for headlines.
* "Sub-Headline" for sub-headlines.

The "Headline" style is based on "Normal Text" but with Bold and Underline on.

The "Sub-Headline" style is also based on "Normal Text" but with Underline on. It also uses a 50% baseline offset - in the Character Style Advanced Formatting section - which moves the text in that style above the baseline grid.

You can see from the image how the text "floats" above the baseline. (I've made the baseline grid extra wide for demonstration purposes.)

You should be able to use a similar thing to achieve what you want with some experimentation.

(You can do the same thing without using styles but it would make things a lot more arduous if you wanted to change anything later.)

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questionesse

yay - only aligning the headline to the baseline grid is a great idea!
And working with the baseline offset gives great results, too!
The only issue I'm experiencing is that distances vary with the next headline under the text blocks, (see example)

headline
subheadline
text

headline
subheadline
text


the distance between the text block and the next headline varies depending on the amount of text as the text is having a fixed alignment and the following headline is aligned to the baseline grid.
Here's a screen

And I attached an example file

Is there any way to make sure distances are similar?

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GarryP

Ah, I've looked at your example and I see what you mean.

The problem is that you've mixed fixed spacing with baseline alignment. Fixed and baseline alignments shouldn't really be used together in the same frame as you "break" what the baseline is for and Scribus can't re-position a new baseline after the fixed spacing. If you know what I mean?

What I think you need to do is experiment more with the baseline distance/offsets and your text sizes. You'll find that making one size bigger/smaller than the other can produce different results.

I've attached an altered version of your example where I've re-formatted various items but all are now aligned to the baseline and the sub-headline uses a negative baseline offset. I've also changed some font sizes and the baseline distance. You'll see that the gap between text and headline(s) is now the same.

I hope this helps. This kind of thing is more experimentation than anything.

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