Text frames in Scribus

Error al deserializar el cuerpo del mensaje de respuesta para la operación 'Translate'. Se superó la cuota de longitud del contenido de cadena (8192) al leer los datos XML. Esta cuota se puede aumentar cambiando la propiedad MaxStringContentLength en el objeto XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas que se usa para crear el lector XML. Línea 1, posición 9001.
Error al deserializar el cuerpo del mensaje de respuesta para la operación 'Translate'. Se superó la cuota de longitud del contenido de cadena (8192) al leer los datos XML. Esta cuota se puede aumentar cambiando la propiedad MaxStringContentLength en el objeto XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas que se usa para crear el lector XML. Línea 1, posición 9212.

As a layout program, Scribus puts objects in frames so that they can be manipulated more easily. Images, drawing primitives, tables -- if it is content, Scribus puts it in a color-coded frame, with eight handles so that you can position it by dragging it around. But of all its frames, the most important -- and probably the most customizable -- is the text frame.

A text frame is just what it sounds like: a container for text-based content. Often, it can be treated like any other object, especially when you are placing it on the page or adding basic formatting. However, how you put text into text frames and format it, and how you connect frames so that text flows from one to the other -- all these are peculiar to text frames alone, and require special attention.

Adding a text frame is much the same as adding any other sort of frame in Scribus If a text frame covers the entire page, you can use the margins as guidelines. However, before you add smaller text frames, I suggest that you select View -> Show Grid so that you can position them more precisely. You may also want to zoom in.

In a complex document, another option you might want to choose is to create a separate layer for text. That way, you can focus on text layout by making the other layers temporarily invisible -- or, alternatively, focus on other objects by making the text layer invisible. You can add the text layer by selecting Windows -> Layers and clicking the button in the floating dialog window that opens to create and name the layer. Making a layer invisible is as simple as un-selecting the column with the eye in the header in the dialogue window.

When you are ready, select Insert -> Text Frame, or the same function on the tool bar. Better yet, simply press the T key -- one of the joys of Scribus is that, because you don't enter text directly, its major key commands are wonderfully simple. The cursor changes to show a small icon with a drop capital A and lines of unreadable text, and all you need to do is drag with the cursor to create the frame. You are left with a red outline, with eight square handles that you can drag to adjust the size and shape of the frame. If you are satisfied with the positioning, click anywhere else in the Scribus window, and the frame is de-selected.

Often, a simple text frame positioned properly is all that you need. However, if you right-click the selected frame and select Properties from the context menu, you open up more possibilities.

A Scribus Text Frame and Its Properties Dialog

To start with, if you really want precision placement of the text frame, you can set its X and Y axis in the Geometry pane of the Properties dialog, or its width and height. If you are using the default measurement of points -- one seventy-second of an inch -- that should give you enough precision for any purpose.

After the frame is positioned, you can move on to other characteristics. While still in the Geometry pane, you can rotate the text frame, for instance.

From there, you might want to select Shape from the tabs at the bottom of the dialog. Contrary to what you might expect, the Shape options set how text in frames below the current one (if there are any) flows around the select frame. Text in lower frames can also be set to flow around the frame, either in a rectangle (a "bounding box") or in a contour line that follows the shape of the frame. Alternatively, you can select Edit Shape to manipulate the contour line independently of the shape.

At the top of the Shape tab, you can change the shape of the frame, using either one of the pre-defined shapes, or else editing the exact shape in a separate dialog. In the Distance from Text pane, you can set the number of columns within the frame, as well as each column's distance from each of the frame.

Switching to the Color Properties tab, you can set the background for the frame -- either a single color, or a gradient, and the line color for the border of the frame. Once the line color is set, you can adjust the border on the Line Properties tab.

Whatever pane you are on, the Properties dialog also has options for raising or lowering the current layer, flipping the contents of a frame vertically or horizontally, and for locking and unlocking the object or its size, or the ability to export an object.

In a long and complex document, you should also consider renaming a text frame from its default name -- "Text" followed by a number. A more meaningful name, such as "Obama callout" might help you to navigate more efficiently

When the frame itself is customized, you can add text by right-clicking and selecting either Get Text to insert a text file directly, or Edit Text to open Scribus' Story Editor.

The Scribus Story Editor

Since Scribus is about layout, not content, most of your editing should occur in the Story Editor, which is the only dialog set up for manipulating bodies of text. You can use the Story Editor to write new text, or to open existing text files, as well as format text, either manually or using styles.

When you are finished editing the text, select File -> Update Text Frame and Exit to export the contents of Story Editor to the current text frame. If you see only Greeking -- lines where text should be -- you have used a typeface that Scribus cannot display. In this case, reopen Story Editor and change the font.

Once text is in the frame, you can edit all the text or selected portions by selecting the Text pane in the Properties dialog. However, if your editing is extensive, then the word processor-like setting of the Story Editor is likely to be a better environment for most users.

As a final step in adding frames and text, select Extras -> Hyphenate Text. This extra step will usually make the text fit more neatly into the frame and the options you have set. The main times that you might want to avoid hyphenation is when you are using multiple columns, and the shortness of the lines means that you have too many consecutive hyphens -- in which case, you might want to reduce the font size and try hyphenation again.

Whenever you add text to a frame, look for a small X in the lower right corner of the frame. If one is there, then there is more text than can fit into the frame, given the size of the frame and the formatting you have chosen. This problem should be corrected before you print or export to PDF.

One option, of course, is to change the formatting, choosing a smaller type size or perhaps adding another column or two to the text frame.

Another option is to change the size of the frame, either manually, or on the Shape pane of the Properties dialog, where clicking the Edit Shape button opens up another dialog. From this second option, you can select the button Enlarge the size of the path by the chosen value, which will increase the size of the frame by the percentage you set each time that you click it.

You may also choose to have the text flow into another frame, either on the same page, or a different one. To connect frames in this way, select the frame with the overflow text, then click the frame that you want the text to flow into.

You can see that a frame is linked by right-clicking and selecting Info. Unfortunately, however, all you see is that the frame contains Linked Text -- not which frame is used first, or which the text flows into. Because of this lack, when linking frames, you might want to change the names of each frame; for example, the second frame might be labeled TextOverflowfromScribusArticle.

Besides formatting and positioning, frames can be manipulated in other ways from their context window. Selecting Contents -> Clear, for example, is faster than trying to delete text manually. You can also cut, copy, or delete an entire frame, text and all from the context menu.

In addition, if you are planning to export to PDF, you can use the context menu to designate the contents of a frame as a PDF bookmark or annotation. Similarly, within Scribus, you can move a frame and its contents to the Scrapbook, or Convert it to a shape primitive.

These are only the main ways that you might want to use text frames in Scribus. However, once you can manipulate text frames with some expertise, you will have taken the first step towards being productive in Scribus.


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Observation: Cloud computing is nothing new

Cloud computing is not only the latest buzz word, it is well possible model of computing, also the 21st century. However, it is easy to forget even a relatively new approach is personal computing in which each user has a stand-alone system that can operate network.

The first practical computer from huge Giants consisting of clicking relays and vacuum tubes. Much of that early development of this multimedia mark had Monster efforts been spurred on by the Allied code breaking during the second WELTKRIEGS. For the first thirty years of history of the general purpose computer was the exclusive privilege of computer time, large institutions and Governments.

One of the first breakthroughs in lower costs for computer access was the concept of a time-sharing system. In such a system, multiple operators can access resources on the computer through the use of remote terminals. Here, in the form of early teletype terminals, and later, video terminals we see the emergence of a network topology where computing horsepower in a central computer of the user is located.

It was the epoch of the mainframe and the dumb terminal. Usually ability would be missing these dumb terminals storage or calculation, as they were simply a display with a keyboard. From the 1970s (usually issued, wearing shorts when books I've seen are correct), an operator shielded terminal would sit before a yellow or green grateful that he no longer needed to wait in line to hand in a box carefully arranged punch cards.

Fast forward to the late 70's and a new paradigm was beginning to win. If you, the Pirates of Silicon film seen Valley, a dramatization of the early years of Apple computers, you can remember a scene in which the young Steve Wozniak is forced to show his prototype PC to his employer, Hewlett Packard. In the scene that I about Steve speak fears that his idea he takes his bosses. The Exchange goes something like:

HP exec
Steve it is Steve isn't it?

Steve Wozniak
(NODS)

HP exec
Steve, you say that this... Gadget... you is for ordinary people. What would want on Earth the ordinary people with computers?

(long pause)

The idea is to the debate has been was a personal computer, i.e. a stand-alone computers on which an electrical power supply needs to function. Singular to computers that do not need a larger computers are connected to run went on the popular face of computing for the rest of the twentieth century to be.

Since its inception, suffered a minor the personal computer, organized attack by companies, which had begun calling Terminal thin clients. These companies such as Oracle and Sun, met limited success in the course of the 1990s. However, sometimes a good technological idea comes, but suffers, because it arrived at the wrong time. Consider, for example, Apple's first attempt at a hand held the ARM powered computer, Newton equipped touch screen. People blame Apple simply existing ideas in the form of the iPad repackaging, but were kept pioneers in hand computing 15 years ago.

The latest incarnation of the general idea of separation of memory and computing power of the user's access point is called cloud computing. Cloud computing probably to a certain extent will be successful because it benefits there are natural power of the most powerful but mundane: evolution. The computing environment has changed and people have decided that want computing has to offer cloud you. What's more, you are ready, some of the benefits of true giving up personal computers to get it. It will take a while, but already, people are starting to realize the benefits of cloud style solution like Google mail and Google Docs.

So take my advice: in a few years when a young, hip child tells you about the new idea in computing, self catering computers with local memory and computing power have, try, surprised look.

______________________

Writer Michael Reed free http://www.unmusic.co.uk/ technology, retro computing, geek culture and gender politics writes headquartered in the UK. His byline has appeared in several technology publications.


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The High Road to HPC Tools: Lunch with Intel's James Reinders

 

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for this link. ]

"As we are now officially in the holiday season and done with SC10, I can only think of one thing. Next year?s SC11 in Seattle. Just kidding. I?m still digesting SC10 and still surprised we are heading back to Seattle next year. My understanding is that SC tries to rotate east coast then west coast every other year. Let?s see, SC10-New Orleans, SC09-Portland, SC08-Austin, SC07-Reno, SC06-Tampa, SC05-Seattle. I see a little bias for the left side of the Mississippi river. Except for Tampa, the last time it was even near the east coast and the northeast corridor was SC04 in Pittsburgh. And, now we loop back to Seattle next year. I?m not even going to guess who Microsoft will foist on us for the keynote.

"Back to New Orleans. On Monday of SC10, before all the hoopla began, I managed to have lunch with James Reinders of Intel. James title is ?Director, Evangelist, Intel Software.? He also has written quite a lot about parallel computing and blogs about many of the major software advances coming out of Intel. Each year I check in to see what is new and interesting."

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Tips for Securely Using Temporary Files in Linux Scripts

 

Tips for Securely Using Temporary Files in Linux Scripts
Dec 6, 2010, 23 :02 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (718 reads)
(Other stories by Jamie Adams)

[ Thanks to Jamie Adams for this link. ]

"Over the years, I've written hundreds, if not thousands, of shell scripts. With the ease at which you can redirect input and output within a shell script, many sysadmins store data in temporary files for processing purposes. In some situations scripts become essential to the day-to-day operations of a system and as such, may end up running on a regular basis via crontab ? never to be looked at again.

"Unfortunately, some sysadmins who write scripts might store sensitive data in temporary files, don't restrict access to temporary files, and might forget to remove them from the system when they are no longer needed. In many cases, they use them when it isn't even necessary. The beauty of Linux and UNIX is that there are hundreds of ways to accomplish the same task. I will keep my Bash examples simple so you can focus on grasping the general concepts."

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The state of MySQL forks: co-operating without co-operating

 

The state of MySQL forks: co-operating without co-operating
Dec 6, 2010, 22 :02 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (622 reads)

"Giuseppe "The Data Charmer" Maxia recently posted his take on the MySQL forks. I had been pondering whether to do the same, and seeing that what I planned to write will nicely complement Giuseppe's article, I was inspired to follow him into the same topic. Note that last Spring I created a Map of MySQL forks in preparation for Monty's keynote at the MySQL user conference. So let's see how things have evolved. I'll look into MySQL ecosystem as a whole and the forks separately.

"The post is long, but the key takeaway is that despite the challenges, the combined development seen in the MySQL ecosystem is probably stronger than ever, the current situation is hard for an outsider to grasp but manageable, and if a few more obstacles can be overcome, we are looking into a very bright future indeed. There are more than 100 engineers (how much more?) working full time on the mysql code base (including both developers, QA, build engineers...). This development effort is an order of magnitude higher than other open source databases I'm aware of, in particular PostgreSQL and Drizzle. Often the open source project with most momentum and mass will come out as the winner, no matter what challenges it may seemingly be facing, and this is the case with MySQL too. Oracle's MySQL"

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