Drop Caps
From Scribus Documentation Project
Drop caps are the first letters of a text which are bigger than the rest. In old books they are often colourful and artistic paintings. Scribus has a built-in function to achieve this effect: In the Edit > Paragraph Styles dialog, the option “Drop Caps” creates a large letter at the bginning of a text. For a detailed description, see the section Working With Styles.ENDNOTE
The methods described below are a little more flexible and allow for some more effects.
- Create a text frame and load your text. Adjust the font, size etc. as you please.
- Delete the first letter of your text.
- Create a new text frame (we call this frame “initial”) and type the letter you have deleted in the other frame.
- Set the size of the text frame “initial” to a high value. Remember, it contains only one letter!
- Change the text frame “initial” via Item > Convert To to Outlines. If necessary, the drop caps's size can be changed like a drawing.
- In the Shape tab of the Properties Palette enable “Text Flows around Frame” and then “Use Bounding Box” on the “initial” frame.
- Now, just move the “initial” frame, so that its position is in the upper left corner of the original text frame. The text in the frame will flow around it:
- The look of the drop cap can be changed in many ways. Here are some examples:
- A second drop cap behind the first one. After some color changes we have a shadow:
- Filled with a gradient:ENDNOTE
- Last, but not least: the outlines can be converted to an image frame.ENDNOTE




