Scribus

Making Lists in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:14:54 +0000

You might as well know from the start: Making bulleted or numbered lists in Scribus isn't as easy as in the average word processor. In fact, compared to LibreOffice, Scribus as installed is downright primitive in the way it handles lists. You can pull a script off the Internet to automate to an extent, but chances are you'll have to tweak it before it does exactly what you want.

Creating a list manually is straightforward, but tedious. You want numbers? Insert them one at a time, and repeat whenever you need to renumber. You want bullet points? Go to Insert -> Character -> Bullet, or, if you want a character other than a plain bullet, to Insert -> Glyph -> Hide/Show Enhanced Palette, and copy and paste as necessary. Then, in both cases press Tab and start typing.

In both cases, you should create a list paragraph style to control the indentations in the list. Go to Edit -> Styles -> New -> Paragraph Style -> Tabulators and Indentation, and adjust the First Line Indent and Left Indent fields, using both positive and negative numbers, until you have the spacing you want. Usually, you want a negative indent for the first line, so that the number or bullet is indented from the margin, and a positive number for the left indent. The trickiest part is adjusting the left indent so that the subsequent lines align with the first -- a matter of trial and error that varies with the font.

Introducing Bullet.py

You can remove much of the drudgery of manual list creation by using José Antonio Meira da Rocha's Bullet.py script available on the Scribus site. Scroll down the page to the script, and copy and paste it to a text file, saving it with a .py extension, since it's a Python script.

Before installing it, you will almost certainly want to make some changes. For one thing, the script references the Dingbat and Wingding fonts for creating bullets, which your GNU/Linux installation is unlikely to have. More importantly, the Unicode glyph the script refers to is a checkbox with a shadow, which is almost certainly not what you want for a bullet.

Search for the variable bulletedListCharFont and replace it with a font on your system, such as the Symbol font used by LibreOffice. Similarly, search for the variable bullet string, and replace the default glyph with t

he one of your choice. You can browse the available glyphs by highlighting a selection in Insert ->Glyph -> Hide/Show Enhanced Palette dialog, and adding the last four characters of its code to the script. After some experimentation, you may want to replace the default 0 in the variable bulletedListCharSize as well.

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Four Hidden Tools in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

Scribus is a powerful tool, but its menus are poorly laid-out. While you can usually find the features you most frequently use without any trouble, others may be hidden almost anywhere. From the Extras, Script, and Windows menus to the Document Setup dialog, useful features can be positioned almost anywhere, with only the most token regard for logic.

The tools described here are ones that took some time for me to discover in Scribus. None are worth more than a few hundred words of description, but I mention them here because all of them can be useful to know.

The Scribus Calendar Wizard

For some reason, Scribus' Python scripting capabilities haven't encouraged a wide variety of extensions. However, of those that are available, probably the most useful is the calendar wizard.

As packaged in most distributions, the calendar wizard is available from Script -> Scribus Scripts. If it's not included in your version, you can download it. You might also open it from /usr/share/scribus/scripts and follow the online directions for modifying it.

To produce a calendar, select the language and the layout options, the year, and the months to include (there's a check box if you want the entire year). When you click the OK button, the script starts a new document, with the days of the month laid out on each page and half the page reserved for a graphic. All you need to do is add the graphics, and, perhaps, change the fonts. The only way the wizard could be simpler is if it loaded a list of holidays and automatically added them, instead of leaving you add them manually.

Replace Colors

Replace colors works with the colors defined for use in a document (excluding those found in images. It can be a considerable time-saver when you are experimenting with variations of the same design.

To exchange one color for the next, select the objects with which you want to work, holding down the Shift key if you want to select multiple objects. Then select Edit -> Replace Colors. In the simple dialog, you can quickly exchange one color for another. Possibly, you will need to define the exact color you want with Edit -> Color before replacing a color.

Adding Barcodes

Scribus has one of the handiest tools for barcodes that I have ever seen. You can open the dialog window by selecting Insert -> Barcode.

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Secondary Window Tools in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

Scribus is designed so that the main window shows only the document you are designing. Other tools are positioned to secondary windows, where they have all the room they need for detailed settings. You may discover some of these secondary windows via menus and toolbars as you work, but not all. Consequently, it's worth taking the time to look at them, to ensure that you don't miss some useful tools.

The secondary Windows are available in the Windows menu, along with the usual list of open windows and the choice to cascade or tile them on the screen. They're listed more or less in order of the frequency that you are likely to use them:

Properties

The Properties window shows all the design details for the currently selected object or frame. Change the selection, and the Properties window also changes.The Properties window includes seven tabs: X, Y, Z for naming and positioning, Shape for the outline of the frame and how other text flows around it, Group for the outline of grouped objects, Text for font and spacing choices, Image for positioning and resolution, Line for how lines end and intersect, and Colors for object fill. Any tab inapplicable to the currently selected objected -- such as the Image tab for a text frame -- is grayed out and unavailable. You can also reach the Properties tab via an object's context menu, or by pressing F2.

Outline

Like the Navigator in LibreOffice, the Outline Window shows all of a document's pages and objects, and can be used to jump to them immediately. It is most useful in long documents, and when you replace the default names (like Text2) with names that meaningful to you.

Scrapbook

The Scrapbook is a repository for items that you might want to reuse or don't yet have a place for in a document. You can have multiple scrapbooks (one for text and one for images is often useful), and drag objects on to a page as needed.

You can set the Scrapbook behavior from File -> Preferences -> Scrapbook. The options you can set are to have copied items moved automatically to the scrapbook, to retain copied items the next time you open Scribus, and the number of copied items to keep in any Scrapbook.

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Tweaking text in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

In word processors, users generally settle for an appearance that is good enough. By contrast, in a design application like Scribus, you have the tools to adjust the layout until it is exactly the way you want.

That is especially true for text. Scribus not only provides tools for general management of the available fonts, but also for micro-managing everything from the size and shape of fonts to the spaces between characters and words and how a word is hyphenated at the end of a line.

Choosing Fonts

Generally, Scribus uses the installed system fonts, defaulting to the first in alphabetical order unless you change the default in File -> Preferences -> Tools. However, if you are a font collector, you may have thousands of fonts that you only want to access within Scribus. To make fonts available only to Scribus, close all documents (so that only the gray background of the Scribus window shows) and go to File -> Preferences -> Fonts -> Additional Paths to add the directories for additional fonts. If your files are hierarchially arranged, you only need to choose the top level directory to include all the fonts in sub-directories.

Sometimes, too, you may need to make a font unavailable because Scribus or your system can't display it. This is particularly a problem when the first font in alphabetical order is undisplayable, which can make you think something is wrong with Scribus in general. In such cases, you can stop the font from displaying in Scribus at File -> Preferences -> Fonts -> Available Fonts, and unchecking it in the Use Font column.

If you need to use an undisplayable font, or a font you don't have, you can set up a font substitution at File -> Preferences -> Fonts -> Font Substitution. For best results with a substitution, use a substitute whose letters take up the same space as the original font -- for example, Liberation Serif is designed as a substitution for Times Roman, and Liberation Sans for Helvetica and Arial.

When choosing fonts within a document, most of the time the brief sample and summary available in Extras -> Font Preview may be enough. However, when you want to compare possible font choices, Scripts -> Font Sample is more useful. Font Sample creates a specimen document, showing all the fonts you select at different weights, so that you can easily compare them and choose the weight most suitable for your needs.

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Using Styles in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:26:31 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

If you don't include master pages (which are really styles under another name), then Scribus supports three types of hierarchial styles: lines, character, and paragraph. As in any other self-respecting word processor or layout application, these styles allow you to apply detailed sets of formatting options quickly, without having to change each instance of a formatting option individually. However, styles are implemented idiosyncratically in Scribus, so they can take time to learn, even if you are familiar with the basic concept from other applications.

One of the conceptual problems you may have is that styles are defined and applied in different places in the editing window. To define and manage styles, you open the Style Manager, by selecting Edit -> Styles or pressing the F3 key. However, to apply styles, you either select Properties from the right-click menu of a selected object or press the F2 key. For paragraph styles, you also have the option of selecting Edit Text from the right-click menu of a selected text frame, or selecting Ctrl+T to open the Story Editor.

Which brings up another peculiarity: the relationship between paragraph and character styles. Not too long ago, Scribus did not support character styles. In fact, the Story Editor still doesn't, although it has a pane for paragraph styles. Not only that, but formatting done on individual characters rather than whole paragraphs -- whether manually or via styles -- doesn't display in the Story Editor, either. To apply character styles, you need to select the characters to format within a text frame in the main windows, and open the Properties window to select a style from the Text pane.

To say the least, this inconsistency is annoying. Editing and formatting text in a text frame is so awkward that generally I recommend that users avoid doing so. However, if you want to use character styles, you have little choice.

At any rate, once you understand this inconsistency, you can focus on the more important job of learning how the choices available for each type of style.

Line Styles

Line styles can be applied via the Properties window to any shape, polygon, line, bezier curve, or freehand line that you add to a document from the Insert menu.

Compared to paragraph and character styles, line styles have a limited set of options. The most common line formatting options are the type of line -- for instance, solid or dotted -- and the line width and color.

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Working with Frames and Objects in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

A Scribus document consists of a series of objects that are added to a page, and contained within a frame. In addition to the usual cut, copy, and paste functions available in most applications, frames in Scribus share a general set of editing attributes and, so far as possible, the same set of properties.

As you can see from the Insert menu, Scribus supports four basic types of frame: text, image, table and drawing primitives. Table frames are collections of individual text frames, which may be edited either as a group or as individual cells, while drawing primitives are sub-divided into shape, polygon, line, Bezier curve, and freehand line. Frames for primitives are added with the content, while the content of other frames must be added separately.

Basic frame editing

When you are positioning any frame, start by selecting View -> Show Grid. Depending on your work habits, requirements, and the degree of precision that you need, you might also want to select Show Guides and other items in the View menu. These selections can help you position frames with greater accuracy.

Ordinarily, you can position any frame by clicking anywhere within it, and pressing the left mouse button as you move it around. Should you want to change the size of a frame and its object while keeping its proportions, drag with the mouse on one of the handles in the corners. To change the shape and proportions, drag on the handle in the middle of one side.

Once a frame has the size and proportions that you want, you can either right-click to open the context menu, or use the Item menu when a frame is selected to edit further. For instances, you can select Size is Locked from the context menu to prevent it from being accidentally edited. Once all the characteristics are to your liking, you can select Lock to prevent all changes. These selections are unnecessary in a simple layout, but, in complex layouts, they can prevent casual mistakes.

In addition, you can send any frame and its content to the Scrapbook, a Scribus utility for holding objects when you either want to share them between documents or are unsure exactly where they will be ultimately positioned.

All frames can be converted to at least a couple of other frame types. All frames except tables can moved between layers, and you can choose how text, image, and table frames appear in exported PDF files -- either as an Annotation, or a Bookmark (selecting nothing under PDF options simply makes the frame part of the PDF's content).

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Working with Images in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:00:00 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

Apart from text, images are probably the most commonly used objects in Scribus or any other layout application. The basics of working with images in Scribus are mostly straightforward, but there are some methods and resources that you might miss, especially at first.

Like any other object, images in Scribus are placed in frames that are visible when you click an image, and that include six control points to help you move or manipulate the image. For images, the frame is color-coded red, but otherwise image frames work much like any other frame, being movable either by dragging with the mouse -- preferably with the grid turned on -- or by adjusting its properties by entering exact figures. Just like any frame, image frames can also be locked to prevent editing, moved to another layer, altered in shape, exported to PDF, or copied to the Scrapbook for use with other pages or project.

Most of the unique options for an image are available in the context menu that pops up when you right-click anywhere within the frame. They include options for both adding a new image and for editing an existing one.

Adding an image

Scribus gives you several options for adding an image and its attendant frame. You can, of course, copy and paste from within Scribus, or select Windows -> Scrapbook and drag an image from the Scrapbook into a document.

However, the most common method is to select Insert -> Image Frame or press I, and then draw the frame by dragging with the mouse. You are left with the visible frame with an X through it.

From there, right-click in the frame to display the context menu, and select Get Image to select an image in a file-manager. Scribus supports all common image formats, so you are unlikely to have trouble using the image of your choice.

However, at this point, a problem arises: Unless you have the foresight to open the image in another application first, the frame is unlikely to fit the image it now holds.

If it doesn't, all you need to do is select Adjust Frame to Image from the context menu to adjust the frame automatically. For some unknown reason, the opposite function is not in the context menu, but you can access it from the context menu by selecting Properties -> Image -> Scale to Frame Size, after which you may need to select Adjust Frame. Often, changing the image size rather than the frame size will be the easiest option, especially if the image is larger than the frame but you need to fit the frame into a precisely-defined space.

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Text Frames in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:36:45 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

As a layout program, Scribus puts objects in frames so that they can be manipulated more easily. Images, drawing primitives, tables -- if it is content, Scribus puts it in a color-coded frame, with eight handles so that you can position it by dragging it around. But of all its frames, the most important -- and probably the most customizable -- is the text frame.

A text frame is just what it sounds like: a container for text-based content. Often, it can be treated like any other object, especially when you are placing it on the page or adding basic formatting. However, how you put text into text frames and format it, and how you connect frames so that text flows from one to the other -- all these are peculiar to text frames alone, and require special attention.

Adding a simple text frame

Adding a text frame is much the same as adding any other sort of frame in Scribus If a text frame covers the entire page, you can use the margins as guidelines. However, before you add smaller text frames, I suggest that you select View -> Show Grid so that you can position them more precisely. You may also want to zoom in.

In a complex document, another option you might want to choose is to create a separate layer for text. That way, you can focus on text layout by making the other layers temporarily invisible -- or, alternatively, focus on other objects by making the text layer invisible. You can add the text layer by selecting Windows -> Layers and clicking the button in the floating dialog window that opens to create and name the layer. Making a layer invisible is as simple as un-selecting the column with the eye in the header in the dialogue window.

When you are ready, select Insert -> Text Frame, or the same function on the tool bar. Better yet, simply press the T key -- one of the joys of Scribus is that, because you don't enter text directly, its major key commands are wonderfully simple. The cursor changes to show a small icon with a drop capital A and lines of unreadable text, and all you need to do is drag with the cursor to create the frame. You are left with a red outline, with eight square handles that you can drag to adjust the size and shape of the frame. If you are satisfied with the positioning, click anywhere else in the Scribus window, and the frame is de-selected.

Text frame customization

Often, a simple text frame positioned properly is all that you need. However, if you right-click the selected frame and select Properties from the context menu, you open up more possibilities.

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Navigating and Working in Scribus

Bruce Byfield — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:48:53 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

Scribus has mixed reputation among free software users. On the one hand, users are vaguely aware of Scribus as a first-rate application that can hold its own against proprietary counterparts like InDesign. On the other other hand, Scribus has a reputation of being diabolically difficult to learn -- and it's this reputation that I'm hoping to help change in my next series of articles on LinuxJournal.com, starting with this general introduction.

To some extent, this reputation is justified. Designed for desktop publishing, Scribus is a specialty application, and not intended for general use the way that OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice is. Unlike a word processor, it is not intended primarily as a way to input text -- although you can use it for that -- but as a layout program for manipulating groups of objects for the printed page. With this orientation, it is perhaps closer to The GIMP or Inkscape, which can be disorienting to the general user.

You might say that Scribus treats each page and document as a container in which you place and edit objects. It is not so much a creator of new content as a manipulator of existing content, and its editing window and tools are all designed to make that manipulation as easy as possible.

Scribus is very efficient about helping you achieve this goal, but it does mean that the editing window is not quite what most people are used to seeing. How its logic affects the editing window should become obvious as we look at Scribus' general design and workflow.

Starting Scribus

By default, Scribus opens in a dialog window with three tabs: New Document, Open Existing Document, and Open Recent. The last two tabs are self-explanatory, but New Document needs some explanation.

In the left pane of the New Document tab, you can choose the template for the document. For most documents, you can use Single Page, which refers, not to the number of pages in the document, but the unit of page design. For books, you probably want Double Sided, and for pamphlets and brochures 3-Fold or 4-Fold. For all of these choices except Single Page, you also need to specify whether the first page of the document is a Left, Middle, or Right Page; usually, it will be a right page (look at the first page of a book, and this observation becomes obvious.

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