[Scribus] Is 1.3.4 stable enough

[Marc Sabatella]

FWIW, I have been using 1.3.4 after some (very little, actually) previous 
experience with 1.3.3.x.  I checked it out because it was there, and only 
afterwards did its status as an unstable development version begin to become 
clear. This isn't made as obvious as it could be on the site, but the fact 
that 1.3.3.x is advertised more prominently as the stable version (and 
indeed, it took a little work to even figure out how to get 1.3.4) meant I 
was aware at *some* of the difference in status.  So I currently have both 
versions installed - not sure if this is supposed to work well or not, but 
so far, having 1.3.3.9 installed has not obviously hampered my work using 
1.3.4.

My current project is a CD design - a simple booklet, tray card, and the CD 
itself.  I elected to use 1.3.4 because of the additional pre-press features 
with regards to bleed & registration marks.  Even after realizing 1.3.4 was 
not intended for production use, I was OK with this decision because the 
project is small enough that if I need to recreate it 1.3.3.9, I know it 
won't take all that long.  And realistically, even if 1.3.4 were fully 100% 
rock solid, I figure there was a good chance I'd have to hand the project 
off to someone else anyhow to recreate it using InDesign, since that is what 
the printer I'm working with prefers.  They are willing to accept PDF, but 
frankly, while I understand basic concepts of color management, CMYK 
separations and so forth, I'm not completely confident I will be able to 
hand off a PDF that conforms 100% to the specs they are looking for.  So I'm 
treating my work with 1.3.4 as generating a mock-up that may well need to be 
duplicated in another application when I'm done  and if I *can* simply hand 
off the PDF I generate, that's just a bonus.  For my project, that is a 
reasonable caveat to live with.  I don't think I would want to do anything 
much larger this way, though.

That said, I am finding 1.3.4 surprisingly usable.  It rarely crashes, and 
when things don't go as I expect, I am more often than not finding it to be 
a case of user error.  Or else, a known issue (the most frustrating of which 
is the fact that when copying text frames, all styles contained within it 
are duplicated - so I have lots of styles called "Copy of <whatever>" 
instead of frames sharing the same style.  Every once in a while I go 
through and clean this up, deleting the copies styles and making the frames 
use the primary style instead.  Plus I am getting in the habit of not using 
copy & paste as much as I otherwise would.

As far as out-and-out bugs go, I've run into very few (and admit I haven't 
reported any yet, but I will).  So I personally am finding 1.3.4 very nice 
to work with overall.  But I would not recommend it for a large proejct that 
you would hate to have to redo.

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Marc Sabatella
marc at outsideshore.com