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Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: drobble on October 11, 2025, 11:50:16 PM

Title: reference position of an object (X/Y) to the X/Y properties of another object.
Post by: drobble on October 11, 2025, 11:50:16 PM
Here is another newbie question.
I have a number of text boxes in my design.
The text boxes are aligned in rows/columns
I'm wondering is it possible, perhaps through a short-key, to reference the property of 'this' object (X,Y, "width" or "height") to the property of another object on the page?

Maybe the name of the object could be used for this reference.
TIA
Title: Re: reference position of an object (X/Y) to the X/Y properties of another object.
Post by: a.l.e on October 12, 2025, 11:54:40 AM
You don't tell us what you want to achieve with that.

Scribus does have some variables in the measurement (pagewidth, ...) but cannot reference sizes of arbitrary frames.

The sounds good, but I wonder how fast it would get hard to manage (at the end, you will probably want to have cyclic definitions...).

The closest thing we have is the idea of welding, but it currently only works for the position and not for the size.


With the little information available, my suggestion would be to go for a typographic grid.

In this former reply https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?msg=24596 you can see a screenshot of such a structure.
Title: Re: reference position of an object (X/Y) to the X/Y properties of another object.
Post by: Nermander on October 12, 2025, 02:28:04 PM
I am thinking that what you may be looking for is the Align and distribute function.

And maybe it would be an idea to use Guides a lot more.

If you want it to be "dynamic" (like a variable), I think you are out of luck. But in some cases grouping the objects may be a suitable solution.