[scribus] Using SVN for Scribus sla files

Calum Polwart cpolwart at wittongilbert.free-online.co.uk
Wed Oct 1 00:28:42 CEST 2008


I work on a small newsletter project.  While I understand how workflow
should be getting others to play nicely is difficult so there seems to
be a relatively large amount if editing done (spelling, typos, grammar
occasionally rewording to fit something into space)after I've added to
the scribus layout.

I'm increasingly thinking it would be better to share the document in an
editable format with the editor.  But as we are 350miles apart to work
in real-time this would need to be - either:

- A 'Shared Drive' on a Virtual Private Network
- A SubVersioning System

Share Drive has several disadvantages.  Only one person can edit the
file at once being one of the main ones.  If I leave the file open and
go out for 8 hours (as I tend to!) its locked for the whole time.  It'd
need a VPN and while I could set that up rest assured the Editor would
have issues!  File names may be problematic - I work on linux - he works
on Windows.  VPN may be quite slow.  By the time the document is
finished it usually creates a 60Mb PDF - so that'd be bandwidth hungry
and I suspect slow.

SVN on the other-hand MAY allow dual user edits - after all the file is
an XML file - so basically plain text?  There are windows GUI front ends
 for SVN - all he'd basically need to do would be click "update/commit".
 SVN would use a local file so should be quicker to work with in terms
of edits and bandwidth would only by the sla file and any other
added/edited files not every file every time.  My biggest concern (apart
from the XML not actually being "mergable" would be file names?)

Looking for anyone who actually does this or something to achieve the
same result to chip in and tell me what they think?


Calum




More information about the scribus mailing list