[scribus] stable sort of (was "No mails...)

[Steven Dayton]

John,

Thanks for the non-hostile comments. I want to call them useful but I don't
think much is useful for my situation. But at least you had something to
say. Honestly I haven't had any complaints with Vista up till now and I have
been using it for about a year and a half. I use Mac and Windows XP at work
because I have a whole range of apps where some of them are Windows only
such as Adobe LiveCycle Designer and others the department supports on the
Mac. And even at home I have some Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended and LiveCycle
Designer which as far as I am aware are Window only apps so it isn't likely
that I am going to dump it all just to get Linux. Although I wouldn't mind
delving into it. I like to think I'm biased.

Admittedly I am just starting out with Scribus and have just played around
with very small documents and as yet no "real" jobs. So I have a way to go
before I am half way proficient at it. Scribus has only crashed once and so
far all is not lost. The automatic backup in this case would I think be an
excellent idea. I realize Scribus is a growing and developing app and I
expect to see it improve. The open source bug has bitten me. And as to the
advise on creating large books in smaller chunks I think that is well worth
keeping in mind.

So again thanks for some encouraging and helpful remarks.
             
Steven Dayton


-----Original Message-----
I suspect the above was written tongue in cheek. 
It's not luck. Linux doesn't crash. Most of my Linux 
applications never crash. I typeset books using pdftex or 
more rarely Context flavors of TeX.   I use the Vim editor. 
The nature of TeX is that it runs in read-only fashion. If 
it errors off then the original file is untouched. 

I have found from my limited use that Scribus 1.3.3.12 and 
later versions of 1.3.5 don't crash either.  In my TeX work 
I am protected because Gvim keeps a continuous backup copy 
under another name as editing proceeds.  Perhaps Scribus 
could adopt a similar automatic backup method. 


With respect to Windows the reported info is that it became 
more stable when XP was offered. Vista is too new to 
evaluate. Most users with XP experience hate Vista. I have 
a neighbor who hates Vista but won't go back to XP because 
Vista is "the latest thing".  But many businesses refuse to 
upgrade to Vista from XP. My wife who has not used anything 
else loves Vista . Go figure. 

 I have Win 2000 on a seldom-used partitition. 

Individual applications such as MSWord can crash if they are 
overloaded with too much data or functionality.  I monitor 
many mailing lists and help moderate one. More than once I 
have seen a tear-stained e-mail where someone has lost 
their entire book with no backup whilst trying to create it 
with spellchecker, grammar checker, TOC and indexing all 
turned on simultaneously.  And because it runs so slowly 
with a big book breaking the book up into idividual files 
is almost a routine practice.

Scribus also has problems with very large documents and I 
suspect this is a function of the basic design. The Scribus 
Manual was broken into segments and developed that way or 
so I am told. But I am happy to use Scribus for those 
applications where it blows the competition away such as 
book covers.
-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters
http://wexfordpress.com