[Scribus] type input very slow, CPU at 100%

[Servant]

Using Scribus 1.1.5 Build-ID: 14. February 2004 *-C-T
and am learning it to replace PageMaker, which I've used
for about a decade.  I'm running Slack 9.1, kernel 2.4.23,
a 2.4GHz P4 with 1MB of DDR333.

When typing, the text output is very slow.  If I type the previous
sentence, I'll be finished before the word 'When' is displayed.
CPU usage goes to 100%, the process load is extremely high,
too, and there is major hard-disk activity going on. Now I have
no idea how Scribus is designed, but would it (by any chance)
be trying to save the file to disk at every key-stroke?

Cheers,
Bruce