Hi Mike > The question: What is the goal of the developers?
I think the best answer is to produce a DTP/layout/assembly (your definitions you mentioned) program of professional quality - to allow users to be able to replace other apps on Linux, and compete with those same apps on OSX and Windows (and any other platform for that matter). That puts Scribus with an aim to reach to the stars, where in the professional world, the liftoff and man hours are provided by those well known companies to get them there, and about 10 years advance over Scribus. As for imposition, as you specifically mentioned it, as I have rarely come across a print shop that wanted it done for them - it is a little hard to place in terms of requirement. We certainly see the need for the basics for those wanting to replace the functionality in say MS Pub, but to go all the way and replace the software worth thousands specifically designed for imposition.. well.. one day.. but maybe not on our first priority list. So we skipped a few years, most people have reviewed Scribus at a "Quark 4" level in most areas (on what, I cannot say right now). In some things, its way ahead. Yes it is true, we are currently 100% unfunded and 100% part-time. At this point, that amounts to 4-8 hours per night, for up to about 8 people all working full-time elsewhere. All in all, at this point, I would say with busy schedules included, that 4-8 hours might be a maximum spent total per day for the whole team. Without funding of some sort, this won't increase unless we are on holidays from our real work. The time spent will also increase once we get 1.3.5 done - its a major work that is just taking along time to get finished up, and we will all party hard when 1.3.5 is finally out the door. As for stability - there is Scribus 1.3.3.x. We are making VERY few changes to it. It works for many tasks and works well. There are bugs, and there are issues in certain uses of the program, but it is pretty stable and usable. No more new features are going into 1.3.3.x, and I do not expect we will release anything after 1.3.3.13. 1.3.3.x can open all files from before it, 1.3.5svn should be able to open all files from before it. 1.3.5svn is what is being worked on and we really are working on a lot of small finishing touches, while slowly working through any major issues outstanding. Looking at the bug tracker open bug count is a little deceiving - many of those bugs, or specifically features, just wont be fixed until we are at something like Scribus 1.6 or 3.0 (random guess). People do dream up wonderful ideas but many take a long time to do, or require substantial underlying changes to be even able to start on them. > Now I know you have been working on this application for at least five > years, and are currently working on a new version. As a (potential) user, I > would like to see, once the new version (1.3.5?) is released, that you spend > time cleaning up the bug reports and polishing the application to make it a > truly effective package for the printing industry. I wish I had had > something like Scribus when I was in the business. You will find that many of the bugs in 1.3.3.x are already fixed in 1.3.5, including many small usability issues. Including issues created by 1.3.5 itself (moving to a new toolkit, rewriting the canvas somewhat, etc), 1.3.5 includes fixes for well over 1000 bugs. We used to do 30-100 per release maximum - 1.3.5 has covered a LOT of ground. Future development releases post 1.3.5 will be short (around 3m) and will allow us to have smaller targets, and allow added projects into the development codebase (eg GSoC additions). Eventually we will release this codebase into a new stable series. Craig
