[scribus] interesting article with thoughts for us

[john Culleton]

On Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:06:16 -0600 "William F. Maddock"
<billsey at earthlink.net> wrote:

> John,
> 
> I think what Tony is trying to say is that there are multiple
> people involved, and that not all of them have 1.4.x. If this
> is the case, then Tony might not have the authority to make
> other people "say goodbye to the earlier versions." It might
> not be his call.
> 
> Also, since the development team already knows how to save in
> those earlier versions, would it really be that tough to add a
> module to do what they already know how to do? The only issue I
> can see is in making sure that this "retro" module doesn't try
> to save features that it doesn't understand. A clue as to how
> to accomplish this might be gained (if it is really needed) by
> studying the old IFF format from the Amiga days. If an older
> version of an application tried to open a document created in a
> newer version, then the older version would simply ignore any
> chunks that it did not understand, and could therefore save out
> what it was able to work on. Since the development team already
> knows which new features the 1.3.x version cannot understand,
> they can simply code the "retro" module to leave those features
> out of the saved file. An enforced "save as" could safeguard
> against over-writing the document created in the newer version
> of the application (for example, by default, a "-13x" could be
> appended to the chosen filename).

It is not just a case of transforming 1.4.0 output to 1.3.3.14.
There have been intermediate versions. While the sequence 1.3.5
to 1.4.0 used basically the same file format I don't know if an
sla file from 1.4.0 will always load correctly in e.g., 1.3.5.
Should all the intermediate versions be accommodated in 1.4.0?

If features changed between 1.4.0 and 1.3.3.x are just left out of
the saved file the appearance of the file may be distorted beyond
recognition.

For example, assume that a gradient is used. Assume further that
gradients are handled differently in the two editions. If you
just delete the gradient then the files appearance is changed. If
you ask that the 1.4.0 file be rewritten to resemble the 1.3.3.x
file format then you are asking for a lot more than just deleting
features. This not a real example but is just an example of the
kind of problem that might occur. 


Users can and should keep up with the latest version, 1.4.0. It
is too much to ask of the maintainers that all older versions be
kept viable in perpetuity. What about 2.0? 

 
-- 
John Culleton Free list of books for self-publishers:
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