Advanced Drop Caps: Difference between revisions
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<span style="font-size: | <span style="font-size: 200%; font-family: serif; vertical-align: baseline">D</span>rop caps are the first letter of a paragraph, typically displayed bigger than the rest of the text. In old books, they are often colorful and artistic paintings. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initials Wikipedia] for some nice examples. | ||
Scribus has a built-in function to achieve this effect: in ''Edit > Paragraph Styles'', the option "Drop Caps" creates a big letter at the beginning of a text: | Scribus has a built-in function to achieve this effect: in ''Edit > Paragraph Styles'', the option "Drop Caps" creates a big letter at the beginning of a text: |
Revision as of 00:48, 15 August 2007
Installation • Usage • PDF issues • Other |
Drop caps are the first letter of a paragraph, typically displayed bigger than the rest of the text. In old books, they are often colorful and artistic paintings. See Wikipedia for some nice examples.
Scribus has a built-in function to achieve this effect: in Edit > Paragraph Styles, the option "Drop Caps" creates a big letter at the beginning of a text:
The following method is a bit more flexible and allows some more effects:
- Create a text frame and load your text. Adjust the font, size etc. as they fit your needs.
- Delete the first letter of your text.
- Create a new text frame (we call this frame "initial") and type the letter you have deleted in the other frame.
- Set the size of text frame "initial" to a high value. Remember,it just contains one letter!
- Change the text frame "initial" with "Item > Convert to" into outlines. If necessary, the drop cap's size can now be changed like a graphic
- In the properties dialog, on the "Shape" tab, enable "Text Flows Around Frame" and then "Use Bounding Box" on the "initial" frame.
- Now just move the initial frame in a way, that its position is in the upper left corner of the original textframe. The text in the frame will flow around it.
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The standard version. The text is set in Linux Libertine, 12 pt. The drop cap uses the same font, but the size is 50 pt. |
A second drop cap behind the first one. After some colour changes we have a shadow. | ![]() |
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With this technique, a "shadow" can be of a different size, even a different font. This example uses a third empty frame to control the text flow around this complex drop cap. |
Filled with a colour gradient | ![]() |
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Last, but not least: the outlines can be converted to an image frame. See also How to fill a Scribus text with an image |
(c) Thomas Zastrow, 2007 The content of this page is licenced under the Free Documentation Licence.