[scribus] The Scribus target - a question for the developers

[John Culleton]

On Monday 08 September 2008 06:54:40 pm John Beardmore wrote:
> Mike Morris wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 4:37 PM, Gregory Pittman
> > <gpittman at iglou.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Thank you for your response.  Perhaps Scribus will always remain
> > a work in process.  If Linus Torvalds is correct, that is
> > probably a good thing for the capabilities of the application. 
> > Although, in my opinion, that will limit the impact of Scribus on
> > the industry.
>
> I can't agree. Who wants to be locked into product that isn't
> evolving and won't respond to external change ?
>
> Would you invest your time in Linux if development ceased ?
>
>
> Cheers, J/.

I have many product resources, all Open Source. I consider Scribus to 
be a niche product. It is strong for book covers, illustrated 
newsletters, coffee table books  and the like. It will never replace 
e.g., TeX for long books or books with with indexes, footnotes etc.  
When I typeset a novel I don't want to jump through hoops just to get 
widow/orphan suppression, running heads and so on.  And things like 
hanging punctuation, microtypography and so on are just beyond the 
reach of Scribus or any similar product.   

There are horses for courses, as they used to say at the race track. 

My major complaint is slow operation. Others complain too and at least 
one has recently abandoned Scribus for this reason.  

I have already asked for PDF/X1a:2001 compliant output for book covers 
for LSI but got no positive vibes back.  In the USA this is a serious 
handicap.  One has to buy Acrobat Distiller just for this feature, or 
accept degraded cover art.  

I am grateful for Scribus as is. I look forward to the next stable 
series. 
-- 
John Culleton
Resources for every author and publisher:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/packagers.pdf
http://www.creativemindspress.com/newbiefaq.htm
http://www.gropenassoc.com/TopLevelPages/reference%20desk.htm