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Scribus => Beginner Talk => Topic started by: larrale on November 05, 2015, 01:50:35 AM

Title: Footnotes
Post by: larrale on November 05, 2015, 01:50:35 AM
Hi,

I've done some small flyers with scribus, but now I have quite a big challenge. I need to make the layout of a 400 pages book, with many footnotes in each page.

I have read that in 1.5 version footnotes are available, but the document is meant to print and I don't feel like sending to press a pdf made with a non stable version. Is there anyway to import my footnotes in a previous version.

I'm close to give up, and turn back to indesign, so I'd really appreciate any help
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: a.l.e on November 05, 2015, 08:47:32 AM
Hey

If you really need footnotes in that book, do not use Scribus for it.

While the footnotes in Scribus 1.5svn have some wonderful features, they are not yet stable enough for production use.

There is currently some work being done to solve some of the most urgent issues, but it's really not ready for prime time!

Come back to Scribus after you got the book finished, please! :-)
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: larrale on November 05, 2015, 02:56:05 PM
Thanks a lot,

I'll come back soon ;)
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 20, 2020, 03:05:47 PM
To say, if you need footnotes, don't use Scribus, seems to me to be an un-creative response.
I have struggled with the footnote issue in Scribus for several years, looking for my own
workarounds. Here is what works:

Compose the text in Open Office, which has a good foot-note and end-note engine.
I use the end-note function, which places all of the end-notes on a separate page
or pages at the end of the file. All revisions have to be made in OO and then re-imported
into Scribus, in order to avoid end-note re-numbering hell. The page of end-notes can
be copied and pasted into Scribus easily, but at that point, the notes are no longer
dynamically editable.

This has to do with the fact that Scribus has been designed as a layout program and
not as a composition program like a word processor. In version 1.5 I have been following
the development of the foot-note engine, but it doesn't appear to really suit my needs
yet.

jack
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: dragonfly on May 20, 2020, 07:33:30 PM
I have not yet used footnotes but I note that the default code in embedded raster frame allows LaTeX and within LaTeX code you could try writing footnote/
Title: Re: Footnotes! Scribus's major deficiency?
Post by: jack_cat on May 21, 2020, 05:00:46 PM
Hi Dragonfly!
I have always appreciated your point of view, which is very educational,
and you have put a great deal of creative thought into this footnote issue,
but I am not a programmer and won't begin. (Hence, I dropped Lilypond and Atom after
a month or so of experimentation, while being grateful for the educational experience.)
(About thirty years ago I flirted with programming long enough to decide not to.)
And I understand that you ARE a programmer and that it is your thing.

Your suggestion to use LaTex markup for footnotes is very much an under-the-hood
special mod from my POV, as was the whole use of Atom as the feeder for Scribus.
You may see and understand this as a simple process, and I don't reject the possibility, but
merely point out that it is at a level of understanding and expertise that is yours and not mine.

I don't want more under-the-hood technical tools which require extensive learning curves, just
as I would not advise you to make a quick and dirty study of jazz harmony starting today
so that you can get up to speed with your guitar playing and be gig-ready by next week.
I do, however, read your posts and consider what you say, to the best of my understanding.

This writing project has already been several years underway; insofar as I want to do more studying, I want to do it in my own fields, where I have reached a certain level of competence and have a great deal of work to do that probably nobody else is doing. 

My relationship with Scribus development is somewhat as my own relationship as a musician to luthiers:
I know the end results that I want, but I also know that I don't have thirty years at my disposal to learn
luthiery so as to build instruments of the quality that I want. My expertise is in playing them.

I have had a number of custom instruments built and I have a lot to say about how I want the product to perform, but if I am in the shop, they don't give me a job, like, go make the neck for me on the workbench over there... They might let me do a little sanding on some minor part. In that case, I am paying them for the work, which is rather different from Scribus. But the question of how much work I can do myself is similar in scope. If I help the luthier out by being his apprentice and polishing frets, it is indeed educational and even fun, but it is not my own prime directive.

So, that is also my relationship with the Scribus development team, and it is probably the same
for most other end-users: we know generally what we want, but not how to get it.

Strictly speaking we should be paying for it! Therefore, I must certainly express my gratitude
for this _extraordinary freebee_, and that I didn't have to buy InDesign.

so thanks to the whole development team, of course.
jack
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: a.l.e on May 22, 2020, 11:17:54 AM
hi jack

one component of the idea of free software / open source is that there is a different relationship between the user, the developer and the program.

think about it: the luthier will not ask you to help out, but she won't give you the violin for free, either...

free software is freedom, so you *can* get involved.
of course, you don't have to. it's called freedom!
you can also just use it.
but when you try to shape the free software you're using, others might ask you to become more involved than you would have thought at first.

you're not paying the development team for the work. sometimes developers will think that your ideas are perfect and simply start programming your wishes. sometimes more work will be needed until your idea gets through. sometimes it will never get through.

and, yes, payments are an option for free software too. but in the case of scribus there is no way yet to through money at the problem. maybe there will be one in the future. and this is also something people can help with, without being able to write any code!

of course, there are probably as many views of free and open source software as there are users and programs. my thoughts are not binding for anyone. except for me : - )

have a wonderful weekend
a.l.e
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: dragonfly on May 22, 2020, 01:52:07 PM
@jack_cat

All of this discussion brings this old clip to mind ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ9f2rnjB84

Regarding footnotes, since your bent is not programming, perhaps study citation management.

At the bottom of this page https://www.citationmachine.net/chicago
is this quote ..

QuoteHow to Cite Sheet Music in Chicago Style
According to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, cite sheet music the same way as you cite books.
Once you've styled each and every reference, take a minute to run your paper through our plagiarism checker. It's the perfect go-to resource when you're in need of another set of eyes to scan your paper!

Now one of the best citation managers I have found is zotero used by professional librarians.

https://www.zotero.org/

Two installations are required.

First, the application which runs in your desktop.
Second, an extension which is installed in your browser of choice.

Launch the "standalone" application. I installed mine here .. /opt/zotero/zotero

Open the GUI and you see "My Library" in left pane.

Now you can add "collections" of references (in your case music). You can arrange your library in different collections and sub-collections. You can even publish to the web.

When you browse to a particular site you open Zotero and highlight the collection into which you require to save your site. Then look at the extensions tool bar in your browser and you should see a Zotero icon which if you hover over it says .. "Save to Zotero ... ... "

Now you have your reference (or references) you wish to cite and place in footnotes in your book you are writing via Scribus.

If you look in Zotero documentation there are various plugins.

https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration

It also explains

Third-party plugins are also available for integrating Zotero with other word processors and writing systems.

https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins#word_processor_and_writing_integration


There is ..

LaTeX, TeX, and Plain Text Editors

Now there is reference to Atom editor but you have given up on that idea.


and we read here ..

Zotero to InDesign export, by Kai• Basic implementation of a Zotero to Indesign export, allowing for LaTeX style citations of Zotero items in Adobe's InDesign

Now the thought occurs to me we should surely have a Zotero to Scribus plugin.
No matches for zotero in scribus site.
No matches for scribus in zotero site.

I would not expect you to write such a plugin but it is a subject for further thought.

Incidentally I am not on the Scribus development team. Music was not my best subject.  I just experiment.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 27, 2020, 03:24:41 PM

@ dragonfly:

Yes, I have to say that a citation manager would be a good thing.
I have considered setting up a database. Thanks for these links.

I should mention that I now have Scribus 1.52 installed and am gingerly
testing the footnote function. So far it is working. I haven't yet established
the limits of its incompleteness. I have high hopes. I have at the moment
opted for using footnotes and not endnotes, so I haven't tried to make endnotes.

There is, of course, another way entirely to manage references which requires no
numbered footnotes, and that is the author-date system (e.g. (jack_cat 2020, p 1) ).
I find this a little cold, and in my own reading of other people's books, I really prefer
numbered footnotes on each page, so that I get the ref at a glance and don't have
to hunt at the chapter end or at the back of the book just to find out whether I want
to look it up.


Title: Re: Footnote: how to renumber text frames?
Post by: jack_cat on May 27, 2020, 04:00:18 PM
First difficulty to emerge with footnotes in version 1.5.2: re-ordering the text frames when they are of mixed creation order in the file, so that the footnote numbers correspond to the order on the page and not to the order of frame creation.

I have a page with two text frames. The one higher on the page, with (e.g.) label "text100", is newer than
the one farther down the page with (e.g.) the label "text50". Each contains a footnote. But, even though
"text 50" is farther down the page, its footnote gets the earlier number, because the text frame that it
is in was created earlier. How does one change the order of the text frames? Or do I have to make new
text frames and copy the material over?

Each text frame has a name-number, but although these can be changed, they function only as names, and
not as ordinal numbers.

If you can help, thanks! Otherwise I will keep working on it.
jack
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: a.l.e on May 27, 2020, 07:47:30 PM
i have mixed feelings about the numbering of footnotes.

in most cases the current behavior is good enough. but indeed it's not a good behavior.

all in all: i don't think that the footnotes in scribus are good enough to be used and i wonder if it's worth to fix this details without first having a concept of how footnotes should and should not behave.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: dragonfly on May 28, 2020, 12:18:42 AM
I'm a bit occupied at the moment on other work. But one wild thought did come into my head.

We have the old favourite ScribusGenerator in Scripter.  Now it seems possible to write a spreadsheet with links to documents, urls etc.  Then you could just drop into each textframe the variable %VAR_footnote01% (or other title), export this as CSV and apply ScribusGenerator.py to populate your textframes with footmotes. It is like a mail merge. Follow the ScribusGenerator YouTube tutorial to see how this is done. Perhaps get Zotero to dump citations to CSV and then  embed citations into Scribus textframes.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 28, 2020, 02:57:14 PM
I like Dragonfly's idea of pulling footnotes from a database. Nice. 

Now to the biz at hand:

@ A.L.E. -- I'm sorry that you have mixed feelings about the footnote issue. I am hoping that
it might be fully developed by version 1.6. The automatic numbering of the footnotes is the most
important detail for those who want to use numbered footnotes. It seems to me that it is
appropriate to offer all three common footnote methods as found in the Chicago Manual of Style,
that is, footnotes, endnotes and author-date citations.

I am sandboxing the footnote function in Scribus 1.5.2.
(I can't get 1.5.5 to run on my machine now).
I have mapped a number of things that cause 1.5.2 to crash around the footnote function.
I am not sure that I have a complete list yet.

The issue of the consecutive numbering of the text frames, which causes Scribus to
number the footnotes in the order of the frames if that order is different from the order
on the page, is solved by copying all of the text from an old text frame into a new one in
order to get the footnote numbers to go in the right order. Before doing this, any footnotes
in the text must be deleted, or Scribus will crash when the copied footnote hits the new text
frame. I have not figured out how to renumber the frames and don't believe that this can be
done from within Scribus, although it appears that it should be possible by editing the code
directly, but this I don't want to get into.

I have experimented with copying and pasting blocks of text that have footnotes in them,
and it seems to work sometimes but crash more often. The best practice, then, in moving a
block of text containing a footnote:
(1) copy footnote to a separate text file
(2) delete footnote)
(3) copy remaining text, paste in new location
(4) copy footnote text into clipboard
(5) insert new footnote in new location
(6) paste footnote text
(7) Un-weld footnote frame and move to bottom of page.

I will list other specific crash behaviours as I find them.
I am VERY PLEASED  that the automatic numbering function is working,
and I have high hopes that I can not only make it work well enough
but will be able to map the faults which will make it crash, and
that may make it possible for others to use it as well.

jack
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 28, 2020, 03:44:43 PM
Some footnote misbehaviours to add to the list:
It seems to be impossible to grab the handles of the text box containing the
footnote text in order to re-size the box. I am working on this. Instead
of the re-size arrow, I get only a Hand symbol for moving the entire text frame.

Sometimes the text which I paste into the footnote frame immediately after inserting
the footnote fills the frame perfectly and the footnote frame size auto-adjusts. Other times it
does not, and the red x appears in the lower rh corner. It is possible to click the red x
and cause the insertion of another linked text frame which contains the overflow.
This is weird, better to merely enlarge the first frame, if I could grab the handles;
nevertheless it gives workable results in the .sla file so far.

It would be nice if the footnote engine would look for and recognize a style called "footnote"
so that I would not have to reset the style of the footnote frame every time. The text which
I paste into the footnote frame after inserting the footnote goes in in default paragraph style
at 11 points, and so I have to select it and change the style, and italicize the title. There may
be no way around this. I think that there will have to be a sub-routine in the footnote engine
to define the footnote style, and that this could be linked to the style editing window.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 28, 2020, 07:32:24 PM
So, the rule I have established is, hit that Save button before doing anything
to or with a footnote!

I report the following crash sequences. I'm not complaining, just reporting.

I have a page with one text frame and four footnotes. I put three footnotes
in without a crash; the third note caused an overflow of the footnote text frame.
I did "select all" within the footnote text frame and set the style to "footnote",
and the footnote text frame resized itself and accomodated all three footnotes.

The 4th note caused the box to overflow again. The routine of "select all" etc
did not work. So, I hovered the mouse over the red x in the lower rh corner and
clicked on the message that offered to add another frame. The new note filled
the new frame. So far so good.

I had a stray extra line that was in between two of the notes where I had copied
an extra carriage return. When I deleted this line, Scribus crashed. It was
kind enough to give me a message: "Scribus crashes due to xxxx exception"
(sorry I didn't screenshot the error message.)

Here's another crash for no particular reason, I was just editing a text frame,
and, again deleted a line. I HAD been editing footnotes, but I was not doing so at the time. 
There was a footnote in the text frame. The style had been lost on the paragraph somehow,
and I had just reset the style of the paragraph the footnote was in.
APPCRASH
  Application Name:   Scribus.exe
  Application Version:   1.5.2.0
  Application Timestamp:   5739eced
  Fault Module Name:   Scribus.exe
  Fault Module Version:   1.5.2.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:   5739eced
  Exception Code:   c0000005
  Exception Offset:   005e6272
  OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
  Locale ID:   1033
  Additional Information 1:   0a9e
  Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:   0a9e
  Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Title: Re: Some Good Behaviour by Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 29, 2020, 02:24:49 PM
Having mapped the actions which will make Scribus's footnotes crash
(detailed piecemeal above)
it is not difficult to learn to be cautious.

However, the footnotes have some virtues!
It is possible to zoom out, select an entire Scribus page (containing one or more footnotes),
push it off to the side of the work area (the text frame and its footnote kept in the same relationship),
clear off another page, and interchange the contents of the two pages, and,
miracle, the footnotes sometimes re-number themselves spontaneously (haven't completely mapped this)

but if they don't, there is a function for it: Extras > Update Document
and on running this, the footnotes rearrange their numbers according to the new page layout.

So, by carefully avoiding the crash behaviours, I am finding that automatic footnote renumbering
is indeed possible in Scribus 1.5.2, and that the limitations are that one must be very cautious
about changing styles of paragraphs that contain footnotes, and very cautious about cutting and
pasting text in a way that will potentially break up the text and its footnote. The crashes that
I have gotten while editing the text within the footnote block appear unavoidable, and the
remedy is to just hit that SAVE button first, and take your chances.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 31, 2020, 06:04:13 PM
On further work with the footnotes over the last couple of days, I am pleased to find that Scribus 1.5.2 does have the capacity to format the style of the footnotes. There are two menu items under EDIT > NOTE STYLES and EDIT > MARKS.

Having observed the parameters outlined in my posts above, I have in fact had no further crashes and the footnote function is working fine and updating fine.

To recap:
(1) Don't try to copy and paste a block of text with a footnote in it. Instead, copy the footnote text to a text file, delete the footnote, and re-insert it after the copy and paste operation.

(2) Be very cautious about changing styles of text which contains footnotes. Hit the SAVE button first.

(3) The text frame containing the footnote is not adjustable in size by default, because it is set in the EDIT > NOTE STYLES menu to "automatic height and width". Unchecking these allows the frame to be adjusted using the standard arrow handles. Left on the "automatic" setting, the footnote text frame routinely overflows, requiring the addition of another linked text frame.

(4) It also turns out that in the EDIT > NOTE STYLES menu you can toggle between footnotes and endnotes, and you can even create multiple footnote styles. I haven't tried the end-note function yet.

These basic things should get anybody up and running with the footnotes in 1.5.2. If anybody has any further questions I will certainly try to find the answers, being this deep into it already.

jack
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on May 31, 2020, 07:21:20 PM
All right, here's another  footnote misbehaviour to report. Obviously this is just an oversight in the programming, and could be fixed, but it's worth being aware of, because it results in a pain in the bezinkus.

If you change the properties of the footnotes EDIT > NOTE STYLES, all of the footnote frames which have been un-welded from their associated text frames and placed at the bottom of the page, revert to being welded to the bottoms of their respective text frames, making hash out of the previous page layout and requiring a good deal of remedial work. That work is easier than re-numbering footnotes, but certainly ought to be unncecessary.

Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on June 01, 2020, 04:18:32 PM
Quote from: jack_cat on May 28, 2020, 03:44:43 PM
Some footnote misbehaviours to add to the list:
It seems to be impossible to grab the handles of the text box....

Sometimes the text which I paste into the footnote frame immediately after inserting
the footnote fills the frame perfectly and the footnote frame size auto-adjusts. Other times it
does not, and the red x appears in the lower rh corner. It is possible to click the red x
and cause the insertion of another linked text frame which contains the overflow...

It would be nice if the footnote engine would look for and recognize a style called "footnote"...

These three issues are all solved by EDIT > NOTE STYLES, in version 1.5.2. Un-check "auto height" and "auto width" to (1) get adjustable handles on the footnote frames and (2) make it possible to size the frame.

As far as footnote style, both the footnote style and the style of the footnote number inserted in the text may be set up as named styles in the EDIT > STYLES menu item, and then they may be applied in EDIT > NOTE STYLES, where there are dropdown check boxes to choose the style. As usual, Scribus has related functions in separate departments. I can deal with it.

Quote from: jack_cat on May 31, 2020, 07:21:20 PM
If you change the properties of the footnotes EDIT > NOTE STYLES, all of the footnote frames which have been un-welded from their associated text frames and placed at the bottom of the page, revert to being welded to the bottoms of their respective text frames...

This seems to be solved in EDIT > NOTE STYLES, by unchecking the box for "auto welding" when you do this edit. If there is any further problem with this, I will report.

jack_cat
Title: Re: Footnotes: another misbehaviour
Post by: jack_cat on June 03, 2020, 04:52:07 PM
I have been using the footnote function in Scribus 1.5.2 quite a bit, and have worked around the crashes quite
a bit, but I had another one that I haven't figured out, so I just report it here:

I was working with two facing pages and as I added the footnotes to this foot-note dense passage, more and more text spilled over into the linked frame on the right page, and at a certain point I noticed that one footnote had become duplicated in both footnote frames, and that the numbers were out of order. I hit SAVE and then ran the EXTRAS > UPDATE DOC, which usually will fix the order of the notes, and it didn't fix it, so I copied the footnote text back out of the duplicated note, and then deleted the footnote from the main text frame, and Scribus crashed, not being able to deal with deleting the duplicate note. I am sure that I can work around this in some way, even if I have to delete the entire text frame and begin again, but I don't yet know how to avoid this one.

EDIT: OK, I got it. You go to EDIT > MARKS and delete the footnote from there, and it doesn't crash. 
jack_cat
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: jack_cat on June 05, 2020, 02:50:13 PM
OK, that last fix for the duplicated footnote did not completely work.
At one point, I had a completely working file except for the odd fact
that in one footnote window, one note was numbered out of order,
while its referent in the text frame above had the correct number.
The number in the footnote frame was also being used by another
footnote on the following page with a referent in the same flowing text block.

Somehow the two footnotes had become entangled with each other, and
opening the file again (and again) after several crashes, the two notes
exchanged their numbers and text content in an odd way, and on trying to
delete either of them, Scribus crashed repeatedly. Problem to be solved.

So how to save the file? I saved several copies at that point in order to try
different strategies as necessary.

The successful one: (keeping fingers crossed)
I opened the text containing the scrambled footnotes, which ran across three
pages of linked text frames, in the Story Editor, and cut and pasted the whole
text block (note that I couldn't have done this in the main window) to a file in
a different text editor, to save it, deleted it from the Story Editor window,
clicked the arrow to save the content from the Story Editor, now empty,
and went back to the main window and deleted the three empty text frames.
The footnote frames full of their footnote text were still visible. I hit SAVE again
and deleted the first footnote frame, and Scribus crashed.

Instead of attempting to delete the footnote frames, I should at this point have
saved, closed and re-opened.
When I re-opened the file the phantom footnote frames from the deleted text had vanished.
At this point I could start rebuilding that section with its footnotes from scratch.
I believe that at this point the file is sufficiently repaired to proceed as normally.
I could be wrong, but it seems ok so far. 

Let me mention another strategy that I tried on another of the saved alternate files,
which did not work:
I tried deleting all the footnotes in reverse order, working with the Marks Editor window,
and so this went fine until I came to the two notes which had become entangled,
and at this point Scribus crashed. So, I abandoned that strategy.
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: hohesC on January 20, 2021, 11:29:35 PM
any news about the footnotes? And is there a plan to make them stay inside the text field? So that on left side without footnotes and on the right side with footnotes the page ends at the same level?
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: hohesC on January 20, 2021, 11:48:34 PM
maybe we can collect some money for this issue. Even if we possibly won´t collect enough money to pay all hours of work, maybe it is a nice way to give the developers at least something (symbolic character) back?
But I think there should be enough people outside searching for a solution in Scribus (as you can see on the number of views, 3285 so far), willing to pay at least 5 to 10€
Title: Re: Footnotes
Post by: dragonfly on January 22, 2021, 06:02:40 PM
Earlier I have thrown in some ideas. i will add another.
I am not really interested in the "pay as you develop" idea.

I am experimenting with some ideas to include Scribus in a toolchain. My main motivation is to output to both PDF and Web.

Now my starting point is writing content in Atom editor (markdown) then piping the content through Scribus as a layout engine. That seems to work nicely.

But I looked at writing footnotes in markdown (in Atom) and it is quite easy.

I can see a workflow where Scribus can import such assets with footnotes already prepared.  It works fine using the pipeline markdown to markdown-preview-enhanced (Atom packages) to PDF output (via princexml which must be installed). Footnotes will only work with interactive links of course.  Regarding publishing to the web I am looking at Adobe JS API.