[Scribus] Ideas on collaboration [was: How do you guys share scribus files for collaboration?

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Alex,

> I would like to second Craig's position on Unicode vs markup. I've run into an
> issue with a multitude of special hyphens and spaces defined in the Unicode
> standard already while working on the new file format. I will defend to the
> last breath the current consensus position that it is more efficient to use
> Unicode instead of inventing elements for all the special formatting cases or
> reusing those from other markup systems. OOWriter importer is the tool for the
> job here.
> 
> Alex

I don't think Unicode and markup are mutually exclusive. Working with 
Unicode lets you define markup sets for any given purpose as soon as 
character styles are available.

IMHO, it is quite reasonable to let markup sets be defined by the 
publisher and instruct the authors on their use. For instance, an 
English native speaker will easily understand <em></em> tags as 
"emphasise", but for a German native speaker <bet></bet> would be more 
intuitive. As Craig pointed out, all it takes is a working Get Text 
plugin. This would provide users all over the world with a maximum of 
flexibility.

Another advantage is that you don't have to run different file formats 
through OOo (including all uncertainties) before using them in scribus.

Christoph