[scribus] Ghostscript

[Craig Bradney]

On 4/27/11 6:53 PM, John Ghormley KJ4UFG wrote:
> 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.

The current version of the message points people to
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Ghostscript

Please update that page as you see fit, we cannot include all the
instructions in the world on a single dialog.

Thanks
Craig