[scribus] Tentative feature freeze for Scribus 1.5svn

["Christoph Schäfer"]

> On 30/12/2012 08:23, "Christoph Schäfer" wrote:
> 
> > Hi John,
> >
> >>> What we need most, though (in addition to coding power),
> >>   >is users willing to test, test, test -- and suggest!
> >>
> >> Where do we download snapshots to test ?
> >>
> >> (Windows snapshots in my case -  Yuk, sorry !)
> >
> > As you probably know by now, compiling for Windows is a
>  >chore.
> 
> Yes, I don't know why, and I don't know what tool chain is required, but 
> I'm happy to believe it. Everything under windows seems to be a chore. 
> However messy it is though, I'm not quite sure why it can't be automated 
> ?  Anyway, not to worry...

You can find the necessary info here: http://scribus.net/websvn/filedetails.php?repname=Scribus&path=%2Ftrunk%2FScribus%2FBUILDING_win32_msvc.txt (slightly outdated in terms of required versions, but it'll tell you how create your build environment).

Please note there are some more build dependencies for 1.5svn (most notably OpenSceneGraph and GraphicsMagick), and even more external prorams to test all new features (e.g. UniConvertor).

> 
> 
> > Why don't you just install a virtual machine and
>  >add a Scribus-friendly Linux distro like OpenSUSE or
>  >Fedora?
> 
> The irony is that most of the software development work I do is on 
> Linux, usually Debian derived or Fedora, though we're still on Fedora 14 
> which is very old, and we normally access it from windows using 
> microsoft remote desktop which doesn't have the best ergonomics for fine 
> GUI work.
> 
> The upshot is that although I think we have an old Scribus installed 
> under Fedora, it always seems more practical to use Scribus on windows, 
> and I do use various windows SVNs and 64 bit versions, occasionally 
> identifying issues that might be fixed.
> 
> 
> > Snapshots are fine, but a bug in a snapshot may have
>  >already been fixed by the time it has been released,
>  >resulting in unnecessary bug reports.
> 
> Yes, that's possible, but what proportion of bugs get fixed in say
> any given 7 day period ?

Despite the limited number of volunteers: a lot. You can follow the pace at http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus-commit/

> 
> 
> > Building from source is so easy under Linux, so I really
>  >urge you to give it a try :)
> 
> Not sure if it would build on Fedora 14 ?  Would it have a new enough 
> version of Qt etc ?

No, Fedora 14 is much too old, but I suggested setting up an up-to-date Linux in a VM like VirtualBox. If your computer(s) provide enough horsepower, this should be easy.

> 
> But there might be another benefit to more testing being done under 
> windows. Features like the spelling checker might not have been left out 
> of the windows versions for such a long time for example. I hope that 
> will be fully integrated into the next windows releases.

Platform-specific testing is necessary, no doubt, but the same goes for Mac OS X, OS/2, BSD, Solaris etc. Building on Mac OS X is easy but time-consuming, on other Unices it's similar to Linux, and on OS/2 or eComStation, well, some kind of black magic ;)

As for the spell checker, you will have a fully functional one in the Windows version of 1.4.2, which will probably released during the next two weeks.

Cheers,

Christoph