[scribus] interesting article with thoughts for us

[Gregory Pittman]

On 04/12/2011 06:26 AM, Peter Nermander wrote:
>> IMHO it touch Scribus as well. OK, we have backward compatibility in one
>> direction - Scribus opens files created in previous versions.
>> But I think when 1.4.0 becomes stable release but more and more user start
>> using 1.5 we will need to have in 1.5 possibility of saving for 1.4 at least.
>> IMHO it is very very urgent.
>
> I don't really see the point.
>
> The old format will not support the features of the new version, so
> saving in the old format will most likely lose a lot of what has been
> entered into the document.
>
> And if you can not use the features of the new version, why no stick
> to the old stable version? With Scribus there is no problem having
> multiple versions installed in parallell (something that is virtually
> impossible with most MS products). And the old version of Scribus is
> freely available.
>
> So the solution is easy: If you need to make documents in old Scribus
> formats, create them using the old version of Scribus.
>
> It's just to much work for the developers to keep the possibility to
> save to older formats. That time can be a lot better spent on
> improving more needed features.

At the same time, what has mostly happened is that new formats add 
elements, which are not so likely to be essential to the formatting and 
display of layout. These might simply be ignored, with the warning that 
some features may be missing (we do this for SVGs, why not Scribus files?).

Because of the way that Scribus files are organized (or disorganized 
depending on ones point of view), it's hard to easily see what's new in 
a newer file. When I get a chance, I want to see if I can modify some 
newer files to see if they can be carved away to some earlier version 
with any utility.

Greg