[Scribus] 1.1.2

[Gregory Pittman]

Well, after spending the day trying an "upgrade" of RH9 to clear up the 
mess affecting not only Scribus but a whole lot of other programs, I 
ended up doing a whole reinstall of RH9, then getting updates, then 
compiling v. 1.1.2 -- WOW!  Now I can see what it's supposed to look 
like.  Really works well, even though I don't have the absolute latest 
Qt (3.1.1-6), but I will probably get 3.1.2 and recompile.

All the units/values problems are gone, everything much smoother.  There 
is still the issue of having to manually change line spacing when you 
change font size; also all the lines have to have the same line spacing 
even when you mix up fonts and sizes -- I think the spacing should be 
automatic (by % according to font size) with the ability to manually 
adjust.  All sorts of ad layouts (for example) mix up typefaces, sizes 
and line spacing, so I think it's something a good DTP program must have.

I've just started reading Eric Raymond's new book, "The Art of Unix 
Programming", and one thing that occurs to me as he talks about good or 
elegant programs is that Scribus's user interface is too complicated: 
too many menu items, too many different ways to do the same thing.  
Here's an example: there doesn't really seem to be a need to have two 
separate buttons on the toolbar for text boxes and picture boxes, 
especially when a right click in the box allows you to switch the type 
of the box anyway.

It seems there should be some arbitrary goal set to reduce the number of 
buttons and menu choices by 1/3 to 1/2 while maintaining all the 
functionality -- I think it's doable.

Greg Pittman
Louisville