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Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: boe2k2 on August 25, 2020, 12:33:35 PM

Title: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: boe2k2 on August 25, 2020, 12:33:35 PM
Hi,
as a newbie, I wonder if Scribus is being still developed or not, as I see that the last released update is about one year old.
Ciao, Andrea
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: a.l.e on August 25, 2020, 02:16:17 PM
yes, it is.

why are you asking?
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: cyberlizard on September 13, 2020, 04:03:16 PM
i think the reason they are asking is that there is no development news on the main scribus page for more than a year.
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: a.l.e on September 14, 2020, 09:29:46 AM
well, the website is indeed almost dead...

but if you read this same forum, the bug tracker or the svn/git commit you will notice that it's not dead yet : - )
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: neville on March 19, 2021, 07:41:36 AM
Well you could have fooled me....

The patch for global search and replace has been sitting waiting to be merged since May last year

Until that feature is implemented, together with Paste with Style, Scribus is hopeless as a proof editor, even if it is quite good as an authoring tool.

Case in point: an author wants me to edit a 500 page book which has a number of foreign terms sprinkled through the text. They need to be converted to italics. Scribus has this extraordinarily multi-featured Search and Replace ... which only works in one text frame. Good Grief!

Paste with Style is a fundamental feature of working with text. In the forum (ages ago) the excuse was it's so hard to implement cross platform because of the different clipboard formats. Other open source cross platform apps have implemented it (LibreOffice, LiveCode ...) Even more grief!

While I'm at it, it looks like XML-RPC was about to implemented - a google search indicated there were scripts developed, but the links on that page are now broken. An ability to use an external editor via XML-RPC might turn Scribus into a useable tool. Has it been implemented? Who knows? It seems impossible to find out from the home  web site, which is seriously in need off maintenance.
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: toyotadesigner on March 19, 2021, 12:34:57 PM
If the text frames are connected (which they definitely should be in a 500-page book!), you can click the »Story Editor« Icon in the menu or press cmd+t. A new window with all text will open. Then you can perform a text search and replacement with cmd+f or click the loupe in the new window. BTW, you even don't have to select the text frame at all...

Simple as that.

BTW, all mentioned shortcuts are on macOS, I have no idea if they are identical in Windows or Linux.
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: neville on March 19, 2021, 11:57:12 PM
Unfortunately no, the text frames are not linked. The book is 70% images so I assume the author didn't want to use linked  frames, the text is not what would normally be considered continuous content (if he knew about them, which I doubt since he was using Scribus for the first time, as am I). Still, good to know, the tip might come in handy

The story editor doesn't seem to work all that well however, altho I admit I haven't experiment ver far with it. On the Mac anyway it doesn't display change of style (eg to italic) altho the style is there when you commit to the text frame. And of course it doesn't accept Paste with Style
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: Nermander on March 20, 2021, 08:48:20 AM
So, just because an author have been using Scribus in a stupid way, you are blaming Scribus? :)
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: neville on March 20, 2021, 09:09:32 AM
No it wasn't a stupid way.

The text had to be placed precisely in each page, as it explains the images on that page. Linking the text frames causes the text to flow across frames, which is correct for a mainly text book but is *not* correct for a largely image based book. Editing the text when it flows like that would need each subsequent frame to be examined to see that it is still placed as originally set.

Even if that were not true, a global search and replace which works globally frames is a sine qua non for a useable layout program. And one of the developers did in fact code that feature, after user requests going back some years according to the forum discussion. The code was completed in 2019 as I understand, and has being waiting for merging in the distribution since May 2020.
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: dragonfly on March 20, 2021, 11:01:08 AM
I admit that I am not a regular user of Scribus but there are multiple ways of achieving your goals - without waiting for developers to meet your requirements.
Look for workarounds.

I do not know if you have yet explored the Scripter plugins.
From the description you give, personally I would create a template for multiple (unlinked) text frames and accompanying image frames and inject the text to be alongside images using ScribusGenerator.py

%VAR_text01%   %VAR_image01%
%VAR_text02%   %VAR_image02%
...
%VAR_text99%   %VAR_image99%

all in a CSV fle.

In fact I extended this workaround to create *.sla via PHP include.

------------------------

Another way is to create your content in markdown editor and import the PDF.
Explore Atom editor > markdown-preview-enhanced package for multiple print options and import into Scribus. But I understand that you have an existing 500 page document so you might find it easier to disassemble document to its constituent parts (text, images) then rebuild as assets used by Scribus. Pandoc is good for this. All by command line.

-----------------------

Global find and replace .. I sometimes use XMLCopyEditor on the *.sla code (which is xml).

Or apply ripgrep to the *.sla code.

https://learnbyexample.github.io/substitution-with-ripgrep/

-----------------------

Remember that Scribus is a layout engine and it is often convenient to build the assets outside Scribus then import.

That is keep content and layout separate.  Scribus StoryEditor tries to do both but my preference is to maximise use of external tools in a toolchain. Atom is good for this workflow.
Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: Nermander on March 20, 2021, 01:49:52 PM
Quote from: neville on March 20, 2021, 09:09:32 AM
No it wasn't a stupid way.

From what you have explained it seems as if the author did not use styles, but rather direct formatting. And that is "the stupid way".

With Scribus, you more or less have to use styles or you risk ending up with situations where you have to reformat everything because direct formatting is lost.

Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: neville on March 20, 2021, 11:57:00 PM
Nermander: Of course the author used styles! That is not the problem.

Dragonfly: now that is the kind of answer I was hoping for. I will investigate XMLCopyEditor - an external editor sounds like just the ticket

Title: Re: Is Scribus being still developed?
Post by: Nermander on March 21, 2021, 08:34:51 AM
If the author used styles for the words that are supposed to be italic, you would just have to change the style.