[scribus-dev] 0013867: Autosave triggers a comment to STDOUT (visible if we invoked Scribus from CLI)

[Scribus User]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 3:14 AM, Juraj Fedel <wtxnh-scribus at yahoo.com.au>
wrote:

> It is easy to printout message to console when autosave is done.
> I send patch to mantis for this.
> I also slightly changed the message showed on status bar.
>
> But i think this should be used only when you debug autosave behavior.
> It is really not that useful to have STDOUT cluttered with debugging
> messages in released program. I already found on console more debuging
> messages than i would like.
>
> Not sure really how useful for user is message printed in status bar
> (bug #13815) either. For user it should be transparent when autosave
> occur. To that end i do not think that autosave countdown widget is
> useful at all. I do not recall of any other program that have this
> feature. Scribus implementation of countdown widget is kind of nice but
> in my opinion too much eye catching, almost hypnotizing. Why should user
> be interested when file will be autosaved? Even worse is when countdown
> is not synchronized with actual autosaving time: this is not reliably
> reproduced but it occur sometimes - autosave is done couple seconds
> before of after countdown is done. Disclaimer: i tested it always only
> with 1 min interval, do not know how it behave with longer time
> interval.
>
> Juraj
>

Hey Juraj,
First, thanks for the awesome wave of patches and participation lately that
you've contributed. It's very cool to see our community step up and help.

Second, Scribus debug has been pretty noisy lately. This has several
reasons AFAIU:
a) the new iconset is not finished and the debug output shows which said
icons are missing. We're waiting for the completion of the iconset from a
scribus community member who volunteered [1].
b) Avox about a year ago was doing several things: implementing new text
layout and working on enhancements to better Complex Text Layout support,
and identifying issues with fonts that had missing glyphs. He has since
'gone silent' with sporadic encounters here and there. There are still
tickets that benefit from this debug output. See [2][3][4]

Third, Scribus is still a program that is not fully stable. There are
issues that as of yet make it risky to use for large projects. Here's a
list of examples:
OOM issues [5]
Undo/Redo issues [6]
Most Annoying Bug issues [7]
I personally have lost several days of work in the past because of a
combination of one of the above issues and other bugs. So considering that,
having a robust Autosave feature at this time makes sense (at least to me)
in this current stage of Scribus development. It increases my feeling of
confidence when I know I have incremental backups of my work every 'x'
minutes.

Fourth, the autosave transparency is optional. At least it's there. Folks
can choose to use it or not. Bonus: If someone wants to modernize it [8] to
make it less conspicuous and still informative, then they could submit a
proposal and have a go at it.

And finally, the ticket in your subject line: "0013867: Autosave triggers a
comment to STDOUT (visible if we invoked Scribus from CLI)" is my ticket.
It's just another way for me to feel more confident using Scribus since I
usually invoke it from CLI. When most of the font and icon debug info is
disabled a small harmless event outputted to stdout telling us Scribus
autosaved something to me isn't considered clutter, IMHO.

Cheer,
/Kunda

Links
[1] All tickets tagged with 'dezso'
https://bugs.scribus.net/search.php?project_id=1&sticky_issues=on&sortby=last_updated&dir=DESC&hide_status_id=90&tag_string=dezso&match_type=0
)
[2] [Font] Lato Font leads to incredibly slow Scribus performance
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13047
[3] scribus crash selecting font lato bold
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=12950#c34812
[4] Improve font-checking script: discards potentially dangerous fonts
during launch https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=12985

[5] Metabug: Cases of extreme memory use
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=2438
[6] Metabug: Undo/Redo (1.5.0.svn)
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=12500
[7] All tickets tagged with 'MABs' (Most Annoying Bugs)
https://bugs.scribus.net/search.php?project_id=1&sticky_issues=on&sortby=last_updated&dir=DESC&hide_status_id=-2&tag_string=MABs&match_type=0
[8]  Modernize Autosave Countdown Clock
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13819
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