[Scribus] Ideas on collaboration

[Gregory Pittman]

Oleksandr Moskalenko wrote:

>* Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> [2005-06-22 10:36:14 -0400]:
>
>  
>
>>If you look at the .sla files with a text editor, it's not difficult to 
>>eventually get a sense of the pattern of the various elements.  On the 
>>other hand, visually it's not easy to find a particular object or 
>>document feature.
>>I think that there could (soon?) be an effort to "clean up" the 
>>appearance and layout of the XML-like format so that it is more easily 
>>understandable.  For example, use of carriage returns and indentation 
>>would help a great deal.  One might argue that the files are not meant 
>>to be hand-edited, but in fact I think that files which are easily 
>>understood by viewing them will also be easier to parse, and parsing is 
>>the key to any kind of assessment as to the differences between two 
>>versions and then reconciling them.
>>    
>>
>
>Greg,
>
>This effort is already under way,      <snip>
>
> consider the following hand-written test code:
>
>     <canvas id="canvas0" width="8.5" height="11.0" sizeunit="in">
>         <canvasobjects>
>                 <imgframe id="fimg0" width="200" height="200" sizeunit="mm"
>                     origin="ltop" xorigin="400" yorigin="500" origunit="mm">
>                     <img id="img0" src="img0" type="png" width="100"
>                         height="100" sizeunit="px" resolution="150"/>
>                 </imgframe>
>                 <imgframe id="fimg1" width="100" height="150" sizeunit="mm"
>                 origin="ltop" xorigin="200" yorigin="250" origunit="mm">
>                 <img id="img1" src="img0" type="png" width="100" height="100"
>                     sizeunit="px" resolution="150"/>
>                 </imgframe>
>                 <imgframe id="fimg2" width="200" height="200" sizeunit="mm"
>                     origin="ltop" xorigin="10" yorigin="5" origunit="mm">
>                     <img id="img2" src="img0" type="png" width="100"
>                         height="100" sizeunit="px" resolution="150"/>
>                 </imgframe>
>                 <textframe id="ftxt0" width="300" height="200" sizeunit="px"
>                     origin="ltop" xorigin="100" yorigin="700" origunit="mm">
>                     <paragraph id="par0" parstyle="parstyle0">
>                         <text parentpar="par0" txtstyle="txtstyle0"> Hello World!
>                             This is a test document for the new Scribus file
>                             format.</text>
>                     </paragraph>
>                 </textframe>
>         </canvasobjects>
>         <scratchspace id="scratch0" canvasid="canvas0" visible="yes" printable="no">
>             <imgframeobj idref="fimg2"/>
>         </scratchspace>
>         <page id="page0" width="8.5" height="11.0" sizeunit="in" origin="ltop"
>             xorigin="40" yorigin="40" origunit="px" orientation="portrait">
>             <layer id="layer0" name="Background" level="0" visible="yes"
>                 printable="yes">
>                 <imgframeobj idref="fimg0"/>
>                 <textframeobj idref="ftxt0"/>
>            </layer>
>         </page>
>     </canvas>
>  
>
Ah, yes. Exactly what I'm talking about.  And, aside from Craig's 
concerns, a goal to have the markup usable by external tools can only 
help in the long run.  For example, there is nothing to be gained by 
making it virtually impossible for OpenOffice to import a Scribus file.  
Maybe an alternative to making a presentation and exporting to PDF could 
be to import into Impress?  (I sure don't like using Impress to make 
presentations, even though there are some (literal) bells and whistles 
that are interesting.)

Greg