[scribus] Multiple instances of Scribus

John Brown johnbrown105 at hotmail.com
Mon Apr 28 17:58:11 CEST 2008


Gregory Pittman wrote:
> 
> John Brown wrote:
>> It's not really a "Linux feature". On Windows, at any rate, you can run any
>> number of instances of an app at the same time. If the developer wants to
>> prevent multiple instances, he must take special measures.
>>   
> Well, yes this is a Linux feature. Prior to Linux, the standard desktop 
> computer behavior was to not allow one to start up a program already 
> running. If Windows or Macs or whatever behave this way now, it's an 
> adoption of this Linux behavior, not something they invented.

If you say so, but I would regularly open two instances of Notepad or Write
so that I could copy and paste between 2 files, starting with Windows 3.1 in 1993.
I remember also being slightly annoyed whenever I ran a program that only 
allowed one instance at a time (I can't think of any right now, they were very rare).
In those days, they would have been copying the Mac, if copying is the right word,
as I don't consider running multiple instances of a program to be a feature.


>> I don't think that it is too much to ask that you at least get a warning that
>> the file is already open. Vi gives such a warning.
>>   
> I note that emacs also does this, but it's not universal. Kedit doesn't 
> complain at all. Which is "right"?
> 

The "right" one is the one that takes a small step to avoid what could be a 
big problem. It's just a word to the wise. Nobody is trying to prevent you from
editing the same file twice if that is what you really want to do.

> And why/how would someone have two versions of Scribus running with the 
> same file? Presumably they would know why they were doing that, and take 
> responsibility for various things that might happen.
> 

Anyone can make a mistake. You might open a number of files at the same time,
so that you can copy and paste. You double-click on files in your file manager
one after the other. By the time that you get to 3 or 4, especially if the files are
not in the same directory, you might forget that you already opened a file.
The files that you are working on may be similar (different versions of your
masterpiece in progress) so that the fact that it looks familiar does not give you
a clue that it is actually the identical one.

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