Create a new document
Create a new document
A4, with a value of 0 for all its margins and without
picking either Facing pages, nor automatic text frame.
If the margins are set to 0, then we use the
whole surface of the A4. Thus all objects outside the margins are
excluded from the final document (eps or pdf).
The
Title Page
Create a frame with the
rectangular frame tool 
.
After marking a preliminary rectangle
somewhere on the page, use the measurements menu to position the
frame on the page (X and Y coordinates) and to set the size (W and H)
:
Note that the coordinates are negative, this is
to ensure that the frame covers all of the page, this is known as a
"hidden ditch" in printing.
Note also that the height of the
frame in the menu is 301 mm that is 297 mm (the height of an
A4 page) + 4 mm (2 mm at the top and 2 mm at the bottom which
overhang the edge of the page).
O.K., all that is a bit (too) rigorous, but it shows the precision
with which it is possible to work using Scribus ... one can clearly work
more easily using the mouse, with the move tool to position the
frame, and to change its size (by dragging the top left or bottom right
corner).
Fill the frame with a 50% grey, to do this
select the frame with the edit tool and choose black in the colour
menu, click on the fill box and from the pulldown menu choose
50%.
Then select the frame with a right click ->
modify (or ctrl+M) open the Modify
dialogue box and deselect
the Text flows around box item and for the line properties
choose a width of 1 pt
and a colour of Black 100 % and leave the style as the default of
(solid).
 Shading in grey ... |
And the result |
The title "Scribus" will be drawn in 2 parts, firstly the "S" which will be bigger and in colour, and "cribus" smaller and in black. We do it this way because the 2 texts will be at different heights.
Create a text frame with this tool 
and use this one 
to enter a capital S.
Use the Show measurements
tool to set the size and font. In my example I've used a font called
"Beta dance medium" with a size of 195 pt.
Very Important : select the frame containing the S, with a
right click and Modify (or
ctrl + M) and deselect the Text flows around box, and
in the background colour menu select None then click on
Ok.
 |
Place the frame with the S in the top left of the page on the
grey strip, if you use a different font, you will no doubt have to
change the size of the S so it's neither too big nor too small to
fit in the grey strip. Normally the default text colour is black (configurable in the preferences) |
Creating a new colour
In the Edit menu choose colours, then click on
new to create a new colour.
In the resultant dialogue box enter the
name of the new colour : YellowGold, then Ok
On the next screen use the sliders or enter
the value 51 for magenta and 255 for yellow
which will give the yellow-gold that we want :
Then click
Ok, and save.
In future dialogue boxes, the colour
you have created will be available in the colour selector
menu (tools -> show colours)
Now apply the colour to the S by selecting it with the edit
tool and in the colours menu use the
box containing an A and choose the colour
"YellowGold".
By deselecting the text, you can
commit the changes.
Select the frame containing the
S again, then choose multiple duplicate in the item
menu:
and enter the values from the screen capture
here.
This has created a copy of the frame with the
S which is displaced 1 mm down and to the right of the
original frame and on top of it.
Select the S in the new frame an change its colour to black at
100%. Reselect the new frame with a right
click and use lower to place it under the original, this will put
the black S below the yellow, so it appears as a shadow.
Above are the stages in the creation of
the shadow.
Select both of the
frames with the S (by using the shift key), then
do Item -> Group or
ctrl+G, this will allow the two frames to be moved
together, keeping the displacement that makes the shadow constant.
Enter the word "cribus"
in a new text frame with no background colour, and deselecting the "text
flow around frame" option (in the modify dialogue box)
Use the measurements menu to set the size and
spacing (manual kerning) to give a result like the screen capture. In the
example title I've used the Beta Dance
Medium font, with a size of 98, and a spacing of 39pt.
Add a line 1pt thick
underneath the text, in the same yellow as the S, and the same
length as the text by using the line tool (the icon resembling a
pencil).
Trick : to ensure that the line is
really horizontal, enter the value 0 in the H box of the
measurements tool.
Create an image
frame 26 x 26 pt with this tool 
and position it under the
yellow line and centre it horizontally with respect to the text and the
line.
Select this new frame
and import the image
"gnu-head-sm.jpg" with a
right click -> Get picture (or
ctrl+E)
Because the image was imported at
100% (See the X and Y scales), it is cropped since
the frame is smaller than the image. The solution is to reduce
the scale of the image to fit the frame :
55%
is the value needed to show the whole image. Caution be sure to
enter the same value in X and in
Y.
On the last image you can see that the
chain symbol (to the right of the scale values) is not broken,
this indicates that if you change one value X (say), the Y
will track it.
The option of having different
scale values (as in the second image where the chain is broken) can be
useful when you want to fit an image exactly to a frame with a fixed
size or to produce a distorted effect ...
In an image frame, the hand tool allows the
movement of the image inside the frame.
This is useful for recentring for
example. You can see that for our image of the gnu the X-Pos+ and Y-Pos+
coordinates are set to 0. The 0 here is the left edge for
X and the top for Y.
The + shows that the values
(when they are not 0) and measured relative to the frame containing
the image...
This is where we have got to
...
Create these 2 text strings under the yellow line :
<
font face="Arial,Helvetica">"The Linux DTP magazine" to the left of
the line, with the start of the text aligned with that of the line.
"Number 1 - November 2001" to the
right of the line with its end aligned with that of the line.
Trick : Start with the left hand
text "The Linux...", select the font you want, its size, change
the spacing if necessary. (Font in the example : Gothic L book,
spacing : 0, size : 9)
Select the frame and use the command Item ->
Multiple duplicate (then choose : 1 copy,
horizontal displacement=60 mm and vertical displacement=0)
to make a copy with the same properties (font, size, spacing and
vertical position of the frame).
Now all that remains is to
select then text in the new frame and move it horizontally
only by using the arrow keys to get it correctly right-aligned.
Create another text frame which will contain
the editorial column.
The
size of the frame should be set to : W=44
mm H=213 mm and at position : X=23 mm
Y=76 mm, in the modify dialogue box enter 5 pt for the
text distance (separation between the text and the edge of
the frame), and make the frame colour YellowGold at
10%.
Import the text file edito.txt into the frame.
In the example the font is : Century
Schoolbook Bold Italic, in a size of 9 pt with line spacing
15 and spacing 0.
 |
If, after you have imported and formatted the text, you have a white square (as in the screenshot), that is because not all of the text is shown. You need to adjust one or more of the settings : Size of the frame, size of the font, textdistance ...until it all fits in. |
Create the vertical title "editorial" in a frame of size : H=24
mm W=234 mm in which is entered the text in font Gothic L
Demi Bold Oblique in a size of 21pt and a spacing of 61pt.
The colour is
YellowGold at 100%.
Rotate the text frame by 90° by entering
90 in the rotation box of the measurements menu : 
Put the bottom of the letters
of "editorial" on the left edge of the text frame and centre the text
in height.
... and there it is.
Now let's go on with the
title of the article :"Scribus,
professional page layout under Linux", which has been formatted as
show in the following screenshot (Gothic L demi bold 15 pt) :
Creation of the text columns
Below the title we
shall create 3 text columns according to the following procedure:
Create a text frame with dimensions : W=40
mm H=210 mm and place it at : X=73 mm et
Y=80 mm.
This is an opportunity to use
the Distribute/Align tool:
Make 2 copies of this frame (ctrl+C and
ctrl+V). Place one of the frames at the right of the
page, with the same spacing between the edge of the page and the
right side of the frame as there is between the left side of the
first frame and the right side of the frame with the editorial. The
other frame is placed between these two, the vertical positions
don't really matter.
Select the 3
frames with successive clicks while holding down the shift key.
Then launch the command Item ->
Distribute/Align, enter the settings as in the screenshot and
click OK :
Here is an image showing the effect of this command :
Before ... |
After |
The frames have thus been aligned vertically spread out horizontally.
Note : When several frames are selected, it is possible to move them together using the mouse; but if you use the arrow keys, only the first one that was selected will be moved.
Before importing the text into the frame, we
are going to create the styles that we will use to format the text :
Use the menu item
Edit -> Styles, to bring up the Edit Styles
dialogue box, where you need to click on
new to make a new style:
 |
In the dialogue which appears enter :
The style name : Text
The line spacing :
13 (adjust this according to the font you are going to be
using to get the appearance you want). The alignment :
Block Click OK
Create another style by clicking
new again, with these parameters:
|
The is the Style menu (Tools
-> Show Styles) where you can see the styles we have just defined:
 |
Usage :
To apply the Text style, position the cursor on a line of
text with the
hand/cursor tool and click on Text in the
Style menu:
The whole paragraph containing the line will then be formatted in the style defined by Text: justified text, and line spacing 13.
|
Now import the text by selecting the first of the 3 frames and
doing a right click -> Get text (or
ctrl+E) and choose the file
text.txt.
Hint: Before importing, enter a
word into the frame and apply the font and size that you want, the text
to be imported will inherit that format.
At this stage, the text only appears in the
first frame.
It is necessary to chain the frames together so that the text
can run through all of them:
Select the first frame,
click on the chain tool 
and then click on the second frame. The text will now continue
into it.
Repeat the process between the second and third frames, and format
you text in paragraphs, justification ...
When working with justified text blocks,
note that there is no automatic hyphenation, it has to be done by hand
..., but given the pace of development it shouldn't be long ...
Of course the text won't all fit into the
3 frames, we'll need to make some text frames on the following pages
to continue the formatting..., but first, let's finish the cover
page:
To
complete the text layout, create an image frame the same width as a text
column (40mm) and import the Scribus logo:
scribus_logo.jpg, and adjust the scaling and the frame height so
that the image fits the frame.
Using the image that comes with this tutorial we
have: X et Y scaling
= 27.5%, H=19.70 mm.
To be able to integrate this image frame into the text, it is necessary to enable (if it is not already done, see the default settings in the preferences) the text flow option for this image frame. In this mode the text will flow around the frame in question, on condition that the frame is placed above the text frame.
 |
In this case the Text flows
around frame option on the image frame is enabled,
and the frame is placed above the frame containing the
text. This is what we want. |
 |
Here the image frame is still above the frame with the text but the text flow option is disabled, the image covers the text. |
 |
The text covers the image, this is the
result in two cases: 1- The Text flow option is enabled, but the image frame placed below the text frame. 2- The image frame is placed below the text frame, and the text flow is disabled. (that's doing everything wrong...) |
Repeat the same operations as above with the image from the top of
the Scribus web page, scribus_head.gif, and place one image in the
first column and the other in the third.
And here is the completed cover page:
