Text margins inside a shape

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Froom2

Hiya,

I did a search and couldn't find an answer to this, but my apologies if it has already been covered.

Lets say I make a shape, a pentagon, and change it to a text box.  Then I fill it with sample text and justify the text.
Now the text touches the lines at both sides.  But Really, I want a bit of a gap there.

I have tried two things, and neither gave me the result I'm looking for.

First, I changed the margins.  But all that does is move the margins - in a rectangular shape - inwards.  So you end up with empty corners but the text still is too close in places (does that make sense even?)

Second, I went into properties and asked it to text wrap using the contour line.  I then shrank the contour line an bit and hoped it would count for inside the box too.  But it doesn't.  It ignores it.

So all I want is a buffer inside the shape, between the line and the text.  Can anyone help please?

Many thanks,
Froom2

GarryP

Hi Froom2.

Since you're using simple shapes in your question I've got a very low-tech solution which may also give you a bit of insight into some Scribus functions you might not already be aware of.

I hope someone else can come up with a much better way of doing what you want to do, but in the meantime, here's an example workflow:

1. Draw your shape, in the attached image I've used a pentagon.
2. Go to menu "Item" and select "Multiple Duplicate".
3. Make the number of copies 1 with no horizontal or vertical gap or rotation.
4. Click "OK".

You'll now have two identical shapes, one on top of the other (you should only see one).

5. Click the shapes (only the topmost one will be selected).
6. Go to menu "Item" and select "Transform".
7. Click the "Add" button then select "Scaling".
8. In the "Origin" box select the centre circle.
9. In the "Scaling" box above "Origin" set the scaling to 80% (or whatever scale you want to use).
10. Click "OK".

You should now have two shapes, one smaller than the original.

You can now convert the inner shape to a text frame and add your text as before. (You'll probably want to set the outline colour of this inner shape  to "None" so it looks like there's a "buffer" inside the outer shape.)

I know this isn't a great solution but I hope it helps you to see some of the very useful Scribus functions and fires your imagination. The Scribus help files (at least from version 1.4) have some more great examples of using these functions.

Garry.

P.S. I'm pretty sure the contour line is only used to control the text around a shape rather than the text inside (but maybe someone can correct me on this).

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