[Scribus] The nature of scribus ".sla" files

[Gregory Pittman]

I was noticing that ".sla" files are quite small compared with PDF 
files, so I decided to look at them, and see that they are a markup type 
of file.

The question I have in that regard is that, as I understand the 
contents, a scribus .sla file is mainly a set of instructions, which 
then uses outside data, such as fonts and images, to create what you see 
on the screen?  Which of course means that sending someone an .sla file 
without the associated images and without knowing that they also have 
the correct fonts would not display properly -- this, I suppose, one of 
the reasons to convert to PDF?

Does scribus crash if it can't find the image files? A rhetorical 
question, since I tried it out and happily report that not only did it 
not crash, the graphics box showed the name of the file it couldn't find 
-- nice.

So, getting back to my original question on a practical level -- let's 
say two people were collaborating on a file, sending it back and forth. 
  If they have the fonts and images, is that all they need in addition 
to the .sla file? Are there (so far) any problems with them having two 
different versions of Scribus (e.g. 1.0 and 1.1.3)?

Greg Pittman