Cannot change the text color - Scribus 1.4.6 mac

[tittom]

hi

I'm using Scribus 1.4.6 on a mac.
I can't seem to be able to change the text color.

Here is how I'm trying :
- create a new doc
- add a text box
- double click it and type a few words in it
- select one word (double click)
- press F2 to open properties
- in the Text tab, Color & Effects, select a color => the dropdown list does not keep the color i chose

Am I doing something wrong ?

[tittom]

Oh it works now!
I changed the Scribus theme from Cleanlooks to Aqua in the preferences, and it just works.
Woohoo, text colos here i am

[edit] Strange issue isn't it? I'll try to reproduce on 1.5 branch when I have some time.
[edit2] Note : if I select the "Cleanlooks" theme again, then I can no longer select any color in the dropdown list.

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forum tittom.

I've just checked your work-flow with 1.4.6 on Windows using the Cleanlooks theme - Windows doesn't have an Aqua theme - and it works fine for me (see attached).
I can't check on OS X at the moment but I can't remember seeing that problem in all the years I used it on my old Mac, although I might not have noticed it.

Does the text actually change colour - only visible after the text has been de-selected - even if the drop-down list says otherwise, or does the text always stay the same? How does your experience differ from that in my attached "video"?

There are some differences between the different OS versions of Scribus so this might be another one.

Note: You shouldn't have to press PF2 to get the Properties Palette open unless you have closed it. Just keep it open all the time and it will automatically change according to what it selected. (This is something that is very important but isn't made clear in the documentation. The official tutorial, as it currently reads, seems to infer that you need to open it each time which gives the wrong impression.)

Edit: I have just changed the tutorial - https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Get_Started_With_Scribus:4#Soul_of_Scribus - to tell people to always have the PP open. Hopefully this will prevent misinterpretation in the future. (Editors of other Scribus documentation should also make this clear to their readers.)

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[tittom]

Thank you Garry for your reply.
I do leave the Properties panel opened as much as i can. My screen is small so I sometimes need to close it, but it's on most of the time. I confirm it's a good way to go

I just retried and there is really something related to the Cleanlooks theme on my mac. As soon as I select it, dropdown lists are misbehaving (no value specified after clicking on the desired element).
I'll try to make a similar video to yours and will post it sometime on saturday.
And I'll try tomorrow on my PC, too.

[GarryP]

You're welcome.

Leaving the Properties Palette open as much as possible is good practice but from the work-flow you provided it sounded like you were opening and closing it, which is why I advised keeping it open. As long as you know to keep it open then that's fine. (It gave me the impetus to change the documentation so that's probably a good thing anyway.)

I can't remember which theme I used on my old Mac but the theme shouldn't affect how the software works. The theme should only affect how the UI looks and have little effect - if any - on function so I'm not sure what to advise. All I can really say is that I think the themes are outside the control of Scribus and any problems with 1.4.6 will not be fixed.

Just in case it helps, the software I used to create the "video" was LICEcap - https://www.cockos.com/licecap/ - which is easy to use.

Edit: I dusted off my Mac - how did I use something so slow for so long - and I can confirm that using the Cleanlooks theme does indeed cause the problem specified. In the attached "video", the text was originally coloured under the Aqua theme, then I switched to the Cleanlooks theme and the problem occurred: drop-down contents go blank and the function was not carried out. Because of this I would recommend using the Aqua theme on OS X as I didn't have any problems with it for years (and it looks nicer too!). I can't see 1.4.6 being fixed - see https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13325 for a related issue - so I hope this will be fixed in 1.6.

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[tittom]

Thank you Garry for the link to the bug.
And thanks for LICEcap, it looks pretty handy, I will give it a try

Problem is solved as I changed my theme to Aqua indeed, and a bug is logged.
Bye for now