[Scribus] Is 1.3.4 stable enough

[Craig Bradney]

> >
> > I can tell you why I chose to use 1.3.4.
> >
> > Firstly, you offer it. That is a big mistake in my eyes if you
> > strongly advise people to not use it after the fact.

We offer it for testing. 1.3.3.x is our stable series and hence suggested for 
production work. 1.3.4 is not suggested for this work, however some have had 
success. 1.3.4 is vastly different in more ways than is visible (although to 
the user it should remain mostly the same) and has been, shall we say, our 
first "real developer" version, where certain bugs do exist etc.

In the early stages of our 1.3.5 development we decided that 1.3.5 would be 
the best way to fix the 1.3.4 bugs as we had waited so long to get 1.3.4 out 
of the way that we just had to concentrate on the Qt4 conversion that 1.3.5 
would bring and fix the 1.3.4 bugs with it.

> > Otherwise, don't scold people who use it,

That should never have been the case, and we apologise if that anyone on this 
list has commented in such a way that you would feel like that, however we 
have never ever said that 1.3.4 was ready for production work, and strictly 
said when someone decided they would use it for production work and was 
reporting bugs for it, that they should be using 1.3.3.9 in our eyes.

> > trying to make this version more usable. Instead, I learned that my
> > effort is not wanted for,

For sure it is.. 

> > so I turned to 1.3.39 for the next project,
> > only to find that I have to get used to a slightly different UI and
> > feature set.
>
> Well, UIs evolve in development, that's part of the process ;) Why is
> Scribus any different here, compared to any other program, closed or open,
> in your opinion?

And it will be different again in 1.3.5 from 1.3.4 due to the Qt4 conversion, 
and fixes we have introduced. That is progression.

> > They had to declare the new version stable. Now everybody would jump
> > to it and find lots of previously undiscoverd bugs, getting very
> > angry, very rightly so, as this version just had been declared stable.
> > What a disgusting mess!

When we declare 1.4.0 stable, that is when it will be stable. I do not expect 
we will declare any version between 1.3.4 and 1.4.0 as a stable version. 
1.3.3.10 will be released as another stable version, and 1.3.5+ (<1.4.0) will 
be unstable, but should be getting closer and closer to production usable 
from 1.3.5+ as it gets closer to 1.4.0.

> > Now I learn that 1.3.4 is a dead end and bugs will not be fixed at
> > all.

The bugs are being fixed in 1.3.5.. 1.3.5 is the natural progression of 
1.3.4.. which was the progression from 1.3.3.x, the progression from 1.2.x.. 
etc.

Craig