Creating swedish style crosswords with Scribus

[a.l.e]

Somebody asked on Reddit if they can create a Swedish style crossword (that's the name Wikipedia gives to it...) with Scribus.

I gave it a try and in about half an hour I could get this result:



Here is a peek behind the scenes:



I only gave it a "fast and furious" try and achieved something Okeish in about half an hour. So, my conclusion is: yes, it's doable with Scribus.

I'm attaching my draft .sla file and here are some more hints I gave to the user:

• I've found https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/ but it does not contain any special signs for languages that are not English: you will need to search a bit further or add yourself the missing diacritics.
• Play with the size of the boxes to match the spacing and size of the font: I've first drawn the boxes, then typed the text, but it's probably wiser to do it the other way round.
• Typing the solution in a single text frame, and using a mono space font to get the spacing even seems work well (you will need to play a bit with the fixed line spacing, the size of the font, the kerning and the letters width) seems to be a good workflow.
• You will probably need 1.7 for the spacing above the paragraphs and the vertical aligning for the cues. The rest should be OK also with 1.6 (you can get a good result there, but some steps will be a bit more cumbersome)
• Working with Beziers is still not as comfortable as it should be. You will be missing the snapping for the nodes and, generally, a way to align them. But it's doable.
• There is no real control on the size of the arrow heads.
• Since you will have multiple items on top of each other, it's not always trivial to select the right element. Working with layers might make it a bit easier.

Has anybody else already tried something like this?

Any further hints?