[scribus-dev] issues

[Craig Bradney]

On 12/2/10 8:41 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> Since Louis is unsubscribed now, I'll gladly make matters even worse.
> It's about time I did so.
>
> There are several real problems with this project as I see them. And
> since I'm in a bastard mode again I will ignore every comment whose
> author tells me I'm wrong, because telling me so in presence of solid
> facts is even more evil than my arrogant behavior, and that took some
> special training, miind you. Which means I'll probably have to ignore
> 99% of Christoph's reply, but I'm perfectly fine with that. I didn't
> take pains of growing up and getting a life to become a nice guy.
>
> Let's go.
>
> 1. Lack of communication to users. The project doesn't understand and
> doesn't make an effort to understand its community.
>
> You don't know who your users are. The proof of that is that this
> project doesn't really focus on anybody. You can't use Scribus to
> substitute MS Publisher, because it lacks polishing for inexperienced
> users. You can't use it to substitute XPress or ID, because it lacks
> features that make production fast and uncluttered. Yes, the project
> has a number of users who are stubborn enough to be in either of these
> groups (there is no sense telling me there are more groups, this is
> not the point). So okay, there actually is a focus group of Scribus --
> stubborn fanatics. Other people just quit using Scribus. As a
> community leader here in .ru I see it way too often.
>
> Opaque development efforts. The project is known from its very
> beginning as a project where development happens under closed doors.
> Nobody cares that this isn't really so, because you don't communicate
> it to people. Nobody cares if you lack time or skill to communicate it
> to people. You don't do it ergo worst and wildest misconceptions about
> the project are true. Fix it or live with it. Examples: very little
> was told about GSoC projects and how they went, after bloody two
> months nothing is officially known about OIF project, nothing was told
> about developers meeting in Paris or wherever it happened recently,
> and nothing ever is told about new things under development (no, few
> cases in rants.scribus.net don't count as such).
>
> Scarce news. This really doesn't need any special notice. Go to
> www.scribus.net and see for yourself: 8 news in 11 months this year,
> and only one of them not about a new version. Have you really got
> nothing else to tell your users? Really? Now go to inkscape.org and
> you'll see why someone in a gimp's mailing list said "I wish we were
> like Inkscape" regarding news on the website (yes, I'm rather proud of
> that). Before you comment on that, see end of the mail for more
> positive things.
>
> Showcases. How do you know if this is a useful project without trying
> it? From pretty pictures. Try finding showcases on the website.
> Visitors couldn't give a damn that you know where the secret wiki page
> is. If there is no dedicated, well organized section linked from
> (preferably) menu on the main page, then this section doesn't exist.
> Whether you like it or not. What *is* there instead is an ugly dated
> Screenshots page. For heaven's sake, Scribus is a *production* tool:
> show magazines, show books, show leaflets -- beautiful, solid stuff
> that sends the message. And btw, Scribus 1.2.x screenshots? Stuff it.
>
> Downloads. When did you last look at http://www.scribus.net/downloads?
> What kind of person wants downloading source code, SVN snapshots,
> templates and scripts in the first place? Why don't you study what
> people really download? Just how much time does it take to go to
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/ and look at numbers?
> Let me do it for you:
>
> scribus section has 512,468 downloads
> scribus-devel section has 271,676 downloads
> templates have 5,899 downloads
>
> Are SVN snapshots same important as stable? Clearly not. Maybe
> templates are? You've got to be kidding me.
>
> How about operation systems?
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/scribus/1.3.3.14/
>
> SuSE RPMS 144 downloads
> Source code 9,027 downloads
> Windows build 450,808 downloads
>
> And Windows build is in "Other Operating Systems:" section far at the
> right side? While outnumbering everything by order of magnitudes? Any
> person who at this point tells me the project understands its
> community should have his head examined.
>
> Now look further below at http://www.scribus.net/downloads. Do you
> really think that the huge stupid Download Items section is of any
> help? Do we download CentOS? Or Mandriva? Or Windows, for what it's
> worth? What purpose does it serve but puzzling and annoying people?
>
> Well, at least the team started publishing a human readable list of
> changes in release notes. Thank you, Christoph.
>
> 2. There is nothing special about the project. Yes, you (we) all
> devoted a hell of a time to Scribus. But guess what -- nobody cares.
> The only thing one can say about Scribus is that it's free. Try naming
> three innovative things that make Scribus stand out. No, this isn't
> evil marketing jargon, this is how people see it: they need something
> else apart from the "free" bit to convince them that Scribus will help
> the get the job done really fast. No matter how hard I try I can't
> think of any feature that boosts production. Sure, you had preflight
> verifier. Now ID CS5 has it too. End of story.
>
> 3. The focus of developers is scattered. Just a year ago you kept
> working on three branches: Qt3 based version where only maintenance
> happened, 1.3.x and 1.5. Obviously you didn't have manpower to do it,
> but you did it anyway. Did it teach you anything? Obviously not,
> because now you have three branches again: 1.3.x-1.4, 1.5 and OIF. Who
> is this good for? Who benefits from that? And besides you are buried
> in bug reports. Yes, you are a small team, but if you keep focusing on
> small things that don't matter much instead of fixing big issues, you
> will only keep losing community and not making a splash. Not that I
> didn't appreciate how fast Franz uncluttered gradients UI in 1.5.0svn
> after my report (and even then it still needs a lot of work).
>
> I don't think I want to go in details about how Scribus lacks this or
> that feature or should have fixed another or shouldn't change file
> format that often, otherwise I'll never get this mail finished.
>
> Now, being agressive doesn't mean I'm of no use. I still volunteer to
> write news for the website. Maybe if I say so for the 100th time you
> will finally sort this out. Until then the existing twitter account
> will be the only alive channel of communicating news to users. And
> even then my hands are somewhat tied, because no matter how many times
> I say that development news should be published, you find perfect
> excuses to prevent that from happening while letting things like
> http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/news/scribus-re-loaded happen.
>
> I can also volunteer to work on initial version of the showcase
> section, but you have to understand that showcases are an entirely
> dynamic thing. Keeping same stuff for ages and never adding anything
> new is worse than sin. If you can't or don't want to do things like
> that, at least quit stopping others to help you.
>
> Alexandre

Rant as you will.. :)

The summary is time. Almost all of us have done 1 or more of the
following in the past 5 years: gotten married, had kids, moved house and
possibly country, built a house, changed jobs. The last 5 years has not
been kind in terms of free time to almost all of us.

I only said to malex 2 days ago that it didn't seem like he had enough
time to sort the new website (not at all his fault), so we should have a
competition of sorts. Can you help us with that? This is to replace the
utterly useless www.scribus.net (useless in every way, especially that
stupid downloads section). I personally feel that Ubuntu's home page is
a good one to copy, and I wouldn't mind a very nice looking but static
page (ok, it coul read some news from an updatable text file or
similar). I think also, none of us have an interest in writing or
maintaining web pages... if someone, yourself, or others want to, then
excellent! I *hate* CMS.. if someone wants to maintain one.. great.. but
static with some php includes or processing is easy, and can be in svn.

We do not have 3 active branches.. We have 2.. 1.4 (currently under the
guise of Version135/1.3.9, to be moved to Version14 at 1.4.0 release),
and 1.5.0. OIF is 2 projects that will be fed directly back into 1.5.0
after they complete. 1.5.0 is also 100% up to date with 1.5.0 code
changes (thanks Jean!).. Ok, it looks like 3, but it is not really.
1.3.3.x is dead, we do not read, checkout, touch, etc that code anymore,
and we certainly do not fix its bugs.

Big issues.. yes, lots.. but we don't *know* how to fix plenty of them..
or have time to get into it. OIF is great for Scribus - it is driving
two major issues, and many many bugs will get closed once those project
get completed. Why was there no news on OIF.. I don't know.. Louis was
emailing us all directly, and not on the mailing list.. not his fault..
but yes it should have been on -dev (apart from finance info).

Whatever you want to do.. don't rant.. come and help.. we would all
appreciate it.

Thanks
Craig

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