Character styles, margins & guides, and find/replace & story editor

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calzen

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to Scribus and have a few questions I was hoping I could get answered.

1 - It seems I can't apply character styles in story editor, but need to do this in the text frame itself by highlighting and using the 'text properties' window each time. I have... many paragraphs where I need to bold the words up to and including a colon, and this is looking pretty painful. I hoped I could do it once, select the next bit of text, and use 'redo', but that doesn't work; and I don't see a format painter that would let me copy the style and apply it to the next selection. Am I missing an easier way to do this?

2 - I have vertical guides just outside my left & right margins (0.12 cm), but it seems impossible to get objects to snap to these guides unless I move them much further away from the margins. (edit: I thought I should add that I do have 'snap to guides' enabled, and not 'snap to grid' or 'snap to items')

3 - I tried using find/replace in Story Editor to replace text, but can't see how to 'save' this; when I click 'close' on the find/replace window, it also closes Story Editor, and the changes aren't applied to the text I had been editing.

Am I missing something for 2 or 3, or are these bugs I should raise?

Cheers!

(edit: I'm on Scribus 1.5.8 for macOS)

AdmFubar

1) In the drop down menus, in Edit you will find the Style manager. also available by pressing F4.
2) you may need to adjust the snap distance for the guides. check from the file menu  preferences, in the prefs dialog look for Guides, about the sixth entry down the list. you may need to make an adjustment there.
3) In the story editor there are a set of icons  below the main menu. the page icon with the dog ear, (it is to the left of the magnifying glass) is the update text frame. You Will also find this in the Edit menu.. or you can press Ctrl+U
Using Scribus 1.6.1, openSUSE 15.6
Advanced hobbyist

calzen

Thanks for the first two, I'll give them a try.

But for the third, the find and replace window is modal; I can see the changes being made in Story Editor as I go through finding and replacing, but I can't interact with the Story Editor window while the find and replace window is open. And clicking 'close' on the find and replace window closes the Story Editor window, too, so I'm never given the chance to click that button. I'll give ctrl-u and the edit menu a try, but if they're from the Story Editor window, I'm guessing they'll be locked to me, too.

Edit:

1 - I may be misunderstanding your suggestion, but that seems to just take me to the style editor. I know how to create styles and have already created the character style I want to apply. The issue is that it seems pretty tedious to apply the same character style to many instances and I was thinking there must be a better way than selecting the text and changing the value in the character style picklist each time.

2 - I adjusted these down to 1px and unfortunately makes no difference. The margin seems to have stronger 'snap' than the guide.

3 - I couldn't do ctrl-u in Story Editor, but I was mistaken when I said closing find/replace closes Story Editor. It doesn't close it, but it does move it behind the main Scribus window! So it only appeared to close.  :D

calzen

And update on 2 - aApparently I can get the object to snap to the guide rather than the margin--I just need to set zoom to at least 200%.

So just issue 1 left!

I've been trying Scribus alongside Pages before I decide which to use going forward, and found Pages has copy style and paste style commands that do this nicely:

1) click into a word that has the character style applied
2) press keyboard shortcut for Copy Style
3) select text I want to apply the style to
4) press keyboard shortcut for Paste Style -- character style is now applied to that text
5) repeat 3 and 4 till done

So much nicer than using the text properties window when needing to apply a character style to many selections.

It looks like this is also possible in InDesign and Publisher, but I'm not finding something similar in Scribus. Is it there and I'm missing it, or is this one that would be good to request as a new feature?

Nermander

It's been a while since I used Scribus but a very common issue I have experienced with other programs is that snapping occurs at the other side of the shape.

For example when trying to snap the left edge of a frame to a guide on the left side, it snaps "harder" on the right side of the frame.

Resizing the frame (making it smaller) is my "to go" solution, then once the left side has snapped I can resize the fram back (or resize it by snapping the right side to a guide).

AdmFubar

Looked up and down scribus's option and didn't find an option to copy and paste character styles. However; :)  in the story editor there are options to apply paragraph styles which can contain just character styles. While not as convenient as a copy and paste you do not have to switch between windows to do so. in the Style Manager dialog (F4). Clicking on new will expand the dialog giving you tabs for Properties, Paragraph Effects and Character styles.  You can make your character styles there. I haven't tried this on actual text yet. It may only work for the scope of a paragraph. and not just selected characters.[/size]
Using Scribus 1.6.1, openSUSE 15.6
Advanced hobbyist

calzen

Quote from: AdmFubar on May 14, 2022, 02:40:52 AM
Looked up and down scribus's option and didn't find an option to copy and paste character styles. However; :)  in the story editor there are options to apply paragraph styles which can contain just character styles. While not as convenient as a copy and paste you do not have to switch between windows to do so. in the Style Manager dialog (F4). Clicking on new will expand the dialog giving you tabs for Properties, Paragraph Effects and Character styles.  You can make your character styles there. I haven't tried this on actual text yet. It may only work for the scope of a paragraph. and not just selected characters.[/size]

Thanks for having a look and confirming I'm not missing something with regards to copy/paste styles.

I'm confused about your advice on Story Editor and Style Editor, though. I don't want to apply a paragraph style, but a character style to specific words in a paragraph that has a paragraph style. Sure, I can make just the character style 'bold' in a new paragraph style, but applying it is going to bold the entire paragraph, not the few words in the paragraph I want to bold.

E.g., I have many paragraphs like:

QuoteStep 1: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut a sapien. Aliquam aliquet purus molestie dolor. Integer quis eros ut erat posuere dictum. Special words. Integer orci. Fusce vulputate lacus at ipsum. Quisque in libero nec mi laoreet volutpat. Aliquam eros pede, scelerisque quis, tristique cursus, placerat convallis, velit. Nam condimentum. Nulla ut mauris. Curabitur adipiscing, mauris non dictum aliquam, arcu risus dapibus diam, nec sollicitudin quam erat quis ligula. Aenean massa nulla, volutpat eu, accumsan et, fringilla eget, odio. Nulla placerat More special words.porta justo. Nulla vitae turpis. Praesent lacus.
Step 2: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Quisque vel erat eget diam consectetuer iaculis. Cras ante velit, suscipit et, porta tempus, dignissim quis, magna. Vivamus viverra, turpis nec rhoncus ultricies, diam turpis eleifend nisl, a eleifend ante felis ac sapien. Integer bibendum. Suspendisse in mi non neque bibendum convallis. Suspendisse potenti. Sed sit amet purus at felis adipiscing aliquam. Vivamus et nisl sit amet mauris aliquet molestie. Integer tortor massa, aliquam a, lacinia nonummy, sagittis nec, eros. Nunc non mauris id eros venenatis adipiscing. Cras et lectus ut nisl pharetra ornare. Yet more special words.Proin leo risus, elementum eget, ultrices vitae, molestie sed, erat. Curabitur et lectus in tellus egestas hendrerit. Sed dapibus ipsum. Quisque sit amet ligula. Suspendisse odio dolor, semper id, feugiat quis, sodales id, mauris. Curabitur id ligula ac libero malesuada pharetra.
Step 3: Nulla facilisi. Nam varius ante dignissim arcu. Suspendisse molestie dignissim neque. Suspendisse leo ipsum, rutrum cursus, malesuada id, dapibus sed, urna. Fusce sollicitudin laoreet diam. Mauris eu quam eget nulla fermentum adipiscing. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Morbi ut odio vitae Special words.eros luctus luctus. Ut diam. Phasellus ullamcorper arcu vitae wisi. Pellentesque urna odio, varius eget, dignissim quis, vehicula placerat, nunc. Ut nec metus quis nulla posuere eleifend.
...etc

Sure, I can just bold and italicise each instance rather than applying a character style. But I'm not sure yet if I want to bold, italicise, maybe even change colour or case, etc, so I have a character style for the 'step' words and a different character style for the 'special words'. Applying character styles will let me easily change these later, and is what character styles are for.

I've been using Word for the work I do and use its Format Painter to accomplish this, but am wanting to try moving to a DTP application to up my game. It looks like other DTP programs like Pages, Publisher and I think InDesign have this covered, but unfortunately not Scribus.

I'm still torn between Scribus and Pages, as each do some things better than the other, with copy/paste styles being an example in Pages favour, and setting guides precisely being in Scribus's favour.

I'll look into how to raise copying/pasting styles as a feature request, as it can save a lot of time.

AdmFubar

That is what i wasn't sure about. In the paragraph styles there are two tabs in the style editor one for paragraphs and one for characters. You may just need to select the characters tab, or words you want to apply the style to, and just use the character styles and not make any changes to the paragraph styles. 'm not certain that this is how it will work as I've not tried it. it would be worth a shot for you to try.

Update: I tried editing a paragraph style to adjust  just character properties. then applying to just a few words in some text. Doesn't work.

Time for a feature request to the developers as this seems a very necessary option to have.
Using Scribus 1.6.1, openSUSE 15.6
Advanced hobbyist