[Scribus] Crash when opening file

[Peter Linnell]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 20:13, Blazej wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We have just started to work on our first Scribus project. And we already have 
> a problem. Actually, it was my wife who had the problem so I don't know the 
> exact details of how this happened. She says she successfully created a 
> document (2 pages - a brochure) with a few text boxes and a few images. It 
> saved OK, everything seemed fine so far. Then she made some changes to it, 
> overwrote the original and started to have weird crashes. When I came from 
> work, Scribus would not open any of the two files she has created. A signal 
> 11 exception was happening.
> 
> I restarted the machine - no good. Then I edited the files in a text editor - 
> from all ITEXT tags removed the contents of the CH attribute. Now the file 
> opens fine but of course the text is gone.
> 
> BTW, we're using version 1.1.4.
> 
> Any suggestions? We really need this to work ASAP but we're hesitating - what 
> if we have the document ready and then suddenly Scribus stops opening it?
> Maybe we should go back to the latest stable release?
> 
<snip>

I think it is the strong sense of the team and many users here will
agree, the 1.1.x series, especially from 1.1.2 on has many stability
improvements. Since the first 1.1.5 version, I have run the daily cvs
without a single crash throughout a whole day. Testing sometimes dozens
of files in a day. 

We have to say that without having files and exact description, it is
difficult to discover what the cause is. The team does hit Scribus
pretty hard with day-to-day usage so we do catch a lot ourselves. Your
issue might actually be fixed in 1.1.5cvs, we need the file to confirm
this.

Recently, Craig Bradney announced the bugtracker
(http://bugs.scribus.net) on the list. Those of you who have already
used it will note that there are already a lot of closed bugs there.

We introduced the bug tracker internally but we only released it
publicly recently so we could get a handle on the system and to get
things documented. Plus, we wanted to get the big things knocked on the
head fairly quickly. Reading through the change log from 1.1.0 to
1.1.5cvs you will see many many new features, but also many Fixed or
Improved or Removed crash type entries.

One large advantage of the text based sla file is just the point you
have made, in that it can be edited outside the program. This can be
very useful for tracking down issues and even repairing the documents.
Its current form may seem a little obscure in places to some people, but
as noted, the format will be improved in the future.

A note regarding the near future development. After 1.1.5, we begin our
road to 1.2. This will include a decent amount of time based on
stabilisation - probably even more than 1.0. We are even working on
automating stress tests to 

I think we can say that most bugs we find we (mostly Franz!) do knock on
the head pretty quickly, but the road to 1.2 will give us ample time to
release a fully polished and thoroughly tested stable version.  (This
certainly won't be a time for sitting still, we can assure you)

You shouldn't have anything to fear for instability in Scribus, nor of
our commitment to keeping adding necessary features. 

We are always ready to help out with an issue with a document, so please
dont hesitate to ask for it, here or on IRC.

When filing bugs, you can include a file as an attachment. All of us
keep a close eye on the bug tracker, sometimes several times a day. 

Regards,
Peter