[Define Paragraph Styles] Here is a screenshot of all the paragraph styles in my document. You can access the list using Edit>Paragraph Styles... from the menus. Let's create a new style in your document, called 'Body Text'. Click on 'New' in the Paragraph Styles palette, and in the opening dialog box, choose your font, alignment of text, size, line-spacing, and other aspects. The important thing to note here is 'Baseline grid'. A professional feature, this ensures that text across columns align to one another. Try playing with it to see how it works. This kind of precise alignment of elements across a page or a double-spread page is what differentiates professional typography from amateur work.

Please define paragraph styles for all possible styles: headline, sub-head, caption, box story, or whatever. The best way to do this is to create some sample text for each type, and once satisfied, jot down all its typesetting features, and manually create a paragraph style for each.

[Flow Your Text] Right-click the first text frame, on page two. From the pop-up menu, choose 'Get Text...' and hop over to the Text folder in FYug. Select the khajuraho.txt file, and press 'Open'. You will see the text flow into two columns on this page. At the bottom-right of the text frame you'll see a 'X' mark in a box, which means there's more text than can fit in this text frame. Click the first frame to select it, go to the Tools palette, and click on the second-last button with a tool-tip that displays “Link Text Frame.” Click on the text frame on the next page. Voila! Text flows from the text frame on page two, to the text frame on page three. Similarly, add links between frames for each additional page.

[Format To Body Text] You'll notice the text on each page is in some random plain-text formatting. Just rclick on the first text frame of this multi-page story. That's the one on page two. Go to the Properties palette, click on the 'Text' tab, and choose 'Body Text' from the paragraph styles in the drop-down menu next to 'Style'. Note you can even choose a language from the drop-down menu below. As I write this, the developers at Scribus are working towards integrating Indic languages so you can soon have Scribus formatting text in Hindi, Tamil, or other Indian languages.

Create Final Page Layouts

[Make space for Photos and Headline] You've got the general idea of how Scribus creates templates, paragraph styles, and works with text frames and picture frames. Time to design all the feature pages of the cover story. Go to page two. This you can do by clicking on the page icon in the page palette, or at the extreme bottom of your screen, you will see a go forward button, a go back button, and pop-up list in-between where you can choose the page you want to visit.

Click the text frame on page two, and in Properties, in 'XYZ' key-in X-Pos: 65mm, Y-Pos: 201.5, and Height: 48.5mm. The text frame shrinks to the bottom of the page. Note how the text automatically flows to the next page. Link the text frame on page three, to the subsequent text frame on page four, so text flows from page to page.

[Insert Picture] Select the picture frame icon from Tools, just like you did for the cover page. This time, draw a random picture frame on the top of page two. In Properties, give it X-Pos: 20mm, Y-Pos: 35 mm, W: 135mm, H: 100mm. Right-click this picture frame. From the pop-up menu, choose 'Get Picture...'. Go to the images folder inside the FYug folder, select the file 'EnterTitle.jpg' and click 'Open.'

[Resize Picture] In the Properties palette, click on the 'Image' tab, check 'Free Scaling' and then key-in X:0mm, Y:-30mm, X-Scale and Y-Scale at 32% each. This will shift the photograph 30 mm to the left, inside the frame, and then scale it down to 32% for that perfect crop.

[Typeset Headline] Draw a text frame. X-Pos: 20mm, Y-Pos: 142mm, W: 165mm, H: 39mm. In the 'Text' tab, choose Georgia Roman 48 pts on line spacing of 42 pts. You could choose Garamond or Times if you wish. Set kerning to -1.0pts. Then zoom in and manually kern the individual letters until you get a crisp, neatly tucked-in headline.

[Hanging Drop Cap] If you go back to Edit>Paragraph Styles... in the menus, and edit any existing style, you'll note an automatic drop-cap feature available, for your preferred number of lines. But let me show you how to create hanging drop-caps, and you'll also learn how to handle wrap-arounds the Scribus way. Take the 'Draw Shapes' tool, draw a rectangle, at X:59, Y:200, W:19, H:24.3. Fill and stroke this with 'None' in 'Colors' so it does not show. Check 'Text flows around frame' and you'll see the first para of your article flowing around this “empty” space. Next, draw a text frame at X;52, Y: 195, W: 24.5, H: 36. Uncheck 'Flow text around frame' for this. Using either the story-editor or the hand-cursor icon, enter the letter 'D' in this text frame. In Properties, set this to Georgia Roman, 87 point, with leading at 104 points. Fill this with Black. Click on 'Shade' choose 'Other' from the drop-down manu, and type 69%. Your drop-cap is done. Should you want to select the invisible rectangle used for wrapping text, and end up selecting this text frame stacked on top of it, press control+shift click and repeatedly press until you select the correct object in the stack.