[scribus] Splitting a large document into several smaller documents?

[John Culleton]

On Tue, 01 Sep 2015 21:29:08 -0700
doubtorfear at ruggedinbox.com wrote:

> I run Scribus 1.4.2 on a computer with 8 GB of
> RAM. However, it is extremely laggy. It wasn't
> always this way. The document got slower and
> slower as it got bigger. Right now, the
> document is around 300 pages long, and it takes
> 5-10 seconds to change just ONE character in
> the document.
> 
> It seems clear to me that the lag I experience
> is a direct result of the length of the
> document. Because the document consists of one
> very long linked text frame, it has been
> suggested that those linked frames are the
> cause of the problem and that I may be able to
> fix it by splitting the document up into
> smaller chunks.
> 
> The problem is that I've already invested a lot
> of time into this project. Is there a way I can
> split the document up easily without
> typesetting everything from scratch? One
> suggestion was to make multiple copies of the
> document and delete all unwanted pages from
> each copy to form the desired chunks. However,
> I found that deleting pages doesn't affect the
> text of the document. When I delete a page, the
> text frame on that page remains and simply gets
> placed on the page that gets moved down to take
> the place of the deleted plage.
> 
> Please help!
> 
>
> 

As a first step download and install Scribus
1.5.0.  Some of the slowness problems with
earlier versions seem to have gone away.

On my current project for various reasons
that have no impact on this thread, I used: 
pdftk filename.pdf burst
 to divide  the latest complete pdf file into
 individual one page pdf files. The resultant
 individual pdfs are named e.g, for page one
 pg_0001.pdf and so on.
After I modify or recreate entirely a given
page in Scribus I save the sla as e.g.,
pdf_0001.sla. Then I export the file as e.g.,
pg_0001.pdf replacing the former page file.
Keeping the same file name for the pdf file is
essential.

Reassembling all these individual files is done
periodically (maybe once a day) with a script that
takes about .56 seconds to run for my 192
page book segment. Here is my version of the
script:
----------------------------------------
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4
-sOutputFile=segmentb.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f
p*.pdf 
----------------------------------
This script needs to be just a single line with
no line breaks inserted by e.g., my email program.

In the working directory only the pages created
by pdftk filename burst can have the format of
p*.pdf Other pdf files in the directory need to
changed to read xp*.pdf or something similar. 

However first switch to 1.5.0 and run your
complete sla file using that version. if the
slowness goes away then forget about the rest of
this email :<)
-- 
John Culleton
Wexford Press
Book layout, typesetting and Indexing
Free list of books for self-publishers:
http://wexfordpress.net/shortlist.html