[scribus] Announce: Scribus 1.4.0 RC6 Release

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:49 PM, ale rimoldi wrote:
> 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...

<not a personal attack>

Bottom-line:

1. We screwed your projects, but we are a small team, don't expect us
to fix it. Especially since changing the way your document looks is
such a non-issue in professional desktop publishing.

2. We will probably continue screwing your projects in the future
between minor revisions that are actually supposed to fix things.
That's 'cause of quantum.

3. We really don't like the way John Culleton works.

*sigh*

So what should I tell users? To keep all the possible revisions of
Scribus just to be able to open their files?

What is the proposed way to figure out which version to use? Save a
text file that will say which version to use?

Will every revision of Scribus be supported at least few years so that
people can be sure they can run an older version on a new system to
reopen their files and not find themselves knee-deep in mutated
layout?

Finally, is it possible that the team locks changes to the file format
and fonts rendering for at least a couple of years? The file format
has changed with little backwards compatibility so many times that I
don't feel justified to blame vendors of proprietary software for same
practice anymore.

</not a personal attack>

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org