[scribus] Speed change when adding PS vector images

[John Jason Jordan]

I just checked and the version 1.3.5.1 doesn't seem to be in the
Scribus or tagancha repos yet, so I'm still using Rc3 on Jaunty x86_64.

I have a large document of 110 pages. There are no bitmaps or long
stories (six frames, max), but there are quite a few imported PS
graphics. Scribus was always rather slow with this document. I haven't
worked on the document for over a month, but now I am doing some final
editing and corrections. In the process I added 12 pages containing
three imported PS images per page. Actually, they are all identical
images and I just imported the graphic once, then copied and pasted 35
times. I find that Scribus is now so slow that I can't even select a
text frame. I click on the frame and five minutes later it is still not
selected. Also, the size has gone from 37 MB to 97 MB.

I have the habit of doing a periodic Save As, especially when making a
significant change. I did so before adding the 12 pages, so I still
have the previous version. It behaves as it always did - slow, but
manageable. Something about those 36 PS graphics is causing a massive
problem. And I mean it is slow everywhere in the document, not just on
the pages containing the new graphics.

The graphic in question is as displayed here:

http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/pulmonic.html

I downloaded it as a PDF, then printed to file with Adobe Reader in
order to get a vector PS file. After importing it into Scribus I
ungrouped it and removed the gray rectangles because I wanted it clear.
Then I regrouped it and copied and pasted 35 times. The characters are
all coverted to paths.

I am hoping someone can shed some light on this. Ideally someone can
suggest a way to get the 36 images into the document that will cause
less havoc. At this point I can't even work on the document.