The Story Editor
From Scribus Documentation Project
Contents |
Introduction
Let's jump ahead a bit just to show you an inkling of where this section is going. We will show how to get there and beyond later.
To the right is the Story Editor, as we learned in Working With TextENDNOTE opened by creating or selecting an existing text frame, then using the context menu > Edit Text..., clicking the Story Editor icon on the toolbar, choosing Edit > Edit Text... from the main menu, or keyboard Ctrl+Y.
Below our picture of the Story Editor is another one showing what we see after we save our work and go back to our document. The top paragraph shows what happens if we just begin entering text – we use the default style parameters, called “No Style” in the Story Editor and various buttons within Scribus, such as in the Text tab of the Properties Palette. What we have done subsequently is to create two styles, “Example1” and “Example2”, as described in the text body for each. Finally, in the last paragraph we started with “No Style”, then highlighted the paragraph (by dragging the cursor over the text) then manually changed parameters here in this Story Editor dialog. This screenshot shows these manually set parameters – we know they are for this paragraph since the cursor is in this paragraph – see the middle of the word "text".
As you can see, in the Story Editor there is little to reflect the actual appearance of the text – in this example only centering is seen – so we must rely on the small box to the left to see which style has been applied, and in addition, many parameters are shown in the various buttons and spinboxes at the top – move the cursor to the paragraph you wish to view these settings.
Story Editor – From Menu to Styles
The Story Editor dialog is complex, so here we will describe its contents in something of a north to south direction.
Menu
File
- New clears all text from Story Editor. If you have any text, it will ask to confirm. This and other changes do not apply to the text frame until you save and exit or update the frame.
- Reload from File will only apply after you have made edits that you have not saved to the frame, and in essence will undo those edits in the Story Editor.
- Save to File... allows you to save your text to a file. An appropriate dialog will open. Note that the text will be saved without formatting.
- Load from File... loads text from a file. This does not do any formatting, so this is not the same as importing formatted files via context menu > Get Text.
- Save Document allows you to save the entire document while still in the Story Editor.
- Update Text Frame and Exit and Exit Without Updating Text Frame are self-explanatory, apply to exiting the Story Editor, not the document.
Edit
- Select All selects (highlights) all text in the frame. One can partially select by using the mouse or holding down Shift and using movement keys: arrows, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn.
- Cut, Copy apply to highlighted text.
- Paste applies text previously cut or copied.
- Clear applies to highlighted text, not the entire contents.
- Search/Replace... applies not only to the text, but also many of its features, and styles. See the section about the Search and Replace diaolog.
- Edit Styles... allows editing styles and creating new ones as described in the previous chapter.
- Fonts Preview will give you a visual appearance of the fonts in your system which Scribus is aware of. If you have any highlighted text, you can apply your chosen font with the “Set” button at the bottom.
- Update Text Frame updates the text frame in the document from the Story Editor without closing it.
Insert
- Inserting special characters is covered in detail in the chapter about Special Characters.ENDNOTE
Settings
- Background opens a dialog to choose to your heart's desire the background color of the display in the Story Editor. This does not affect the background color of your text frame.
- Display Font, similar to Background only affects the display in the Story Editor. Do notice that you can choose to show Strikeout and Underline when these font features are selected in the Story Editor font effect buttons.
- Smart Text Selection shows it is selected by a checkbox being filled. The default behavior (unchecked) will highlight a word which is double-clicked, and also following spaces and Tabs up to the next printable character or end of the line. With smart text selected, a double-clicked word highlights only the characters of the word, no preceding or following spaces. Triple-clicking behaves the same with either setting – an entire line is highlighted, but note this is display-dependent. A line's limits depend on the size of the Story Editor dialog, and represents only the length of the line in the current dialog size.
Now we'll move down to the icons:
These icons simply are shortcuts to selected operations from the menu, from left to right:
- Clear Text from Frame – same as New above
- Load from File
- Save to File
- Update Text Frame and Exit
- Exit Without Updating Text Frame
- Reload Text from Frame
- Update Text Frame - without exiting
- Search/Replace
Next we see a button and 3 spinboxes:
Click the button to the left to choose your font. To its immediate right the unlabeled spinbox selects font size, the middle spinbox adjusts width in percentage of the standard font size, and the right spinbox height, again as percentage.
Here we have choices for justification, and styles:
The icons are self-explanatory:
- Left justification
- Center justification
- Right justification
- Full justification
- Enforced full justification - even short lines will be fully justified
The “Style” button merely allows applying an existing style. It is not a means to editing styles.
The next row of buttons have labels (and tooltips) that should help remembering their purposes:
From left to right:
- Underline – This will underline text and all intervening spaces. Click to select, click and hold to bring up a small dialog for adjusting line thickness and distance from text.
- Underline Words Only – Underlines words only. Spaces are not underlined. This also has the click and hold option for the same purpose.
- Subscript – Various subscript parameters are set in File > Document Setup.
- Superscript – Again, parameters are set in File > Document Setup.
- Caps – All letters will be capitalized.
- Small Caps – Uppercase letters are large caps, lowercase letters are small caps.
- Strikethrough – Click and hold for adjustments of line width, position. You will need to experiment to understand the settings.
- Outline – Click and hold to set line width as a percentage.
- Shadow – Click and hold to select X and Y displacement – again as percentages. The shadow color will be the same as outline if both are used. Shadows in Scribus are simply a duplication of the letter "behind" it, with a monochrome color, and sharp edge. Opacity can be set.
- Kerning (spinbox) is a bit out of place here, but allows for adjusting the distance between characters, and can be applied to one or many at a time.
Lastly, there are two sets of color adustments, each operating in an identical fashion.
- The left sets the line color, applied to outline and shadow. If neither of these effect buttons is selected, the button will be inactive as you see here.
- The right sets the fill color of the font, its main color. Click the button to choose the color, then click and hold the percentage to be able to choose shading (saturation) from a list or set your own (Other...). This brings up a dialog to enter a number from 0 to 100. Numbers less than 0 become 0%, greater than 100 become 100%.
Text Entry and Using Styles
One can certainly use the Story Editor without either making or using styles, in which case to the left you will see the label “No Style” for each paragraph entered. How is a paragraph defined? Simply put, a paragraph begins either with the beginning of the block of text or a press of the Return key, and ends with the next Return key press or the end of the entire text block. So each time the Return key is pressed a new label is created, the previous style carried over to the next paragraph.
Check the font and other features set, as indicated above, change any you wish, and begin typing or load your text from a file. If you wish to continue entering text with a different font or other features, make any desired changes in settings, then continue typing – changes made apply only to newly entered text. In order to change settings for previously entered text, highlight it by holding down Shift and using arrows or other movement keys, or use the mouse to select. Changes to settings will modify only the highlighted text. Use either of the Update methods (with or without exiting) to save any changes to your text frame.
If you do use styles, they are very easy to apply or change in the Story Editor. Click on No Style or whatever the current style is to the left of the text area.
Otherwise, you can click Edit > Paragraph Styles... to bring up the styles dialog, taking us to the process explained in the Working With StylesENDNOTE chapter for creating and editing styles.
This opens a small dialog, the top of which is a button – click the arrow and you get a list of style choices if any exist. Click on your choice, and that style is applied to that entire paragraph. Remember it will not be applied to the actual text frame until you update.
To apply a single style to the whole text, use Edit > Select All or use Ctrl+A on the keyboard. Then select a style from the drop down list in the Toolbar of the Story Editor.


