[scribus] Speed and CPU

[John Jason Jordan]

Scribus has always been slow, and 1.3.5 Rc2 is no exception. I am
currently working on a moderately long and complex document (a book),
but even when I did the cover as a separate file Scribus was pretty
slow. I mean, click on an item and it takes two or three seconds before
it appears selected on the screen. And after selecting an object I
cannot drag it for about ten seconds; longer if it is a complex object.
My platform is Ubuntu Jaunty x96_64, up to date. My two year old
computer has an Intel Core2 Due T7300 2.00GHz and 4 GB of RAM. The
video is nVidia Quadro NVS 140M and I am using the open source driver,
although I have tried the proprietary driver and there was no
appreciable difference.

I read here comments that Scribus is fairly quick on 64-bit computers.
That leads me to wonder if there is something in my configuration that
is making Scribus not take advantage of all the resources available.

While working on my current project System Monitor reports Scribus as
using close to a GB of RAM, but the CPU usage is not as high as I would
expect. For example, while waiting to be able to drag a complex object
I would expect the CPU usage to max out, but it does not. I also have a
little CPU speed indicator applet in the Gnome panel which shows 800 -
1200 - 1600 - 2000 depending on the speed. While waiting for Scribus to
do something it usually stays at 800.

The computer is a notebook, so perhaps there is something in power
management that is throttling back the CPU in order to save the
battery, even though I am almost always on the mains. Unfortunately, I
am not familiar enough with Linux to know what to poke at. 

Any comments and suggestions welcome.