[scribus] Announce: Scribus 1.4.0 RC6 Release

[ale rimoldi]

hi mike,

> Some things shifting are unacceptable between revisions.  Do you
> seriously expect people to redo all their layouts because text
> placement was implemented "wrong" in previous versions?

yep, if they reopen the file i would expect them to check them!

the rule: don't update / upgrade during a production run is always valid
(except if you have very good reasons to update / upgrade... but in
that case you will probably save much time on other issues!)

certainly, i agree with that in the ideal world such changes should not
happen... but scribus i not perfect, yet :-)

> You either
> have to accept that it will be "wrong" forever due to poor judgement
> during the original authoring,

in my opinion this is the worst option ever!

producing world globes should be forbidden, because we have all those
maps showing a flat earth with dragons around it...

> or (more professionally) have RC6
> compensate for this when opening RC5 (and earlier) documents by
> automatically correcting the text placements so their IS no shift.

this is one of the sources for code bloat and spaghetti code!

don't misunderstand me, i'm not against keeping the compatibility, but
knowing about the spare resources in the hand of the developers
who are on the release of 1.4, i would not expect them to come
up with a solution.

there are good chances that they finally (or even pretty soon) will
come up with a solution... but i would not expect it from them.

on the other side i wonder if (and how long) we should keep such a fix
in the code... if one is ever written...


> Either this needs to be corrected promptly, or I'm reverting back to
> RC5, because I'm CERTAINLY NOT going to manually change all my text
> frames across multiple documents!

if you're working on a specific project and are not ready to fix such
issues, yes the solution is not to update!

as i wrote above, it's a good habit *not* to update while you're working
on a specific project!
most of the time there is no risk, but sometimes (like this time) you
get a version which is broken for you!

don't forget that you can have several versions of scribus
installed in parallel (i would not run two RCs at the same time
though... it will probably work, but you may have problems beceause they
access the same preferences file)!
so, use RC5 for the ongoing project and RC6 for the new ones!


=== disgressing ===

btw, this is one of the main reasons, why many people don't like the way
john culleton is keeping his scribus up to date!
(and why they don't like him to promote the way he is doing it...)

updating, compiling and installing scribus overnight is bad because you
have no control over the code currently installed.

if you use scribus in production you should always keep a version you
know that works for you. and stick to it for your daily work.
when you have some spare time, install a newer version, test it on new
projects and only when you know that is working good enough for you
replace the old one.

everything else is dangerous for your health!

=== end of disgression ===

voilà, i hope that a solution for this problem can be found... but if
it is not, i don't see it as a huge issue... there are workarounds...


ciao
a.l.e