Mac user new to Scribus has some kinks to work out

Previous topic - Next topic

RGrahame

Hi folks

I have just started to use Scribus to get back into doing some publishing again. I used to do training for QuarkXPress long ago. A few years ago, I took a look at Scribus, however I didn't give it a fair shake. I am now doing a pilot newsletter for a friend and am using this project to get back into the groove.

First, forgive me if some of what I present here belongs in another form. Perhaps someone could assist in moving or reposting to ensure the matters get attention.

We used to think Quark was quirky, however we got used to it and many of the issues were replace and some useful features were added. I would like to present here a few of the notes I have made as I have begun to work with Scribus.

1. On my MacBook, I use two-finger scrolling, however the image jumps around due to something being too sensitive. Am I missing a setting somewhere to control this? Is there something I could do?

2. When I select some text in a text box, it would be nice if the text setting would automatically activate. This is minor and I hope to learn some keyboard shortcuts. Thus, I select text and stay on the keyboard to do things like change the font size, leading, tracking, etc.

3. I am finding that when I select some text, switch to the Text tab, the correct font, size, etc. often does not show correctly.

4. I am having trouble working with text inset on a box and text runaround outside a box. I am used to drawing a box and just using keyboard commands to enter values for these features.

5. On Macs, users are familiar with: single-click to drop the insertion point, double-click to select a word, triple-click to select a sentence, and quadruple-click to select a paragraph. Is this possible with Scribus?

6. I am used to using the Shift key to constrain movements. For example, if I want to move an item horizontally, I start dragging it and then hold the Shift key to constrain the move to a straight line. The same would work for vertical movement. The Shift key would also be used to constrain box resizing to be proportional both vertically and horizontally.

7. I have not been able to figure out how to set tabs properly in Scribus. I can't change from left, right or center tabs, etc. I have searched, but found no tutorial on setting tabs.

8. When I draw a Table, I get a box, but no cells. Am I missing something that I might need to install?

I think that is enough for now. Overall, I am getting excited about the possibilities of actually doing some production using Scribus and building and integrating it into a workflow. Probably the most annoying problem at the moment is the jumpy scrolling around the project. I hope that these issues are either resolvable by my learning how to use more features properly, or could be integrated into the development process for future released.
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

Nermander

Just a few comments.

Some of the issues you describe seems to be that Scribus does not behave as other Mac applications. This is probably mainly due to that Scribus is multi platform an initially written for Linux.

Table support in Scribus is NOT good as it is today, this is a well known issue. In most cases the recommendation is to use TABs or create the table in some other program and import as vector object.

This is the section from the manual on how to work with TABs
http://documentation.scribus.net/index.php/Working_With_Text#Tabulators

Kunda

Quote from: RGrahame on February 16, 2015, 05:47:53 AM
1. On my MacBook, I use two-finger scrolling, however the image jumps around due to something being too sensitive. Am I missing a setting somewhere to control this? Is there something I could do?

http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=12414#c32288
I doesn't fix it but it improves usability tremendously.

When I have more time, I will try to address the other issues you've mentioned.

RGrahame

Quote from: Nermander on February 16, 2015, 08:16:50 AM
Just a few comments.

Some of the issues you describe seems to be that Scribus does not behave as other Mac applications. This is probably mainly due to that Scribus is multi platform an initially written for Linux.

Table support in Scribus is NOT good as it is today, this is a well known issue. In most cases the recommendation is to use TABs or create the table in some other program and import as vector object.

This is the section from the manual on how to work with TABs
http://documentation.scribus.net/index.php/Working_With_Text#Tabulators

The Mac-like behaviours I described were part of cross platform software, however, I must admit that I did not try the software on a Windows machine, so I don't know if they were available. However, most seem to me to be a sensible way for the software to behave. If I select some type, the type setting tab should activate automatically.

I'll try to steer away from using tables for now. Hopefully, tables will improve in a future version.

This is interesting, I don't seem to have a Tabulator button in the Shapes tab. There is a rather large blank area under the five selections for text flow.

I am using:
Scribus Version 1.4.5
26 January 2015
Build ID: C-C-T-F-C1.14.0-Mac/Aqua
Using Ghostscript version 8.71
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

RGrahame

Quote from: Kunda on February 16, 2015, 09:38:27 AM
Quote from: RGrahame on February 16, 2015, 05:47:53 AM
1. On my MacBook, I use two-finger scrolling, however the image jumps around due to something being too sensitive. Am I missing a setting somewhere to control this? Is there something I could do?

http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=12414#c32288
I doesn't fix it but it improves usability tremendously.

When I have more time, I will try to address the other issues you've mentioned.

The setting referred to (Preferences > User-Interface > Interactivity >wheel jump) does not exist in the version of Scribus I am using. Is there another version I should try? I am using:

Scribus Version 1.4.5
26 January 2015
Build ID: C-C-T-F-C1.14.0-Mac/Aqua
Using Ghostscript version 8.71

It is strange because I can't set tabs due to a lock of the Tabulator button in the Shape tab in the Properties pallet. I just have a blank area under the five settings for text runaround.
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

Kunda

I'm using the 1.5svn 'unstable' version thought it's pretty stable..not sure how it fares in a production environment.

You can try it out http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/scribus-svn/1.5.0.svn/ (just download it in to a separate directory than your v1.4.5

If you try it..make sure you duplicate the projects you already made in 1.4.5 before your import them in to 1.5 because 1.5 is not exactly backward compatible.

If you want to get the bleeding edge version (like myself) then I suggest using Homebrew to build it. I've written a page up about it: http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus_and_Homebrew

GarryP

If I can just put my two-penneth in. (Apologies if I'm stepping on anyone's toes.)

Point 1: I don't have a MacBook so I can't answer that one but others have already given some ideas. (BTW: The "Wheel Jump" setting - in 1.4.4/5 - is in "Preferences / General".)

Point 2: I'm with you there. It would be great if Scribus could default to go back to the Text tab if you move away from one text frame and go to another. It would save quite a bit of time.

Point 3: That's been an issue for a while (since 1.3? at least). However, it seems to come up so randomly that it's difficult to put a workflow together to show a developer the exact problem.

Point 4: I'm not sure what you mean there. (It's possible I just don't know the terms you're using, e.g. "text inset".)

Point 5: In the story editor, double-click is select word, treble-click is select paragraph. There is no "select sentence", unfortunately but that might be an OS-setup/specific thing. (This is how TextEdit works for me. Maybe I've got a different OSX set-up to you.)

Point 6: The "cmd" key will constrain a lot of movement to certain angles but it doesn't work everywhere - like the node editor - unfortunately.

Point 7: I've never been able to get tabs to work the way I expect them to so I've left them well alone. I'd advise - as Nermander did above - to create tables elsewhere and import them as SVG, if possible. (BTW: The "Tabulator" thing is in "Properties / Text / Columns and Text Distances", not "Shape". I had to look for it myself.)

Point 8: You need to Alt-click a cell to edit it. Or Alt-double-click to edit the cell text. It's not particularly well documented. (It really should be a reminder on the Status Bar, which is mostly empty anyway.)

I hope some of that has helped with some of your issues. It's great that you're giving Scribus a trial and I hope its quirks don't put you off from using what really is an excellent bit of kit once you get used to it.

RGrahame

Quote from: GarryP on February 17, 2015, 04:30:28 PM
If I can just put my two-penneth in. (Apologies if I'm stepping on anyone's toes.)

Point 1: I don't have a MacBook so I can't answer that one but others have already given some ideas. (BTW: The "Wheel Jump" setting - in 1.4.4/5 - is in "Preferences / General".)

Point 2: I'm with you there. It would be great if Scribus could default to go back to the Text tab if you move away from one text frame and go to another. It would save quite a bit of time.

Point 3: That's been an issue for a while (since 1.3? at least). However, it seems to come up so randomly that it's difficult to put a workflow together to show a developer the exact problem.

Point 4: I'm not sure what you mean there. (It's possible I just don't know the terms you're using, e.g. "text inset".)

Point 5: In the story editor, double-click is select word, treble-click is select paragraph. There is no "select sentence", unfortunately but that might be an OS-setup/specific thing. (This is how TextEdit works for me. Maybe I've got a different OSX set-up to you.)

Point 6: The "cmd" key will constrain a lot of movement to certain angles but it doesn't work everywhere - like the node editor - unfortunately.

Point 7: I've never been able to get tabs to work the way I expect them to so I've left them well alone. I'd advise - as Nermander did above - to create tables elsewhere and import them as SVG, if possible. (BTW: The "Tabulator" thing is in "Properties / Text / Columns and Text Distances", not "Shape". I had to look for it myself.)

Point 8: You need to Alt-click a cell to edit it. Or Alt-double-click to edit the cell text. It's not particularly well documented. (It really should be a reminder on the Status Bar, which is mostly empty anyway.)

I hope some of that has helped with some of your issues. It's great that you're giving Scribus a trial and I hope its quirks don't put you off from using what really is an excellent bit of kit once you get used to it.

Hmmm... I can't find Wheel Jump anywhere, however, I did find the Tabulator button and set a tab. It was hidden. I had to scroll the Column box to find it.

When I use the term 'Text Inset' I mean the amount of space text is from the text box edge. Cells in a table also have a space that text is away from the line of a cell. On the outside of a box, you set the runaround space, perhaps outset, the space that text is away from the outside of a box.

I just thought of another thing I have wondered about. Is there a way to set the vertical entering of text in a box. Simply adding returns to move text down to try and centre it is not the right way.

The Command key does constrain movement. It works well for resizing a box, but only slightly for moving items around. There might be a setting for that.

It is the Option key on the Mac. I can edit cells now. Great! I turned on Show Frames, so now boxes don't disappear. However, something peculiar. When I draw a Table, I can't enter values for the Rows and Columns from the keyboard. I have to click the little arrows in the window, even though the number values are already highlighted.

Is there a setting to change what happens after drawing a box. Currently, it assumes I want to draw another box. I usually do one at a time. I know that sometimes one might want to draw a lot of their page geometry and then do editing. I like to work one box at a time, so I would like it to switch tools automatically. It would be nice if it not only switched tools to the Select Item tool, but if I draw a text box, it would automatically assume I want to enter text in the box. Right now, I draw the box, hit 'C' and then double-click so I can enter text.

This is great! Things are moving along. Scribus seems to be solid and not too flaky. Some issues are a matter of understanding the terminology used and where features are located. I guess we are identifying a few things that can be resolved in upcoming versions, even if they have already been identified. There are a lot of powerful and advanced features in Scribus that one simply can't find in other software out there, other than the industrial Quark and InDesign. As and open source project, it is impressive. Perhaps I found a few things that might help. Typography seems good. It seems that tables and tabs could be perked up a bit.

Thanks folks for all your help. This is what it is all about!
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

GarryP

"Wheel Jump" is at the top-right of the "Preferences / General" dialog, above "Recent Documents". Honestly, it's there (unless you've got a weird version of Scribus).

To put distance between a text frame and its contents use "Properties / Text / Columns & Text Distances". (The cells in a table are just text frames that are "collected together".)

To put space round an object use its "Contour Line" ("Properties / Shape"). Text flows around objects that have the contour line "activated". You need to use the Node Editor to expand the contour line if it's too small (check "Edit Contour Line" to change the contour line rather than the frame shape). It's not exactly intuitive at first but you'll get used to it eventually.

The command key only has limited constraint functionality. You just need to learn where it does actually work and in what way. It would be better if it worked the same everywhere though.

There's no way to automatically vertically centre text within a frame. You have to do it manually, usually by moving the frame itself or increasing the space in the top of the frame (as mentioned above). Not great but it's all we've got.

There is no "insert frame, enter text, insert frame, etc." workflow but "Insert -> Sticky Tools" keeps the current tool "active" until you select another one. Again, not great, but useful.

Sorry, I meant the Option key. I keep forgetting that's what it's called because it's got "alt" written on my keyboard (and it's an Apple keyboard too).

If I were you I'd give tables a miss until they're done better. You might find that you waste too much time trying to get them to do what you want rather than doing them yourself how you actually want them.

In all, Scribus is a bit odd at first but, like anything, it becomes second nature if you use it enough.

P.S. In the forum you don't need to quote the whole text of the previous post. The posts are always in chronological order so, unless you specify otherwise, it's assumed that you're answering the previous post. Just use someone's name to tell them your comment is directed at them. (It doesn't alert them or anything like that but people can usually figure it out.) Not a major problem though.

Kunda

Hey @RGrahame and @GarryP,
really enjoying this thread. Lots of good UX tidbits in here. It's important to read and learn from a new users' experience. Would you be interested in continuing to post your play-by-play experience? Also at some point it would be really great to make a clear list of bullet points for easier readability if a developer is reading the conversation.

Things like:

  • Tabulator button was hidden. I had to scroll the Column box to find it.
etc..

GarryP

I've got no problem with continuing this post as it develops. It might be useful to have a "narrative" of a new user's experience in one place. It will be a little like a sort of "user journal".

There are periods of days when I'm not available to reply but that, of course, don't stop other people from answering.

RGrahame

First, let me apologize for the length of this post and the complexity. Hopefully you folks can figure out what I am saying. Sorry also for the long quotes in previous posts. I should know better having operated BBSs and groupware systems going back before the Internet. Does anyone remember Fidonet?

I should tell you a bit about myself so you will know where I am coming from here. I began back in the 1970 in press and prepress. No computers. It was a different industry altogether back then. Then the computer turned prepress people into typesetters and typesetters into prepress people and the graphic artists came along for the ride because they could. My first setup was a Mac Plus running System 6, Aldus PageMaker, Aldus Freehand, a few Adobe fonts and the good old 300 dpi LaserWriter II with the Canon engine for which I paid $5200 (yes, just the printer). I switched to QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator with Photoshop somewhere in the mid-ninties. With QuarkXPress 3.1, Command-K was used to get rid of a text box. Option-Command-K and you would see a little martin march out on your screen and shoot the box with his laser.

I shall confess up front now that I do not have recent experience with the latest software. I own a copy of QuarkXpress 6.5 (old now and does not run on newer Macs) and I have not done much for about a dozen years. However, the software was getting very sophisticated and the latest developments were steering toward integrating web publishing and repurposing of content. InDesign was still trying to topple QuarkXPress when I stopped training people in this sort of software. There may be some improvements to what I suggest here.

Anyway:

• I found Wheel Jump in Preferences->General. I'm not sure why it is called Wheel Jump or why it is next to Language. I experimented and found that a setting of 8 works best when zoomed out, however, it is painfully slow when zoomed in, so the setting would have to be a bit higher or lower depending on zoom level. It is not smooth, but a bit jiggly and slides around. I think I can live with it. I could not type a value in and had to use the up and down arrows. Note that the setting that works for me may differ slightly for other Mac users as it probably depends on the device used (mouse, trackpad, etc.).

I sort of found the setting for space inside a box. The space around a box is interesting and I'll have to experiment with it to learn how it works. Understanding that a table is text boxes collected together is good to know, however that is probably why the Table feature is, well, a bit rudimentary.

• Tables are pretty basic and need work. As I recall, tables came to QuarkXPress as an Xtension. QuarkXPress gained many features through its very powerful Xtension technology. There was an Xtension Manager for activating and deactivating Xtensions. Most software calls this sort of technology plugins now.

• Vertical justification of box contents would be useful.

• Sure enough, I had Sticky Tools on. Now I can draw a box and the tool switches. Great, saves a step of hitting 'C'. Next would be to have a setting (default hopefully) that would go straight to text editing. If one actually wants to draw a bunch of text boxes before editing, they could change the setting. Or, here is an idea, turn on Caps Lock and the Sticky Tool feature gets turned on. Anyway, now I hit 'T', draw a box, double-click it, switch to the Text tab in Properties. I think a couple of steps could be eliminated. I can understand one wanting to draw a box and then punch in exact values to position and size the box, however, none of these value fields are automatically activated, so one still has to click in a field to enter the values. Here is how I think it might work:
- Type 'T' for text box
- Draw box
- Cursor starts blinking
- Start typing or Command-I for Get Text
or
Hit a keyboard shortcut (command-?) to enter the Text tab of Properties and have the Font field highlight
- Type first couple of characters of a font name or tab to field desired and enter values

• Keyboard shortcuts could be added to get to other settings.
Examples:
Command-, and . were always used to increase or decrease font size
Command-; and ' were always used to adjust leading
Command-[ and ] for tracking

The goal is to do as much from the keyboard as possible. Taking hands off the keyboard, finding the mouse and then locating the pointer all takes time and effort.

Editing shortcuts:
Arrow key left or right moves insertion point one character.
Option arrow moves by word
Command by line
Hold down shift key at the same time and the movement of the insertion point will select text.
Arrow up or down moves one line
Option arrow by paragraph
Command arrow by story
Shift key selects text
Note: Command-arrow seems to work, however, option does not.
Double-click a word to select it
Triple-click to select sentence
Quadruple-click to select story.
Note: I can only double-click to select a word. The other clicks don't work.

• I wonder if having an item tool and a content tool might be a solution. Option-click any drawing tool and it would stay active when drawing boxes, otherwise, after drawing a box the content tool automatically activates and text control features automatically become available. [Oops, I just realized that there is a content tool. It is near the other end of the tool bar. I am wondering if, due to a relationship with the Select Item tool, it might be better to have it at the other end of the tools?

• Another feature I think would be useful is to, when moving boxes, be able to click and hold a second or two before dragging to get live display of the text or image. This would work for resizing a box. For example, click-hold-drag the bottom of a text box to see exactly when the text goes bust (into overflow). Is there a fit box to text depth? When building a page for a newspaper or newsletter, for example, the headline is in a separate box so it can span more than one column. You want the depth of the box to be where the leading ends. Then it sits on top of the body copy box with the columns and the page has clean geometry. You know then that the space between the headline and the body copy is the same as the setting for the leading on the headline. I hope that makes sense.

I'm not sure why the Transform features are set up the way they are, but as I think about it, I'll bet it might make sense once I try it a few times.

I must have done something along the way. I can't move my insertion point using the arrow keys anymore. Also, I can hit 'T' and that works, but 'C' and 'Z' no longer work. Some work and some don't. In fact, I can't use my keyboard to enter anything in a field. What gives?
Note: I relaunched Scribus and now things work again. It must have been some sort of transient error.

Don't worry, this is complicated stuff. QuarkXPress had so many little quirks that we called it QuirkXPress. I don't think people realize just how difficult fonts, typography and typesetting really is, never mind the rest of the job. Being able to do it properly and utilize all the features of modern font files, like hinting, etc. is not at all simple.

**** Special not here ****
I prepared this reply over several hours. Just before I hit Post, I decided to copy all my text to the clipboard. That was a fortunate decision for us all. The system logged me out and when I logged back on, my message was gone!!! I can't recall using a system that allows you to work even when the system has kicked you off without notice. I can't say I have ever seen a login screen that asks you for your time limit. How do I know how long I am going to be?
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

GarryP

Wow. Someone who writes longer posts than me! Fantastic.

I went into nostalgia mode for a while reading your background. Ah, LaserWriters... The stuff of dreams.

I can't remember what my first DTP software was called but it came on approx. 8 x 5.25" floppy disks and ran on an IBM PC (yes, if any young people are reading, a real branded IBM PC with a CGA graphics card, might have even been EGA, I can't remember) outputting to an 8-pin dot-matrix printer (until we got a new-fangled 24-pin one). It came out around the same time as dBase III+, which was great at the time but a bit awkward when you only had one floppy drive. (And my first computer used cassette tapes for external storage.) Good Heavens I feel old now.

I don't remember Fidonet but I do remember using an acoustic coupler to connect to Prestel at around 1200 baud. A world of information at your fingertips and you only had to pay an arm and a leg to get it!

Anyway:

* I think it was probably called "Wheel Jump" just to give it a name early on and it didn't get changed. The "General" tab is just for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else so "Wheel Jump" being next to "Language" is probably just where it fitted nicely in the window.

* Some of the Scribus fields with the little arrows on them - (spin boxes?) - don't work for text entry for some reason. I don't know why. Probably just a UI problem.

* Vertical justification would be nice for us users but I imagine it would be a real pain for the developers. See my ramblings here for more "info" on the potential difficulties: http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,1266.0.html

* Have you looked in the Keyboard Shortcut Settings? You can set all sorts of things in there. (Someone created a Quark shortcut set a while ago. It's somewhere in this forum if you have time to look for it.) Not everything is possible though.

* A live preview for text while dragging would, again, be nice for us but I've a feeling that the code would be an absolute nightmare. When you've got linked frames, hyphenation and all kinds of other stuff to contend with when frames are resized, it makes me shudder just thinking about the complexity of displaying it on the fly.

* There's no "fit frame to text" option. It's been asked for before - and there are some scripts here and there if you look hard enough - but it's not here yet. Mostly it's not a problem, just leave the frame larger and forget about it, but - as you say - there are times when it would be nice.

Tip: I write all of my forum posts in a text editor and then copy and paste to post when I'm ready. This way I know I'm not going to lose what I've written if the web site decides to be awkward.

RGrahame

Wow, I enjoyed your nostalgia GarryP. I remember that stuff, but was hands-off 'cause I thought it was just too awkward. I figured something would come along that would be really interesting. I saw the Mac 128K and later bought a Mac Plus used from a guy who was getting a Mac Iici, the first real graphics machine. I did have a Texas Instruments TI 99/4A that used cassettes.

It is nice to know that some of what I have mentioned is already buried somewhere in the annals of the forums here. I am encouraged that the so called kinks I found are going to one day be resolved. Some we worked out here. I will keep on with Scribus and pipe in when something pops up that I feel needs to be shared.

I was thinking of giving Scribus 1.5 a look at, but I think the only way is to do a build. I don't have time to do that right now. I should mention that, when I found I was not up to the latest version, I tried the package installer, but it didn't work. So I used the .dmg download. Is there a difference?
MacBook Pro
OS X 10 Yosemite

Nermander

It is generally recognized that Scribus has a few problems or "not so good" solutions, but changing them takes effort.

Scribus also does a few things differently than other programs, some think it's bad, but IMO it's just "different". If you expect a new program to work just like your old program, stick to your old program:)

It is also well known that there is much documentation out there that has not been updated. Asking here in the forum or the mailing list i usually the best way to get up to date information if searching doesn't seem to find anything.