[scribus] stable sort of (was "No mails...)

[John Culleton]

On Saturday 21 March 2009 04:18:01 am Phil Ward wrote:
> helloooooo
>
> can i come and live in your world? where windows never
> crashes?
>
> pretty please :)
>
> Phil
>
> On 21 Mar 2009, at 08:20, Fritz Eichelhardt wrote:
> > hi all,
> >
> >> From: Carl Symons <carlsymons at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [scribus] stable sort of (was "No
> >> mails...)
> >>
> >> Scribus crashed on Windows Vista?!
> >>
> >> I have never heard of anything else crashing on a
> >> Windows platform.
> >
> > as far as i know, windows can't even crash, unless you
> > use very unreliable
> > software like scribus.
> >
> > it's a pity, but i can't afford this lovely peace of
> > software and have to use
> > linux instead.
> >
> > by pure luck, scribus/linux never crashes here.
> >

I suspect the above was written tongue in cheek. 
It's not luck. Linux doesn't crash. Most of my Linux 
applications never crash. I typeset books using pdftex or 
more rarely Context flavors of TeX.   I use the Vim editor. 
The nature of TeX is that it runs in read-only fashion. If 
it errors off then the original file is untouched. 

I have found from my limited use that Scribus 1.3.3.12 and 
later versions of 1.3.5 don't crash either.  In my TeX work 
I am protected because Gvim keeps a continuous backup copy 
under another name as editing proceeds.  Perhaps Scribus 
could adopt a similar automatic backup method. 


With respect to Windows the reported info is that it became 
more stable when XP was offered. Vista is too new to 
evaluate. Most users with XP experience hate Vista. I have 
a neighbor who hates Vista but won't go back to XP because 
Vista is "the latest thing".  But many businesses refuse to 
upgrade to Vista from XP. My wife who has not used anything 
else loves Vista . Go figure. 

 I have Win 2000 on a seldom-used partitition. 

Individual applications such as MSWord can crash if they are 
overloaded with too much data or functionality.  I monitor 
many mailing lists and help moderate one. More than once I 
have seen a tear-stained e-mail where someone has lost 
their entire book with no backup whilst trying to create it 
with spellchecker, grammar checker, TOC and indexing all 
turned on simultaneously.  And because it runs so slowly 
with a big book breaking the book up into idividual files 
is almost a routine practice.

Scribus also has problems with very large documents and I 
suspect this is a function of the basic design. The Scribus 
Manual was broken into segments and developed that way or 
so I am told. But I am happy to use Scribus for those 
applications where it blows the competition away such as 
book covers.
-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters
http://wexfordpress.com