Is there any point in naming Frames (Text & Image)?

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Spilly

Hi All

This is for a community magazine, with both editorial & small ads content using Scribus 1.5.6.1 on Windows 10.

We are a brand new team of three volunteers with v little DTP experience.
We need some simple rules so we can all contribute to an issue and it will still fit together. 
Any Do's and Don'ts for such team working, (esp. under Covid restrictions), would be more than welcome.

As yet, we don't really have a defined house style.
---

Small Ads
I find our small ads each need 3 or 4 frames: a bounded box background, 1 or more text frames and possibly an image frame as well. I plan to bind these 3 or 4 components per advert together as a Group, before they are Locked.
Once a page is assembled, its SLA can be imported into the main issue which will end up with many such objects. Should we worry about synchronising the Style library between the team?


The system allocates names to each frame & group, and I can see those names by snooping in the SLA xml.
The actual names seem to have no purpose as far as users are concerned.

Q1) Can I safely forget about frame & group names? Or have I missed something?


My other question is really about STYLE naming standards

I believe Style names are the only Scribus names potentially meaningful to us as users.
Well named styles will make for easier use as time goes by, and as personnel change.

Q2) Could anyone suggest a Style naming standard and an associated level of detail each discrete style should have?

I realise Q2 is a bit of a woolly question.
At one extreme one could build lots of very explicit styles
and at the other maybe just name the Font family, the Reg/Bold etc category + the point size.... e.g. "Arial Reg 12pt"

Maybe the less detailed option would facilitate experimentation with the changing styles en mass?


We expect our editorial articles to have longer paragraphs, while the small ads will be all about fitting the wording into very limited space, maximising impact and controlling line wrap.

Any suggestions of good fonts to use? 
(I'm more a techie than a designer- Excel macros & spreadsheets are much more familiar territory for me)

Thanks in advance

spilly
spilly
1xWin 10 bog std 2015 laptop   AMD A8-6410, 16GB RAM, SATA SSD
1xWin 11 bog std 2022 desktop   Core i5-12400. 8GB RAM, NVMe SSD

Scribus v1.5.8 64bit on both
in IT for 60 odd years, but little DTP experience

utnik

hi spilly

i usually don't name my frames, but if i have an object or group of objects wich i will use in different files, i define a meaningful name for it (to find it in a 'scrapbook', in the 'outlines' window or in the .xml code itself...)

styles shouldn't usually be named by the used fonts. they should have meaningful names which describe their purpose (i.e. 'main text', 'caption', 'comment', 'subtitle'...) with such a naming system every contributor knows where to use the defined styles and it will be easy to adjust the look of your magazine (which might be inevitable at some point in it's future development...)

utnik

Nermander

The naming of frames is not critical, but it can help you navigate and identify different frames easier.

Spilly

@utnik  thanks for your comment on style naming
It makes sense for structured items such as magazine articles

I'm struggling with  pages small ads, each in pre-sized frames, where text positioning in limited space is vital

I THINK I can cope with the Text Properties (F3), but I wish there was a visible spin button for Space before & After the current para, Word Processing style.
Those buttons appear only in the full style editor I think

I'm also posting about my total failure to import both .DOCX and .ODT file types.
I've read that the style can be imported too, but I can't even get the text from these file types.
Please check that post too if you can help

Thanks for your interest & time

Spilly
spilly
1xWin 10 bog std 2015 laptop   AMD A8-6410, 16GB RAM, SATA SSD
1xWin 11 bog std 2022 desktop   Core i5-12400. 8GB RAM, NVMe SSD

Scribus v1.5.8 64bit on both
in IT for 60 odd years, but little DTP experience

utnik

hi spilly

yes, for altering the space between paragraphs you should work with styles.

i don't have ms-word, but i often use libreoffice. 'import text' and 'append text' works for me from an .odt file. but as a short test shows, i can have the text formatted as in the source file, but without the import of the styles. it looks as direct formatted text now.
but i might do something wrong here, as i normally format my texts after the import...

utnik

Spilly

Hi utnik

Quotefor altering the space between paragraphs you should work with style

Agreed 100%: and those settings have entire document scope.

That's fine for changing the style of a whole document,
but could not the F3 text editor also do the same thing,
but with only selection scope, just as WP apps do? 

It would be the user's responsibility to apply Style & F3 text editing in the correct sequence. 
(e.g. Style set after F3 would replace prior F3 editing).


Our little community magazine has 40 or 50 paid-for small ads, of various sizes and styles.
Some are graphic, but many have word processed text in any file format.
It is often not at all easy to fit the copy into the size and shape of the space purchased.
Often it is necessary to tweak the spacing, especially the vertical spacing to avoid overflow

But I'll [have to] find ways around these problems to get the job done.
spilly
1xWin 10 bog std 2015 laptop   AMD A8-6410, 16GB RAM, SATA SSD
1xWin 11 bog std 2022 desktop   Core i5-12400. 8GB RAM, NVMe SSD

Scribus v1.5.8 64bit on both
in IT for 60 odd years, but little DTP experience