[Scribus] Announce 1.2.5 Release

[Allen]

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the clear explanation of the why of the change. I didn't see 
John's post as FUD, but rather concern for potential confusion in the 
road to getting more and more people to adopt open source software.

I like to apply what I call the 85 year rule to change. Will the 
benefits be sufficient when placed against the need of the end user to 
learn yet another protocol/methodology? Is is simple enough that my 85 
year old mother, who had a minor stroke a few months ago, can use it?

Alas, truly competent computer experts are few and far between. I know a 
fair bit, but I'm not at the level of the people who code Scribus by a 
long way. However, I can tell you a lot about the way people comprehend 
the user interface and documentation and how end users fail to grasp 
what is obvious to coders. Coding that creates software that most people 
can not grasp or easily use is a waste of effort and gives open source 
software the same black eye that Microsloth has been getting recently 
from end users.

Brief example. There is no documented process to migrate from Outlook 
2002 to Outlook 2003. They changed the file structure, locations and 
naming. It is so bad that Microsloth had to give a freebie to a client 
of mine when it came time to migrate. It probably cost them 6 or 7 hours 
of tier two support to solve the problem only partially. My client is 
now much more willing to look at alternatives, but..., well, when she 
looked at what she'd have to learn and what she'd have to do to 
communicate with with her clients who are still in the Windoze world, 
she passed. She's in her mid fifties and really only wants to do the 
build outs for facilities moves, not spend her time learning computers.

John, I think, and I are sort of between the two worlds so we can see 
both sides to the problem.

Sorry about the length but as a new user of Scribus who is very skilled 
at Framemaker, I find it somewhat disheartening when I see posts like 
some I've seen to John's post.

Best to you and yours,

Allen

avox wrote:
> 
> John R. Culleton wrote:
>>
>> While I was there I took a peek at 1.3.4 and saw some things like
>> optical margins that move closer to the familiar TeX world. But I
>> saw somethig that gave me pause. There was a time when any Open
>> Source program could be compiled from the sources using
>> ./configure; make; make install. Now each group is adopting a
>> new and unexpected build procedure. We face a new tower of babel.
>>
> 
> That is very sad indeed. I'd also prefer everyone switched to CMake
> instead of scons or some really arcane build systems (ok, I can accept
> Ant for Java apps ;-) ).
> You might be happy to hear that Ghostscript recently switched to
> "./configure && make && make install". In fact there are still quite a
> few libraries around which don't use autoconf or automake.
> 
> Let's face it. Autotools did a really great job in the last century when it
> helped to adapt thousands of applications to different Unices. But this
> is the 21st century, and it's possible to have something faster, simpler
> and more robust. I'd say that CMake is also easier to understand, but that
> would imply anyone could completly understand autotools at all. :-P
> 
> Additionally, current applications need build environments which autotools 
> don't support optimally, eg. Win32, MSVC, and to some extend Mac OS X.
> 
> The Scribus team decided on CMake because it was adopted by KDE. We expect
> that soon many many more projects will use CMake. Due to KDE's switch to 
> CMake, CMake is already maturing at a very fast pace, so in a few months
> we'll have a near perfect build system. Trust us. Don't mourn for autohell 
> but embrace the future :-)
> 
> /Andreas