Better interaction with layers

[a.l.e]

In Scribus I don't work that much with layers. But when I do, I often find myself with the "wrong" layer selected.

We also have had several people who come to us asking for help because Scribus does not work anymore: most of the time, they're on a different layer, one that has not items on the current page.

Yesterday, Jim opened a ticket about an issue with the items of an hidden layer being selectable.

Of course, this is the way Scribus works: You can only select items on an active layer and if a layer is active its items can be selected.

This is simple and coherent.
But does it make sense to select items on an invisible layer?
Probably not.
Does it make sense to activate an invisible layer?
Neither.

Also, It's not completely true, that only items on active layers can be selected. There is a "well hidden" option to allow items on specific layers to be selected even if the layer is not active.
In my eyes, a good idea, not so well implemented.

I feel that Scribus has (almost) all needed feature but they are exposed in the most straight forward way, without having spent much time on the way the layers are used in page layout.

I don't think that there are single points to be changed to improve significantly the way layers work in Scribus.

But  we might be able to produce a concept allows a much better experience with layers by only introducing small changes in Scribus.

Does anybody have suggestions on how layers should work in Scribus?
Or do you think that the current situation is the best one?

[a.l.e]

It's not possible anymore to select items from a hidden layer:

https://gitlab.com/scribus/scribus/commit/a35ae97e05105bc411642c44ea390124ac207dd4

i still think that the better solution is to make it impossible to activate a hidden layer...

[RodneyLee]

I like the Layers as is, I just don't really use them much

[a.l.e]

hi rodney

well, the question was for people who use layers often or have good ideas on how to improve them : - )

when you don't use them much (or do not have high expectations) the current implementation is for sure ok!

ciao
a.l.e

[RodneyLee]

at one point I thought layers would be great and keep me from accidentally moving items I was done with, what I found was that it was inconvenient to switch back and forth so an easy way to do this would be great maybe something similar to changing pages found at the bottom of the Scribus screen.


I came from Pagestream on Amiga where you could load the tools you wanted at the top of the screen and save layouts with different names so you could load the best for your project, always having to click a new tab to get to a tool (which is not a real big deal) is my only complaint about Scribus

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[RodneyLee]

my post made me think, I have so much screen real-estate that I could have all the property tabs open, so I'll be testing this and layers again

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[a.l.e]

well, scribus does have a list of the layers in the status bar (at the bottom of the window) and you can use it to switch layers...

[AdmFubar]

My $0.02 worth. I like to see the assigned layer color on the layer window., I'm usually looking at the outline window, and not the bottom window frame for the status of the current active layer.