[scribus] Ghostscript

[John Ghormley KJ4UFG]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Louis Desjardins <
louis.desjardins at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/4/26 Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com>
>
> > On 04/26/2011 03:21 AM, a.l.e wrote:
> >
> >> hi
> >>
> >>> First of all, you can ignore the message about not having
> >>>>>>> Ghostscript and use Scribus without any trouble. The only
> >>>>>>> thing is that you won't be able to create PDF files of your
> >>>>>>> documents. Since that's often important, it's worth getting
> >>>>>>> Ghostscript, but again, you can get to work in the meantime.
> >>>>>>> This isn't true, BTW. Ghostscript has nothing to do with
> >>>>>>> creating PDFs or even exporting as EPS.
> >>>>>>> I stand corrected.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> That depends very much on what the content of the document is. In
> some
> >>> cases that is true.
> >>>
> >>
> >> well, i know it may sound picky, but i prefert to fix this thread,
> >> before somebody picks it up from the archive and gets a wrong advice:
> >>
> >> - ghostscript is not needed by scribus to create PDFs.
> >>
> >> - you can work with scribus without having to install ghostscript.
> >>
> >> - you only need ghostscript for some specific functions (print preview,
> >> ...) or to include specific type of content (loading a PDF or an EPS
> >> into an image frame, ...)
> >>
> >>
> >> so:
> >>
> >> - it's correct that you probably can start working with scribus without
> >> installing ghostscript
> >>
> >> - it's not correct that you need ghostscript to create PDFs
> >>
> >> - it's correct that you need ghostscript to include some types of
> >> contents (into your documents or PDFs)
> >>
> >>     -- when you are rasterizing a vector file into an image frame
> >
>
> Considering the confusion around Ghostscript would it be possible to modify
> the warning into something that would simply state that. Getting an error
> message on the first install of Scribus is not fun from the user
> perspective. It's not appealing, to say the least.
>
> This question is often raised. While we cannot control all the parameters
> when someone installs Scribus, we could at least mention what is important
> and what is not. I know we could put it in a readme file but a bit more
> verbose warning could well solve the issue.
>
>
I with Louis on this one.  High among the things I detest are error messages
that don't give a clear indication of the problem from the newbie's
perspective.  Often, Linux applications suffer from this and I figure it's
because programmers expect Linux users to be more learned or sophisticated
PC users.  While that may or may not be true, a good error message should
explain itself to even the most unsophisticated user.
-- 
John Ghormley  KJ4UFG
Editor, SERA *Repeater Journal*
Walkertown, NC  USA
editor at sera.org
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