Recent posts

#31
General Discussion / Re: Tables
Last post by crlMIDI - March 18, 2026, 05:57:11 PM
Workarounds (@PastaShock) seem to be the way to go here, though I'd rephrase that by proposing better connectivity between applications, mainly LibreOffice, Inkscape, LaTeX and Scribus. Each has its own essential uses for finished documents, but users with different experience and amounts of know-how need to be able to switch between them more easily.

Everyone needs to make last-minute alterations, without the chosen workarounds getting into a mess with directory structures, page layouts and so on.

Most often, a key user requirement of a workaround, not just for published work, is to have control over character fonts and sizes; good typographical practice generally requires variation to be limited here.

I read this thread hoping to find the current best solution for including tables in language teaching handouts for primary school children. Depending on the language, you may need various tables, for example for conjugating verbs. While the kids don't mind, the exercise in PAO, with images, frames and items of text, is exactly the same as for a local history exhibition or a poster at a scientific congress.

My simplest workaround for a small-ish table for school seems to be to make it in Writer, where nice formatting is easier than in Calc. I select the table and export it as PDF, which Scribus can import as vectors; 'Collect for Output' sets up a directory that can be used to keep the files together. Presently, LO seems to forget its export filepaths, but I guess that will be fixed. A limitation is that, as far as I can see, Scribus doesn't fix the aspect ratio of the image by default, and the original dimensions are not given under Properties – if you mess up you have to go back to the PDF.

PastaShock, in response to @a.l.e's proposal to use Tabs, is considering writing code to do that. A big advantage is that the tables are searchable. In fact, that's how LaTeX does it complete with lines, though as usual the code isn't too easy if you don't use it every day. I don't know if it would be possible to convert or port the LaTeX code to Scribus, so we could use the same coding for two applications (like with some equation editors) – perhaps that's what AI is supposed to be good for.

On the subject of AI, LaTeX is half a century old, and built from a huge number of well-documented macros. It's still very powerful, with a huge number of users, and a corresponding (sometimes conflicting) amount of help on the web. Perhaps an AI project might produce a user interface to provide more user-friendly guidance and enable LaTeX to interact better with Scribus.

Finally, Scribus already has a specific render frame for LateX. Render frames can used to code any content, including vectorial graphics from its Tikz ecosystem and nicely typeset extended blocks of text, if they fit on a page. Again, the text is not directly searchable. A local installation is needed. By contrast (to exaggerate a bit), Scribus concentrates more on individual typesetting tools which may require typesetting skills I don't have.  Render frames seem to be underdeveloped, at least with respect to the documentation, which I found hard to follow in the context of the normal LaTeX markup preamble which defines fonts and so on.

It's been noted that Scribus render frames are bitmap images and you have to find out how to adjust the settings. Inkskape makes vectorial render frames, but I don't want to hop between 3 applications...

#32
Beginner Talk / Re: Frame coordinates changing...
Last post by CycloneVonSleet - March 18, 2026, 12:52:17 AM
Back already- It seems at some point the option "View -> Measurement -> Rulers relative to page" was unchecked. I haven't manually updated the software since starting the project, but I'm not certain it never automatically updated. Checking it reverts my coordinates back to their previous behavior.

I couldn't find this topic discussed elsewhere, so hopefully this helps someone else in the future. Marking as "Solved"
#33
Beginner Talk / [SOLVED] Frame coordinates cha...
Last post by CycloneVonSleet - March 18, 2026, 12:38:48 AM
I've returned to a project after around a month's hiatus to find that my text frames on every page have shifted slightly on the x axis, which is annoying but not a big deal; however the y coordinate of each frame steadily increments each page, despite having the same visual position relative to the page it is on. I'm worried that while I was away, Scribus decided that every frame in my document should have its coordinates related to page 1, instead of the page the frame is contained within.

The Y value is incrementing in equal steps, and they appear to correspond to the page height plus the scratch area between pages vertically. For what it's worth, the X coordinates of every "right" page are also offset by the width of one page, but this is in addition to them also no longer being centered mathematically, despite visually still being centered. For reference, my pages are 8.4 inches wide, but an x coordinate for the center point of a text frame set to 4.2 inches is way off to the left. This is also new behavior.

This behavior wasn't happening when I last worked on this project, and I'm worried about what it means for the longevity and stability of my document. It's also very disruptive to my workflow as I manually position the bounds of each frame my manually editing the values under Geometry in the Properties panel. What can I do to fix all of this?

Using Scribus 1.6.2 on Windows 11 Pro 25H2.
#34
Code / Re: PythonAPI and groups
Last post by a.l.e - March 17, 2026, 07:21:22 PM
there is a patch having a good life in the bug tracker...

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=17490
#35
Code / Re: PythonAPI and groups
Last post by henrylaw - March 16, 2026, 07:18:16 PM
I've found a workround for this; if you retrieve the names of the objects in the group and then ungroup it, you can then access their properties by name.  But you have to issue "closeDoc()" before exiting your script as otherwise Scribus will remain open and ask for confirmation.

Here's a code fragment which works.  (It processes text frames unless they have paragraph style "diary_style")

grouped_items = scribus.getGroupItems( item_name, type=4 )
scribus.unGroupObjects( item_name )
for gi in grouped_items:
if gi[1] == 4:
  try:
    para_style = scribus.getParagraphStyle( gi[0] )
  except scribus.NoValidObjectError:
    print( f"Object not found: '{gi[0]}'" )
    continue
  if para_style != diary_style:
    process_text_frame(gi[0])
    ... etc
#36
Code / Re: PythonAPI and groups
Last post by henrylaw - March 16, 2026, 03:59:52 PM
I too have found that, while I can get a list of the object names, I can't even access them to determine their properties.  I have an existing document which I'm trying to analyse; it has groups of text frames and I want to examine the paragraph styles assigned to each of those frames.  This code fragment shows how I'm trying to do it:
grouped_items = scribus.getGroupItems( 'group name', type=4 )
for gi in grouped_items:
    if gi[1] == 4:
        try:
            para_style = scribus.getParagraphStyle( gi[0] )
        except scribus.NoValidObjectError:
            print( f"Object not found: '{gi[0]}'" )
            continue
        print( f"Item '{gi[0]}' in group; style '{para_style}'" )

I get "Object not found" for every text frame in the group.

The getGroupItems method could be really useful, essential even; but not if you can't do anything with what it finds.
#37
General Discussion / Index Creation not saved
Last post by Kerrrunchhh - March 16, 2026, 11:23:02 AM
I succeeded in creating a content and an index page for my project.
But when I load the document creating them again does not work.
Maybe saving them is buggy?
#38
General Discussion / Text Styles: Can the Direct pa...
Last post by marce colina - March 15, 2026, 01:16:47 AM
Is there a way to override the Direct paragraph formatting when applying an style? Such option would be handy, since in some cases you apply the text style and is not really applied until you made the second step of pressing the remove the direct paragraph formatting icon.
#40
Features / Re: PDF Export Profiles
Last post by a.l.e - March 14, 2026, 09:37:13 AM
There is a proposal for exporting the PDF presets:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=16257