[scribus] Multiple instances of Scribus

[Terry Hancock]

John Brown wrote:
> I really don't care if Scribus allows you to open a file more than once
> or not, even if I canot think of a good reason why somebody would
> deliberately do that.
> 
> If it wants to stop you, there are several methods:
> 1) Silent refusal (emacs)
> 2) Loud refusal (Excel)
> 3) Allow only read-only copies (Word)
> 
> Again, I don't care.
> 
> However, if it allows you to open a file more than once, it should
> give you a warning before it lets you go ahead. That is my only
> requirement.

Vim handles this extremely well.

It gives you a menu of choices for what to do if you try to reopen a
file with a new instance of Vim:

* "Open read-only" (great if your real need is to review part of the
file while editing another part in another window)

* "Edit anyway" (dumps the lock, which is good if you know it's just a
stale lock)

* "Recover" the old state (this uses information from the swap file,
which  also acts as the lock, to recover lost edits. Again this makes
sense for a stale swap file, since it probably means the program crashed
before)

* "Quit" & "Abort" both abandon the operation so you can go find the
original Vim window. "Quit" actually exits the program at the same time.

If you choose "edit anyway", make changes and then save, and then go
back to the first instance (whose buffer is now out of date), you get
another menu warning you about the file being altered:

* "Load file" will synchronize the buffer to the file, so nothing is lost.

* "OK" will ignore the changes so that if you save now, you'll lose
whatever changes were made in the other instance.

This also happens if any other program edits the file. Which is great
when you are using ispell to spell-check the file. You can leave the
file open in a window during editing; then run the spell-checker on the
file; then load the file back into the buffer; and do any further
proof-reading.

IMHO, that would be the _best_ model for Scribus to follow, although I
recognize that it may be a lot of work.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com