Scribus Forums

Scribus => Text and Typography => Topic started by: RodneyLee on January 18, 2018, 04:34:15 PM

Title: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 18, 2018, 04:34:15 PM
So I finally got tabs to work for me, laying out 44 page phonebook, I have 2 tabs with leading dots, 1 at 1.53 and the other at 1.90, 10 and 7 digit phone numbers
I just noticed the dot spaceing changes, see screengrab, its not a real problem for me, I do find it interesting though.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: GarryP on January 19, 2018, 11:09:08 AM
Without being able to look at the original document I would guess that this is something to do with how the text is formatted.

It looks like Scribus is drawing the dots using different fonts on different lines and, because different fonts/variants have different character widths, the dots have different widths.

Try changing the formatting of the frame as a whole - to "refresh" it to a standard format - and then re-formatting the characters of the text where necessary rather than the paragraphs. (You might lose the tabulator settings while doing this so make a note of them first just in case.)

Scribus has loads of little quirks when it comes to the details of certain functions and the tabulator isn't immune. It's usually just a case of knowing where these quirks lurk and working around them.
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 01:00:41 PM
Thanks, I pull some text out a put in new document and see what happens re-formating, it should be all the same
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 01:17:09 PM
here is the test file, third line tabs just a bit off from first line

my default font is Times, if you go to end of last line default switches to ariel

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Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: GarryP on January 19, 2018, 02:24:23 PM
Sorry, I can't read the SLA as it was created with 1.5.3 and I only use the stable version.
(The release notes for 1.5.2 say "The text layout engine has been rewritten from scratch" so this might be contributing to the issue but I don't know.)
Maybe someone who uses 1.5.3 can help.
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 03:10:31 PM
that was my thought also, some kind of held over formatting (I started in 1.5.2), I just hate to start from scratch :),  thanks Garry
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: utnik on January 19, 2018, 04:39:57 PM
hi rodneylee

Quote from: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 01:17:09 PM
here is the test file, third line tabs just a bit off from first line

this difference is needed to fill the different spaces from text to tab with dots! (otherwise there would be a space before the dots on the third line.)

Quotemy default font is Times, if you go to end of last line default switches to ariel

the font of your last paragraph is 'times new roman', but the default font of the frame (as well as the font of your default paragraph style) is 'arial'...

utnik
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 04:44:21 PM
how do you change it in the paragraph, ad default is times I expected it all across the document
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 04:47:10 PM
I just tried it in styles manager, it crashes when ever I hit edit on defaults
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: utnik on January 20, 2018, 09:06:21 AM
Quote from: RodneyLee on January 19, 2018, 04:47:10 PM
I just tried it in styles manager, it crashes when ever I hit edit on defaults

i never had this crash – just tried it with your file and it worked well...

...there might be an issue with the default font defined for the text tool in the document settings. (as i almost always work with styles, i don't care much about this...)

utnik
Title: Re: another Interesting Issue
Post by: RodneyLee on January 20, 2018, 01:13:19 PM
I tried styles, kept crashing while editing text, I am using mint 18.3 and the Scribus Appimage 1.5.3, I have 1.5.4 installed to play with, an earlier post I was having trouble with styles crash #11, removed styles helped, then got more crashes til 44 page booklet wouldn't open anymore, eventually I opened in 1.5.4 and it worked and somehow recovered, back to 1.5.3 with everything mostly working...