[Scribus] wanting advice about editing .sla files

[jrm at kw.igs.net]

The context is that I'm continuing to use Scribus for 
layout of Chess Canada magazine (48 pages, bi-monthly, 
several thousaand circulation). 
 
I've already had a bit of success using Emacs to edit an .sla  
file -- with trial and error, I got rid of some junk objects. 
(These were mainly objects I'd dragged off the page and lost! 
They showed up with Scribus 1.3, but deletion in there was no 
good because I needed Scribus 1.2 to be able to read the .sla 
file.) 
 
Can someone recommend a best available Emacs mode for 
editing .sla files?  (Can I hope for scribus-mode?) 
 
Where is the best gentle introduction to .sla structure? 
 
The immediate problem (and I'll still care about the above 
questions even after this is solved) is that my PDF bookmarks 
seem to be mysteriously disappearing.  Sometimes some of them 
show up, sometimes none.  Sometimes I'll have something that 
shows up in Scribus 1.2 (actually 1.2.2.1 or whatever) as 
being a bookmark, but doesn't show up in the little bookmark 
window, and when I then switch off it being a bookmark I get 
disappearance of some other bookmark from the bookmark window. 
Pretty confusing!  But I'm guessing that if I find out what 
to look for in the .sla file then maybe I can sort it out. 
 
Fond regards (this is a great mailing list!),  
 
-- 
John (MacPhail)