Automatic Contour wrap

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marce colina

Hi! Im learning Scribus from some time. Not used it for something big yet, but im founding it more and more useable, after learning.
I have been messing with the wrap around transparent pngs and svgs. That is something that i do all the time, and in my view basic. I found scribus wrapping powerfull but not practical. The no automatic wrapping about the visible contour of an image makes things time consuming. The tiffs with embedded paths are no advantage, since you need to edit the tiff somewhere, and draw the paths, and then save again.
I wonder how this so basic feature in other programs, like PagePlus, Publisher, office suites, including Libre office, is not included in Scribus. Is that this is for beginners? That is not used in pro work to wrap so often like i need? Just curious why this feature i consider so basic and importat, maybe is not for others.

a.l.e

Ok I had a look at how it is implemented in LibreOffice and, yes, it can be useful.


Still, depending on the kind of images one are flowing around, it's -- in my experience -- often better to make a vary rough contour and then adapt it a bit to get a good flow of the text.
But it's worth mostly not worth to follow to closely the image.
I also tend to keep "flat" lines horizontal and have nice "diagonals" and vertical lines, rather than making each line of text have a different length (with exceptions of course!).

Personally, improving the way nodes are added, moved around, aligned, curved, multiple selected... is what gives me more productivity.
And this insight the development version of Scribus has improved a lot... even if it's not there yet where it should be...

Also, if you load a tif into Scribus you can edit it with an external editor (it's the "Edit Image" command), get Gimp or any other tool to open with that image, define the clip path (if the editor has a detection of the contour you can use it!) and use the clip path in Scribus.

Here some very succint instructions:

  • In Gimp, create a selection, "Selection > To Path"; check that the path is in the "Paths" panel; save the image as Tif or Psd.
  • Load the image in a Scribus image frame; In the "Image Properties", "Clipping Path" section, select the path.
  • In the "Properties", flow around the clipping path.

marce colina

Hi ale. Thanks! Yeah, the closely wrapping is not desired most times. In the old Pageplus you could adjust distance from text in each side (left, right, top, bottom) precisely. That was good.
About using Gimp and Paths, yeah, i experimented a little with it. Is good if you are working in a page with a detailed finishing. If you are just working with some speed, and letting the program adjust things, not very much. I believe that the automatic adjustment for beginner/speed working plus the advanced settings would be a nice bunch for scribus.
Yeah, Libreoffice is basic, but it has implemented the automatically wrapping in the transparent areas.