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3. The Menus

3.1 File Menu

New

Closes any open File and brings up a dialog box in which you can set the dimensions of the new document.

Open

Closes any open file and brings up a file select box in which you can choose a focument do be editied. Scribus can only edit one document at a time, but more than one instance of Scribus can be running, depending on your system's memory availability.

Close

Closes the current document.

Save

Saves the current document to disk .

Save as

Saves the document under a new name.

Get Text/Picture

Changes to Get Text if a text box is selected and allows to you to import pure ascii text.

Changes to Get Picture if an image frame is selected. You can load .png .gif .jpeg .eps and Xpm images .

Save Text

Allows you to export the text of the selected text box to disk as pure ascii text.

Save Page as EPS

Saves the current page as an EPS-File.

Save as PDF

Saves the document as an PDF-File. The current version can save in either PDF version 1.2 (Acrobat 3) or 1.3 (Acrobat 4.x).

Please note there are some limitations with level 3 postscript ouput and certain versions of Ghostscript. This limitation is mostly related to alpha transparency and layers in images. This is not a bug within Scribus per se, but a limitation within differing levels of support for level 3 postscript with Ghostscript. Versions after 6.51 should have much better support for alpha transparency. Recent testing suggests not having a transparent background to images. White is reccommended instead.

Scribus tries to work around this by limiting the usage of level 3 contsructs in postscript output. You can optionally create a postscript file directly from the print dialog box and separately convert a postscript file to PDF with Ghostscript's ps2pdf and various conversion options. Consult the ghostscript documentation for exact details.

Document Info

Here you can add additional information about the document.

Document Setup

Allows you to change the dimensions of the document. The maximum size of a document is 1000x1000 points or approximately 13.7 inches. Scribus now supports facing pages for cross page images or text. Note to get the standard set of gutter layout for the two pages select two columns before clicking ok.

Print

Prints the document. You can optionally create a postscript file by selecting file as printer.

Quit

Terminates the program.

3.2 Edit Menu

Cut, Copy, Paste

These items work as usual. Users should be aware drag and drop is enable by dragging with the right button, instead of the left. Once remebered, quite usable. To drag something from the scrapbook to the document, use the left button.

Clear

Clears a text box.

Select all

Crtl + A - Selects all text in a textbox.

Colors

Brings up a dialog box where you can edit or create custom colors of the document. The append function is for copying a custom color from one document to the color palette. This will bring up a file open box from which can select the document which has the custom colors. Clicking OK will bring in the custom color into the color palette.

Font

Here you choose which font (s) will be embedded in the Postscript-output for printing.

Preferences

The usual application preferences.

3.3 Style Menu

This menu contains sub-menus for setting different object properties, e.g. Color, Font and so on.

3.4 Item Menu

Modify

Brings up a dialog box in which you can change all properties of an object at once.

Duplicate

Makes a copy of the currently selected item.

Multiple Duplicate

Allows you to copy an item more than once.

Delete

Deletes the selected Item

Send to Back

Put the selected item in the background.

Bring to Front

Brings the selected item in the foreground

Lower

Shifts the selected Item one Layer back.

Raise

Shifts the selected item one layer up.

Distribute/Align...

Opens a dialogbox in which you can select how the selected items art ot be aligned.

Shape

Contains a sub menu with various frame styles

3.5 Page Menu

Insert

Brings up a dialogue box where you can choose how many new pages you want to insert and where.

Delete

Brings up a dialog box where you can choose which pages you want to delete. Note: there will be always one page remaining in the document.

Move

Here you can move and reorder pages around in the document.

Apply Template

Here you can apply a previously created page template size, gutter and other settings. Templates are specific to a document.



3.6 View Menu

Fit in Window

Scales the document in a way that one page fits into the window. You can change the defaults in the preferences dialog box.

50%

Scales to half of the original size

75%

Scales to three quarter of the original size.

Actual Size

Scales to the original size.

200%

Scales to double size

Thumbnails

Scales to 20 % of the original Size

Hide Margins / Show Margins

Hides or shows the Pagemargins.

Hide Images / Show Images

Hides or shows Images in the Document

Show Guides / Hide Guides

Show or hides the guiding Lines

Snap to Guides

Makes the Guide-Lines magnetic.

3.7 Tools Menu

Hide Tools / Show Tools

Hides or shows the Toolbox. The tool bar can also be move by dragging to the left or right side of the screen and will be vertically oriented.

Hide Measurements / Show Measurements

Hides or shows the measurements palette.

Hide Colors / Show Colors

Hides or shows the Color-Palette. Note as of version 0.5 the color palette will have dynamic or static sliders for BRG and CMYK colors.

Hides Outline / Show Outline

Hides or shows the Outline-Palette. This Palette can be very useful to select small Items or when you have a complex page with many items layered.

Hides Style / Show Styles

Shows or hide the paragraph styles included with the document. This is useful for formating text with preferred font, size, color and justifcation.

Hide / Show Scrapbook

The scrapbook is a useful palette, which can store often reused components, like logos, repeated text blocks. The scrapbook is stored as a .scs file and should be copied with the working document if moved of backed up. You can have multiple scrapbooks, as well as one which is common to all documents.

3.8 Extras

Manage Pictures

Pictures - shows the link status of each image. If the picture is missing in the status box you can search and locate the correct image file.

3.9 Help

About Scribus

Displays version info about Scribus.

About Qt

Displays some versioning information about the Qt libraries. Scribus currently needs to have a version greater than 2.2.2 or less than 3.0. You should check to make sure not only the run time libraries, but that also the qt-devel is installed. Note : Testing on Qt 3.0 should be completed in the next couple of development versions.

Tool-Tips

Allows you to switch Tool-Tips on or off.


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