[Scribus] symbolic links

[Gregory Pittman]

Frank Cox wrote:

>On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 00:14:36 -0500, BandiPat <magicpage91 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The sym links are convenient, but I think you should save those for more
>>important work.  
>>    
>>
>
>In my specific situation, I have seven users who work on (currently)
>three weekly publications using Scribus.  Soon to be four
>publications, I'm told.
>
>Through clever use of group permissions and symbolic links, I have
>everything important in several subdirectories of a subdirectory under
>/opt -- the templates for the papers, graphics, commercial ads,
>classified ad databases, and so on.  As I'm (usually) a remote
>sysadmin for this application server, this allows me to simply rsync
>the /opt subdirectory to one of my local machines to provide me with a
>backup of everything that needs to be backed up, as well as a copy of
>the current data to work on as required.  Scribus (and other X
>applications) are painfully slow to use remotely over a 128k uplink
>except in dire circumstances, so I try to do my work locally and just
>blast the data back to the server as needed.
>
>However, /opt over there is not /opt over here; on this box I stash
>that data on a nfs share that's actually located on a fileserver that
>I keep in my basement..
>
>Complicated enough for you?  It may not be exactly according to Hoyle,
>as it were, but it is very convenient.
>
>Having got that out of the way, the situation that got me concerned
>about this symbolic link stuff in the first place is that I use
>Scribus to create png files for a web page using the bargainhunter
>data that's in /mnt/cabinet/home/frankcox/bargainhunter/backup/scribus/regina,
>but I want to put my png files into
>/home/frankcox/bargainhunter/webpage/graphics.cache/regina, which is
>where my script for updating the webpage expects to find the current
>Regina paper.
>
>So I created a symbolic link in /home/frankcox/bargainhunter/webpage
>that points to /mnt/cabinet/home/frankcox/bargainhunter/backup/scribus/regina,
>thinking that I could then simply back up one notch to get to the web
>page after loading the Scribus document and telling it that I want to
>export png files.
>
>Nothin' doin'.  When I select the "export to png" option in Scribus, I
>find that I am in
>/mnt/cabinet/home/frankcox/bargainhunter/backup/scribus/regina and not
>in /home/frankcox/bargainhunter/webpage/regina like I thought I should
>be.  So I have to click and click and click and climb the whole darn
>directory tree again to get back to where I thought I would be in the
>first place after creating that symbolic link.  Multiply that by three
>more papers, weekly.
>
>A simple example:  If create a symbolic link  /home/frankcox/link -->
>/mnt/arcade/home/games, then enter this sequence of commands into
>bash:
>
>cd
>cd link
>cd ..
>
>I find myself in my home directory at the end.  If bash worked the way
>that Scribus appears to, I would find myself in /mnt/arcade/home
>instead, and that seems to defeat the purpose of having symbolic links
>in the first place.
>  
>
I have not made these kinds of complex linking for saving files, but I 
have wished in the past that Scribus saved previous directories.  Some 
programs now have a widget that you can click on to show you a sometimes 
rather extensive list of previous directories you may have either opened 
a file from or saved to.  I too get annoyed with all the clicking to go 
up and down directory trees.

Greg