Replacing styles

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jpek-m

I have a lot of Word/OO texts with a great amount of identical styles. My goal is to create a Scribus book with same style names but using a new design. I have designed a file model.sla with this improved design.

Do you have an advise how the texts should be imported using the same style names but converting them to the new design? I have tried to follow http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,237.msg1074.html#msg1074 this way:

  • Create a new Scribus document book.sla using my model.sla as a model
  • Delete the texts from book.sla
  • Import one .odt file (tried both options replace or merge paragraph styles)
  • Open Style manager and Import styles from model.sla
After steps 3 and 4 the styles looks like in the .odt file, not like in the model.sla.

(Scribus 1.4.5 lang=fi, OS X 10.9.5)

Nermander

I THINK this (importing styled text) has been improved in the upcoming 1.5 version, so maybe you should wait for release or maybe try a SVN build if you really need to know.

a.l.e

in my experience, importing styles from .odt into .sla is tricky.
i've heard that one should be able to do achieve any desired result, if she tries hard enough. but since i preferred to give up. that's why my experience is limited.

question: is anybody interested in doing a 4 hours online meeting/workshop and produce a document explaining how it exactly works?

we should list and test all the different possibilities, with both 1.4 and 1.5, with .odt, .html and tagged text; we would create an howto, sample documents and -- very likely -- also produce a list improvements.

proposed dates are a friday afternoon or saturday morning, afternoon, evening (CET times).

anybody on board?

ciao
a.l.e

jpek-m

Oh no, the next version may take some time, i guess ???

My book is 300 pages and has about 200 A4 pages to be imported from a genealogical software. Maybe I could import all text first and then try to import (or hand edit) better styles? I am afraid editing such text mass as one text block is not a good idea.

a.l.e

On the one side: for paragraph styles 1.4 should already do an ok job, if you find out how to use for you!


On the other side, I started a list of formats and formatting that could be tested. You're all welcome to comment on the (draft) content and the (draft) aproach.

Quote
## File formats support for formatted text

- ODT (Libreoffice, Openoffice, Microsoft Office)
- HTML (Web, Office)
- tagged text
- XTG (Quark Express Tags Documents
- IDML, INDS, ICML Adobe Indesign export files
- PUB (MS Publisher)
- RTF (Microsoft Office)

Partially supported file formats:
- .doc(x) files can be imported through `antiword` but all formatting will be lost.
- .pdf

Sources:
- [Scribus 1.5.0 Release Schedule](http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus_1.5.0_Release_Schedule)

## Supported formatting

- Paragraph style
- Character style
- Font name
- Text size
- Bold
- Italic
- Sup / Sub
- underline
- http links
- text alignement
- paragraph (left, right, hanging) indents
- tables
- footnotes
- bullet/ordered lists
- text and background color
- embedded images
- images
- vector graphic
- embedded formulas
- language
- notes


a.l.e

I've done a first test with a simple ODT file where two default styles are in use ("Heading 1" and "Text Body") and the merge option activated: the import failed with both 1.4 and 1.5.

It would have probably succeeded with 1.5 if there would not have been spaces in the style name.

I'll wait for the reaction two the submitted tickets before doing further tests:
- http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13002 (1.4)
- http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13001 (1.5)

jpek-m

I'll document for you, how I actually imported from Ms Word my over 300 pages of text with paragraph styles and text formatting.  8)

  • Open the text in OpenOffice (or similar). You may change the paragraph style fonts to desired font family and size here
  • Save as .odt file
  • In Scribus, import the .odt file into a text block
  • Edit each style name and their properties as you like (and delete useless styles, you can define to which style the are converted)
  • Delete the original Ms Times fonts (etc.) from the Scribus document. Next time you open the document you can define the replacing fonts (if they still existed)
Bacause the text is long, it was practical to split it later to 4 separate text blocks (using cut/paste in text editor). But do it after you have found and fixed all anomalies you want to change (formatting, punctuation and spaces, abbreviations etc.) during the first 100 pages of publication.

The bold text nicely replaced with a proper font and the text underlines is preserved, but unfotunately you can not create any font styles.

My next wish: allow setting the text style in Find/Replace operation, so I could manage the formatting nicely.