Hi All!
This is a complaint about the Scribus GUI, specifically about text editing.
My main complaint is that the Properties Window is a cludge.
I am still using 1.4.6, so it is possible that this is already being addressed in 1.5.x.
Yesterday I took a chunk of work and put it back into Open Office to revise, where not only are the footnotes far easier to work with, but all text operation having to do with font and style manipulation is also easier, because the icons are generally accessible with only one click. And I have been using Open Office for text preparation as advised, as one part of my workflow, but not for everything. I am working on the work-flow issues of using Scribus. While forum poster Dragonfly has been criticized for trying to integrate Scribus into other work-flows as a component, it remains so that for my purposes I will always need auxiliary programs like Gimp and Open Office.
Editing text in Scribus could be as easy as in Open Office, couldn't it?
No matter what I want to do to a passage of text in Scribus, I have to open another window: either the Story Editor or the Properties Window.
In OO, the icons for text manipulation are present on the desktop in a menu at the top of the screen or in a sidebar window, and can be kept handy or not. This really doesn't waste much screen real estate, and to italicize a single word requires only selecting the word followed by ONE mouse click; the Text Properties sidebar does not obstruct one's view of the work as does Scribus's larger Properties window.
When I leave the Properties Window open, I have to keep moving it all around the screen trying to get it out of the way of seeing what I'm working on. I am not running out to buy a bigger monitor. I have the best and fanciest computer that I have ever owned in my life, albeit a little less than state of the art.
Scribus's Properties Window has too many functions to be handy, and is takes up too much screen space. Because it has too many functions in it, it takes more mouse clicks to drill down into the text properties. Sometimes it will come up again with the text properties open, but if I leave the particular text box and go work on some other detail, the next time I bring it up I have to open the text properties again.
In Scribus:
Select the word.
F2 to summon the Properties Window
Click on "text".
Click again, when necessary, to open the colors and effects.
Click the change.
Or, two clicks to change apply bold or italic: first open the drop-down, then click.
F2 to close the Properties window. Minimum five operations instead of two. And hunting with the mouse to drill down into the menus.
And the Story Editor has one major problem: it's not WYSIWYG, and so it is very difficult to tell what text
markup has already been applied when the text is open in Story Editor. IMO there is no reason not to make
the Story Editor WYSIWYG at least with regard to font and style markup, it would be a lot handier that way. (A non-programmer talking here.)
My suggestion: either put a menu bar with the common text manipulation icons across the top of the main screen as with most word processors, or make a SMALL text properties pop-up window or floating sidebar which does not obscure the workspace, so that it may more conveniently be left open than the present large Properties window, and which does not also contain all of the other properties which are stashed in the current Properties window along with the text properties, which could be accessed separately when needed just as easily as being bundled in with the text properties.
Thanks,
jack