[Scribus] XML format used in Scribus

[Gregory Pittman]

Marvin Dickens wrote:

>Question:
>
>Is the XML format used in version 1.3 stable or will it change/evolve more 
>before version 1.4 is released? Also, what is the possibility it will 
>change/evolve again as development versions 1.5/1.6 progresses?
>
>The reason I am asking is that we want the ability to massage Scribus 
>Documents in their native XML format and I do not want to reinvent the 
>wheel with every new release.
>  
>
I think it's been pretty clearly stated that so far, the formatting of 
1.3 files is unstable, thus the admonition to not use 1.3cvs for 
production work.
The last I checked, the original XML-like formatting of Scribus was not 
considered "well-formed", at least by Perl XML parsing modules.  The 
problem there largely seemed to be the use of Ctrl-E as a 
newline-equivalent in the files (when I got rid of the Ctrl-E, they 
parsed).  XML parsing presumably stumbles on Ctrl-anything.

It seems to me that these "soft" newlines should not be part of the file 
as saved, but simply be internalized in the way that the file is 
ultimately displayed by Scribus.  Once the file is transformed to a 
format in which this is hard-coded (such as PDF) then the point at which 
Scribus made that line break should be codified.

I have to say that I am concerned that, from my assessment of various 
Scribus-list messages, there is no plan envisioned for any capability 
for Scribus versions 1.2x or below to be able to handle >1.3x files; not 
even conversion utilities.  I can understand that there are features of 
1.3x and beyond that do not correspond to prior versions, but the result 
is that at some point anything <1.3x will suddenly be crippled.  One 
then must worry that at some point advanced versions will then not be 
able to load anything <1.3x.

TPFKAG