Hello! I am currently struggeling with a book theh I am trying to set up nicely with Scribus. After having made the switch to Scribus for Broschures and a magazine I am now experiencing all kinds of drawbacks with the book I am working on. In the hope of getting some good tips I am now making this summary. Perhaps it could be used in the online manual or as a separate tip page, I have not seen one that goes in depth about this. At least it would be welcomed if users experiencing--or working--with other big documents in Scribus could share their experiences.
I am aware of some bug reports (of wich I can not remember the numbers) that adresses some of, or all, the problems I am mentioning. 0. Before I start my summary of what works and what not: I am using Scribus 1.3.3.7 built from sources on Kubuntu edgy. Machine: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+, 2 GB RAM. My book has approximately 140--150 pages (A5), distributed over linked frames, one at each page (except for the first four starter pages). 1. Big documents are said to be a problem, and I see this is true, although is has certainly improved since 1.3.3.5 (or something like that). I can now scroll my text in the story editor quite normally, I am also able to scroll through my pages in the viewing mode quite normally as well as resizing the pages pretty fast -- these three things were very slow earlier, so thank you :-) 2. Specific problems: a) Copying and pasting within the story editor takes forever, even if it is only onecharacter, but, strange enough, writing or getting the same sign from the "Insert -- Glyph" takes forever, I have not bothered waiting long enough (More than 20 min. I think) to see if this is just a delay or a crash. If this is not formerly reported I could try to check it out. b) Opening the document takes about 10 minutes or more, opening the story editor about the same amount of time, but a single text frame of just one page opens instantly. That means it could be solved if the document can be separate into *smaller* chained frames. Probably this would not make the document open faster, would it? Opening the documnt is not that big an issue, I probably only need to do this once a day anyway, but: c) Since I can not have more than *one* story editor window open at the same time I have to close the opened one to edit another. That makes me have to wait (and makes me think it perhaps is not so bad an idea to have it all in the same linked frames--since this leaves me fewer close-and-open-processes). d) Swithing the style of more than one (small) paragraph may take several minutes. Since I have to make many changes in such a big document this is really a drawback. In a smaller document with fewer paragraphs linked in one this is insignificant, so for this to be solved I could have cut my text into many independently linked frame units. But this would give me other problems, se above. e) It also takes a minute or so to go from one frame to another (in *editing* mode), so this is not a particulary efficient way of working, except that I then am able to see what it all looks like and spot things I may have overseen. 2. Possible solutions a) Make many small documents, Subdiveded in chapters for instance. * Advantage: Fast * Disadvantage: More work, for instance the same style could be inconsistent across different parts of the document. I also don't know if my printer would accept not one pdf file but three or four. * Suggestion: Could it be possible to make a main document, like OOo does, and then through the use of sub documents keep the same style across them all, load and work faster etc.?? Also then the printer wopuld probably want the main doucument to be exported as one single pdf-file afterwards, just a thought :-) b) Make smaller chains of frames (se above) c) Make just one big chain with all the text in it (se above) As I see it all of these soulutions are suboptimal at the moment, unless I have overseen something, in wich case I would be glad to be told what I have missed :-) Probably there is more to this, but it ought to be possible to work fast with big documents too, I hope. OOo can, Pagemaker can (at last faster), and I suppose others can too ... If this would be solved it would be a big leap forwards as far as I am concerned :-D Best regards Axel Bojer
