[scribus] real life job with 1.3.5

Markus W. Barth markus at sismografo.es
Thu Jul 2 18:27:06 CEST 2009


I have been using the 1.3.3 version for publishing a monthly eight page 
magazine for a spanish town hall. This time I was tempted to give the release 
candidate a try on a 12 page issue that has just been sent to the printer. 
I built the rc2 from source on Ubuntu without any problems. After a couple of 
weeks of working with rc2 on various documents, I am glad to say that it is a 
huge progress in comparison to 1.3.3. Everything works a lot smoother and the 
effort that has gone into the rewrite of text rendering is very clear. The 
initial idea was to track all issues and make detailed bug reports, but I must 
admit it is difficult to do that during every day work.

I experienced problems with widgets redraw, and deadkeys (accented characters) 
are impossible to get to work with scribus on ubuntu, which supposedly are 
both qt-related issues.

I also had various crashes while using undo. Copy and pasting with grouped 
objects make problems; the copy ends up on a completely different page. When 
copy-pastin textboxes, an empty line is inserted at the beginning of the text. 
When you select an object on a different page, this page (at least sometimes) 
doesn't get the focus. I also ended up having hundreds (sic!) of style copies 
of one style. Images embedded in text don't print. 

This so far is what I can remember. Sounds a lot, but I think that the overall 
impression of the state of the art shows that Scribus is roaming in to become 
a mature dtp app, which would make it one of the most outstanding open 
software apps. However, I still think that S1.3.5 should not be released until 
these bugs are squeezed. Especially new users may get a wrong first impression 
from this impressive piece of software. 




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