Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
By the end of this series of Scribus tutorials you'll be able to create a full- fledged publication. Whether it be a color booklet or a black and white newsletter, the basics are the same. So first we need to learn those basics! As I write this, the latest version in the Ubuntu repositories is 1.3.3.8 and is named scribus-ng, that is exactly what I'll be using in these tutorials.
Here we either start a new document or open a previous one. In this first part of the series we'll just be playing around with the most widely used options so we have no need (yet!) to be picky here, just keep the defaults by clicking OK This is our blank page, ready to be edited. The red outline is the very edge of the page. Anything outside that red border will not be printed. The blue lines warn you that should you put anything outside the blue lines (ie: between the blue lines and the red outline) you run the risk of it either being chopped off at the printers or that your printer may not be able to print anything in that area. For now, just think of them as the borders you'd see on a lined A4 writing pad.
So lets get started. First thing you need on a page is some nice header text, so click the Insert Text Frame button :
Your pointer will change to a small page with a cross symbol. What we need to do here is hold down the left mouse button and draw a box where we want the text to go. When you're happy with the size and shape of the box, release the left mouse button.
That's my box drawn out but where's the text?
Double left click inside the text box to add/edit text. Single left click outside the page to stop editing text.
Let's say we want to move the text. Easy, just click on the pointer icon at the top of the screen :
… then, with your pointer over the text box, which will change to a grabbing hand icon, hold down the left button and move the mouse! To release the text, release the mouse button.
But our text is a bit small. We need to open the Properties window to gain access to the text box properties. This will let us alter the size and color of the text. So, go to the Windows menu and click Properties…
This is our Properties window.
Everything is greyed out since we've not selected anything. From here on in, whenever we select something on our page, tabs will be highlighted in the Properties window to let us know we can edit settings here. Let's enlarge the text size and alter its color Highlight the text and single left click on the header text box. You'll see the Properties box spring to life. Click the Text tab in the Properties window.
TIP At any time you can right click on any box and select Properties.
Now we're in business! Let's play around with a few of these options to get you familiar with editing text. First enlarge the text by repeatedly left clicking on the up arrow beside Font Size (or enter a size value if you want). Next, lets center the text within the box. Click the Align Text Center button (same choices as most word processing programs) Looking good! Still a bit plain though, lets put a splash of color in there. Left click Color & Effects, scroll up/down through the colors and left click on the color you like.
So we've got a header, we need actual content text now. So drag out another text box but this time make it half the width of the page and quite tall :
Rather than spend time typing in filler text (assuming you don't have the actual article yet) we can have Scribus fill in text for us. With the text box still selected go to the Insert menu and click Sample Text.
Here we can pick the language of our filler text and number of paragraphs needed. I've just selected Standard Lorem Ipsum (Latin) and ten paragraphs (the default). And click OK. But wait, that's not ten paragraphs! Why was the command ignored? The reason is because the text is actually flowing out the bottom of the text box. If you look closely at the bottom right of the text box, you'll see a small box with an 'X' in it.
This symbol tells us that there is not enough space in the box for all the text. We either need to enlarge it or have it flow into another box, otherwise, it will not be visible.
Drag out a new text box on the right half of the page, again, make it tall. This is where the magic happens. Left click once, on the left column of text, this is where the text is to flow from Now click the “Link Text
Frames” button :.. and single left click on the right text box
Voila! Don't forget to click the Link Text Frames button again to turn it off, otherwise Scribus will think you want to continue linking boxes.
I should mention that the small red squares which show up on the corners of your text boxes are handles, they allow you to resize your text box. Play around with those handles and you'll see your text automatically update itself within the two linked text boxes…
Ok, time to save - and export – your work. From the menu, Select File→ Save as:… and enter a name for the document
To export the document as a PDF… Select File→Export from the menu, then chose “Save as PDF”
The Preflight Verifier Window should pop up. Don't worry, this is the Preflight Verifier window. It checks your document for possible errors before you package it up as a PDF. In this case it's telling me that there's a text overflow on page 1. Fine, thats my ten paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum that doesn't fit into the two text boxes, no problem. Keep an eye on this Preflight Verifier window, it will save you getting a lot of phone calls from printers saying that there are things missing, or wrong, in your PDF! So in this case we click Ignore Errors and continue…
[image 29]
The Save as PDF window has a ton of options that relate to how the PDF file should look and what should be packaged inside the PDF file. We'll get into all that in a later part of this series for now, give your PDF file a name and click Save.
A window may briefly flash up, thats just Scribus converting the page to PDF, later, we'll see how with several pages it can take a few moments longer to convert to PDF. So, let's look at out handy-work so far in a PDF viewer : Beautiful! the screenshot shows the document in Document Viewer, but since it is PDF it will look the same regardless of what viewer you chose.
I hope you enjoyed the first part of the article, “Using Scribus.” In the next part we'll add some images to our little sample page.
Based on the original article by Ronnie Tucker in Issue 1 of Full Circle Magazine