A discussion about the typesetting software

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a.l.e

Interesting read, indeed.

There are a few things that I'd like to see in Scribus (and might be not too hard to add):

  • Contextual / conditional paragraph and character styles (including GREP styles): I wonder how to do them in a way that is both simple to program and to use.
  • Multiple hyphenation dictionaries (and external word lists)
  • Minimal number of chars in the paragraph before the first hyphen and after the last one (as alternative to a minimal length of the word)
  • Warn in the preflight verifier for modified frames
  • Color coded view of character and paragraph styles (similar to the white space review mode)
  • Charts and graphs as vector frames
  • Letterspacing applied to a range of text, but only within the range, not after the last character.
  • Multiple baseline grids
  • An external tool for for imposition and prepress.
  • Basic export to EPUB

Aleks100

Does 1.7x version have option to knockout shape color and overprint (out)line?
This is very useful for prepress.
It can be solved by copying outline at layer above but this is easier.

nitramr

@Aleks100 yes, there is. In Properties Palette (Fill or Line) you can click on the color dot to open the color dialog. There is a 3 dot menu where you can switch between knockout and overprint. Knockout is the default.

@a.l.e
I think we need something like a listener on text changes to render the GREP styles while typing. To keep the calculation activity low, it could listen for the active paragraph only. If the style definition has changed, the whole text must be processed at once. The GREP styles could apply temporary like regular styles to avoid a "recalculation" if the style definition doesn't change, but have to be identifiable as "applied" GREP styles in story text. We can start with a simple implementation for color, size and fontface.

I have some additions to your list. I asked an AI what is needed to flatten the learning curve for beginners and make Scribus ready for professional workflows.

The report contains a lot of useful improvements and ideas:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mUlatITRQXkU-NpIS0w_dDPVgCc0qBda0TrNDpEw8v8/edit?tab=t.0

Aleks100

Both fill and line can be knockout or overprint, but I meant for fill to be knockout and at the same shape line to be overprint.

utnik

hi aleks

i know this as 'trapping' (overfilling a shape to avoid blanks).
unfortunately scribus doesn't support trapping, which is usually not a big problem for digital printing but may be a show stopper for offset printing.

you could file a feature request here.

utnik

Aleks100

For offset, screen... every kind of printing but digital.
However, I prefer to set it manually.

utnik

Quote from: Aleks100 on Today at 01:23:03 PM...However, I prefer to set it manually.
it's usually not my business, as my work is for digital printing. but i think it would be a good thing to have an editable trapping preset. (editable by selecting which element will overfill and by the amount of the trapping...)

utnik