Keeping notes on your project

[ginkgo100]

For every project I do, I end up keeping extensive notes: everything from a "to-do" list of tasks not yet completed, to useful reference data (like the X-coordinate of the center of the left and right page between the margins), to a record of typographical decisions so that consistency can be maintained (e.g., "in document Foo, add a thin space to the regular space at the end of each sentence"). I keep these notes using Windows Notepad because it uses such a small proportion of precious system resources (side note: I really need to upgrade my computer). Still, that requires frequent switching between Scribus and Notepad (and this is even less convenient if I have more than one Notepad document open at a time). If I want to use both simultaneously, it also requires extensive resizing, scrolling, and zooming to get everything arranged on the screen.

--> Is there a way to keep these meta notes in the Scribus application itself?

[ginkgo100]

I thought I'd add a screenshot that will should nicely illustrate why I think this would be so helpful. My current project is an adult (and older kids') coloring book that's actually a color-by-numbers book using geometric grids. (Anticipated publication date: October 2015—fingers crossed.) Now I know that some people will want to be surprised by each picture's subject (I would be in that category), but others will want to know what each picture is before they invest the time to color it (my son is in that category). So to accommodate everyone, I'm using the world's simplest cipher for the titles: 1 stands for A, 2 stands for B, etc. I've been working on this so long that I can almost read this cipher text like regular text—almost! But it would be so much easier if I could just add a margin note or a virtual sticky note or something with the deciphered text (in this case, "Vampire Bats") so I know at a glance which image I'm looking at. I have rearranged the pages so many times that I have despaired of keeping track of it all on my Notepad text document!  Needless to say, these notes would definitely not be intended for publication, nor even exported to the PDF I send to the printer. They would just be for internal production use only.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[utnik]

hi ginkgo

you could create a second frame with the title in plain text and set this frame to 'non printable' ('properties' (f2) → 'x, y, z' → click the icon with the printer...)
create more of this non printable frames for all the other notes – as soon as you go to 'preview mode' they will disappear.

...or you might add a whole 'non printable' layer (checkbox under the printer icon on the 'layers' window – not the printer icon itself, this would toggle the printing state of all the layers!)

utnik

[dagoss]

I frequently create non-printing layers for this very purpose (usually in the margin area)

(BTW, an adult coloring book sounds like fine!)