[scribus-dev] Scribus review in Linux-Magazin

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi guys,

The German Linux-Magazin has published a comparison between Scribus 1.3.5svn and QXP/ID in its current issue (8/2008, pp. 68-70). Unfortunately the result was more or less devastating.

While some points of the author are questionable, I think most of his criticism has to be taken seriously.

Here is what the author (Peter Kreußel) criticised:

- The Properties Palette isn't dockable (agreed).

- The Properties Palette is too big (I agree. This has become a huge problem with Qt4, as it takes about 50% of the screen now. This isn't acceptable!).

- There's no way to tear off PP tabs and leave them open while the rest of the PP is hidden (Pierre and Franz seem to work on this issue).

- The Zoom tool is too primitive, and it remains active after zooming. It should be automatically deactivated after a zoom. Here's a new idea derived from my reading of the article: How about allowing the user to activate the magnifier and then let him drag a rubber band around the area he wishes to enlarge on screen?

- The next point of criticism was that Scribus doesn't support diagonal guides. While it is telling that Mr. Keußling didn't compare Scribus to InDesign or QXP here and used Inkscape instead, I have to admit that these guides (among many others) have already been requested by me in mail to MrGuides (aka subik).

- The next complaint is related to object selection, which doesn't seem to be valid, given the improvements to the outline dialog

- Another complaint is still valuable: The choice between scaling and moving and item is still a game of chance. This has to be improved as soon as possible. I know from experience that this a real showstopper, because people are really wasting a lot of time with this unpredictable behaviour.

- No object styles. This should really become one of the primary development goals after 1.4!

- No text variables, except page numbers (and number of pages).

- No editable items on master pages. This was one of the major complaints. I'm working on a user-side suggestion for the solution of the issue, which, I think, will be much better than QXP's and ID's ways.

- Finally: performance, performance, performance.

Regards

Christoph
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