[scribus] Scribus bundles (was : ! ;-))

[joseph harris]

Hi Craig,

And sorry everybody for not making 'off-list' be off-list; I 
claim a distracting time! I hope I am not coming across as 
negative; not my intention.

> Hi Joseph,
>
>
>> I have no beef with Scribus. I think it is a program that 
>> isn't
>> just under constant development and with tremendous 
>> flexibility,
>> but for professional use is probably now the best program to 
>> use
>> for control and quality of final product.
>>
>
> Scribus is undergoing development all the time - however, many 
> of the things
> we need to do to advance Scribus require a lot of major 
> structural changes.
> Just one of these was the Qt3- Qt4 (GUI toolkit) migration. 
> While this in
> itself was not incredibly hard to make quick progress, it has 
> lead to a lot
> of major changes for the canvas code, and related areas.
>
> I think you will find the fast paced development will pick up 
> after we
> release 1.3.5 (a development version) as we will change our 
> model of
> development slightly leading to more releases with more 
> discrete changes
> made rather than long unending changes. This should also allow 
> us to move to
> a new stable series eventually.
>
> Still, it is awhile off yet, 1.3.5 is not finished, but we are 
> working on it
> and it has seen some decent performance increases in the past 
> few weeks. We
> are also a little closer to being able to produce a proper 
> "bundle" single
> install option on the Mac for the 1.3.5 version.
>
> cya
> Craig

This is all good news, and I think the enthusiasm to get there 
shows through on this list. Constant development can only be 
good. Single bundle is one key to accessibility for a lot of 
people, and will undoubtedly increase take up.

One point (that maybe is already understood), Windows has three 
active sets of users. 98, Xp and Vista. While Vista is being 
pushed hard it not not popular with a very large group of Xp 
users and Xp may remain the main - at least strongly competing - 
OS at least until Longhorn. 98 users are much less likely to be 
in the market for scribus, and it is now probably a rump.

I am not sure that Longhorn will have more success. Xp solved the 
stability problem (I understand) and possibly SP3 has made enough 
improvements. Vista offers another learning curve, and Longhorn 
will as well. Judgement on this will affect how Windows bundles 
are planned and executed.

Joseph Harris