[Scribus] The layout of books or large documents with Scribus --Workarounds!

[Axel Bojer]

Axel Bojer skrev:
> Axel Bojer skrev:
>> Hello!
>>
>> I am currently struggeling with a book theh I am trying to set up nicely 
>> with Scribus. After having made the switch to Scribus for Broschures and 
>>   a magazine I am now experiencing all kinds of drawbacks with the book 
>> I am working on. In the hope of getting some good tips I am now making 
>> this summary. Perhaps it could be used in the online manual or as a 
>> separate tip page, I have not seen one that goes in depth about this. At 
>> least it would be welcomed if users experiencing--or working--with other 
>> big documents in Scribus could share their experiences.
(...)
> Here are some issues I found:
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(...snip a lot of errors, see former post or the shortened list at the 
end of this post)

> Is there an easy way to collect two or more finished documents into one? 
> Hopefully without having to edit the resulting file afterwards :-)
> If yes I may give it a try ...

I have tried the import page-function, but the links are no tkept, which 
makes it cumbersome, pratically nearly impossible, to change the text 
afterwards. I also tried to copy the content of one frame over to the 
other, but then the stylees are not kept. The only thing working is:
* Keep only the first frame (unlik between the first frame and the second)
* Send to clip board
* Paste somewhere else

Of course I then have to redo my linking, too, but at least I don't have 
several unlinked frames with parts of the same text in it.

Concerning the lack of performance:
I have (through literally *days) reworked the whole 150 page document 
the following way:
All articles are kept as seperat chained links. That means not in one 
unbroken chain all the way thrpugh the 150 pages, but perhaps the first 
then (article 1), then the next 12 (article 2) etc. I have also split it 
in two part, one 100 pages long, the other 50 pages long.

This has improved the speed so radically that I want to make this a tip 
for other struggling with the same problem. Before I could have to wait 
half an hour or more just for the document to open, now it opens in 5 
minutes (still not lightning fast, but usable).
When the text in a linked frame is smaller the Story editor also works 
normal--normally no delay, with some exceptions:
* Applying styles can still take 1--5 minutes to finish (depending on 
the length of the applied paragraph I think)
* Copy and pasting of even short text part into a frame chain with much 
text in it already also takes about 2--5 minutes to complete. In empty 
frames or frame chains with little content in them, this works without 
delay.

This is still not ideally, but with this method I can live with it and 
do my work, some waiting is still necessary, and big style changes or 
copying/pasting many times is unpractical still. I you use 
OpenOffice.org to do the styling and import the finished document, this 
should not be an issue though. It could even be faster to rework the 
changes in OOo and then import anew. Of course manual cerning or other 
tweaks will still have to be redone, but this is fast enough to do to be 
manageable. Sadly the import function for OOo is not perfect either, so 
some formatting may be lost, I discoverd italics disappearing at least. 
And the styles may be diversed (not all text snippets may keep their 
style, even if you choose not to merge styles). But mostly this works.

When I have all my present delayed work finished I may make a wikipage 
on the use of big documents (or someone else may use this as a starter 
for one). I think I have the main things covered here now :-)
And hopefully most, or all, og these bugs will be fixed in 1.3.4, I am 
waiting eagerly for a production version of it to appear, maybe later 
this year?

Relevant bug reports:
---------------------
0005186: Copying text should keep styles
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=5186

0005185: Copying frames unlink them
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=5185

0005191: Make it possible to split and join frame with their content
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=5191

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

0002438: Metabug: Cases of extreme memory use
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=2438

0004076: large document takes several minutes to load
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4076

0004328: Severe slowdown in paragraph styles if preview is activated
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4328

0004835: color list on property palette is updated very often
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4835
(Slows Scribus down. That means it might help to remove all unused colours).

0004513: 100% cpu usage while aligning the text
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4513
(Probably not fixable before 1.3.4. Also mentioned is the slowness of
updating when changing the text style)

0001036: Severe performance problem on documents with very large number
of linked frames
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=1036


Best regards
Axel Boje