[scribus] The never-ending quest for perfection

[Gregory Pittman]

On 06/19/2011 09:33 AM, John Culleton wrote:
> On Saturday, June 18, 2011 09:41:46 pm Gregory Pittman wrote:
>
>
>>
>> Technically, right now 1.3.3.14 is stable, 1.40rc5 unstable, 1.5.0
>> developmental.
>>
>> We are on the verge of squashing a few last bugs so that 1.4.0 can
>> become the stable version. Then it seems that 1.5.0 will be a
>> combination of unstable/developmental. When 1.5.x becomes good enough,
>> it will become the next stable 1.6. Who knows when the future 1.7.0
>> might be started...
>>
>> You can expect that after 1.4.0 becomes the stable version that there
>> will be releases of 1.4.x as various additional bugs are fixed, but
>> since it's a stable version no new features will be added. Bug fixing
>> stopped on 1.3.3.14 some time ago.
>>
>> Greg
>>
>
> It is my suggestion (again) that all users of Scribus use the latest available
> release candidate of 1.4.0.

Some of the confusion about all of this comes from the very different 
culture of (at least some) open source projects and proprietary.

There is little doubt that proprietary software developers have 
something of a similar structure, except that everything other than the 
stable version is hidden from view, except when some selected people 
might be chosen to preview a beta version (in many cases PR as much as 
anything).

In an open source project like Scribus, any user has the opportunity to 
track the development by downloading advanced versions to try out. What 
is done at the same time is to label different levels so that a user is 
warned about the riskiness of working with these advanced versions.

Stable versions are the ones you should be able to rely on for 
day-to-day work, and should work as expected. This having been said, 
even the most stable versions will still have some bugs, both known and 
unknown, yet hopefully nothing catastrophic. Bug fixing on 1.3.3.14 has 
stopped, not because they're all gone, but because the effort for any 
remaining ones seems wasted.

Unstable versions really have a range of usability. 1.4.0rcX versions 
are pretty darn close to being equivalent with a stable version. It is 
unlikely to have any new features added, and any work on it is in regard 
to remaining bugs. On the other hand, once 1.4.0 is released as the 
stable version, 1.5.0 is going to be a pretty rocky unstable at first, 
and may yet have some features added, removed, or modified.

Developmental versions may be undergoing some major recoding of various 
sections, may have some major new implementation going on (like the 
all-new tables that are part of one of our GSoC projects). If you want 
to live where the wild things are like John, you have to accept that 
today's svn update may break your working developmental Scribus.

If you're going to use advanced versions of Scribus, it's a good idea to 
track what's happening on the mail list and maybe even scan the bugs 
site to help you decide when you might _not_ want to update. You can 
also look for snapshots of advanced versions, which are periodically 
created at points of relative stability.

Greg