[Scribus] Modifying SLA files outside Scribus

[Gregory Pittman]

John Beardmore wrote:
> I've got some SLA files which may be corrupt. Ideally I'd like to 
> recover them, but to be realistic it may be quicker to recreate the 
> document.
>
> I'm working under windows XP, but I'm curious to know if the same 
> problems are encountered by linux users.  If it turns out to be a 
> general problem, I guess it could lead to a bug report.
>
> As the files have come confidential content I shouldn't really upload 
> them unmodified for others to test without modification.
>
> I understand that I should be able to examine / edit SLA files with 
> Notepad++ because they are UTF-8.  Is that right ?
>
> Can I just overwrite the confidential text with other characters, then 
> save the file for other people to try ?
>
> I assume that after the file is loaded, and certainly before it is 
> saved, I'll need to do
>
>      Format->Encode UTF-8 without BOM
>
>   
A starting point would be to simply look at them and identify what 
version they were made with, then see if you can find any loadable ones 
from the same version to compare features.
If you're going to start modifying them, make sure you use copies 
sequestered in a directory of its own, because you will want to be able 
to clean up the mess you make as you start fiddling with the files.
Once you look at them you should see content in blocks. In versions 
before 1.3.5svn you will see "<PAGEOBJECT..." blocks for various frames, 
and "<ITEXT..." blocks for text content of text frames. A simple thing 
to do might be to delete all content (PAGEOBJECTs and ITEXTs) and see if 
the file loads.

Greg