[Scribus] Mac OS port

[Craig Bradney]

On Saturday 05 March 2005 16:13, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> Please sign me up for the porting/testing effort for the native Aqua
> Scribus. I spent months last year trying to get it to build. Alas, I
> don't know C++ at all, and always had to stop when I ran into the
> screenpaint/X11 calls: just didn't know how to work around them.

Lets see what the answer is on how the X11 calls were replaced. Right now, 
tbh, I'm a little skeptical (but very happy to see a working result).

> It may not be possible to have the ideal binary distribution, which is a
> ~ standalone, drag-and-drop app bundle. One can do that if you compile Qt
> to be statically linked, rather than dynamically linked. However, I know
> Scribus has other external dependencies as well. Still, if Scribus can
> be built against a static Qt, then it should be simple to isolate the
> other external dependencies (libtif? etc.) into a Mac pkg installer. A
> standard Mac user in Scribus' target market (publishing, graphics) isn't
> going to want to install all of Qt just to run Scribus, even if you
> provide a binary installer (I maintain PyQt for the Mac with a binary
> installer, so I have some insight here).
>
> The example of Gimp.app (a Mac app bundle of Gimp 2.2.x) is instructive
> here: it's become wildly popular in terms of downloads because it wraps
> all the Gimp binaries and GTK libraries into a single app bundle. Its
> only external dependency is Apple's X11 environment.

Scribus 1.3/1.4 will not be dependent on X11 for drawing or for font 
discovery. It already has fontconfig there now and hopefully cairo gets fast 
enough that we can drop libart.


> One area where we'd have to tread carefully is if the Scribus build
> links to Fink libraries. That complicates matters, for several reasons.
> One, the goal should be to make Scribus as standalone/isolated as
> possible; I don't think that requiring a separate installation of Fink
> should be part of this. Also, the Fink leaders are serious about
> enforcing GPL on their packages: I was warned last year when I asked
> about making an X11 app bundle of Scribus that I'd have to carefully
> document all my steps, make all my source code available, etc. I decided
> all that was too complex for me to undertake by myself. If Fink winds up
> being part of this equation, then I just want to highlight the due
> diligence that would need to be taken.  Perhaps Martin can provide
> advice on this front.
>
> Another question: where should this project be hosted? My little
> AquaScribus app launcher is available from the Scribus site, as well as
> from my own server, but it's a very small download. Depending on the
> libraries, a Mac pkg installer of Scribus could be 20-50 megabytes to
> download. Can the Scribus servers in the UK handle this, or should a
> Sourceforge project be set up for the back end?

The scribus.info server (cvs, bugs, wiki, docs) is hosted at an ISP for free, 
N at work in Germany and on anduin.net servers (quick plug). We have NO limits 
there. The www.scribus.net server in the UK at Salford uni (quick plug) has 
similar restrictions, ie none we know of really.

> I'm incredibly excited about this: I've been wanting to ditch my
> Microsoft/Adobe toolchain in my publishing business (I publish about 50
> poetry books per year via POD) for some time, but Scribus hasn't been
> quite mature enough for my needs. (I have used it successfully with
> cover design only, so I know that Scribus can handle commercial work,
> but those covers were more work than a comparable version in InDesign
> would be.) With 1.2.1 supporting styled text import, it looks like
> Scribus may have crossed that threshold. And with NeoOffice J running
> natively on the Mac, that and Scribus.app would allow me to ditch X11
> for everything except Gimp.
>
> So, just let me know what I need to do! I can't wait!

Although I dont have a Mac (happy to have a donation :) ), I'm eager for a 
native Mac version (based on standard *nix libs like libtiff etc, without 
X11) too.

Craig
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