[Scribus] Postscript import into Scribus?

[linuxlingam]

On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 18:57, Craig Ringer wrote:
[snip]
> OTOH, I don't see how an importer can be created that can do a
> trustworthy and reliable import of an undocumented binary format like
> Quark's or Microsoft's. The OpenOffice folks have enough trouble with MS
> Word, and it doesn't have to import sub-millimetre perfect positioning
> and complex type adjustments. Importing an ad wrong and not realising is
> even worse than having to re-do the ad, IMHO.
> 
> What might be useful, though, is something that could just import the
> text content from Quark and InDesign documents, producing a set of
> frames in a temporary scrapbook that could be positioned and styled
> appropriately.

[snip]
> 
> I guess in the end, a user changing apps would just have to bite the
> bullet, re-do their templates, and make the jump.
[snip]


couple of things about this thread struck me, and my response to this:

1) scribus should work towards making its fileformat (xml incarnation?)
the de facto industry standard.

2) but scribus is a software, it can't do that. people can do that. so
we need to make the scribus fileformat a standard. let that be used for
inter-oping from one page-layout to another. [i know this is far more
complex, but the journey of a thousand clicks....]

3) it is often far easier to have your legacy archive recreated rather
than imported, into a new app. one-off pages are okay, but whole decades
of it, and that too during a deadline crush...? otoh, no digital archive
is alive beyond 3 to 5 years due to incompatible or no-longer-supported
file versions. i know a *lot* of publishers who are hopping mad who have
books to be redone because pagemaker 3 is not supported today, or corel
ventura disappeared....

this is an interesting challenge, i have no solution, but from the looks
of it, opensource, open fileformats, open standards, open methodologies,
seem to point to the answer. this is where scribus comes in.

:-)
LL