Maybe, Sort of

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Maybe, Sort of
by Allen on Friday 11/Feb/2005, @21:23

I would like to love Scribus, but some fundamentals are keeping it a hobby toy.

The quasi-stateless sort-of XML file format drags down the performance of the rendering engine. I've never understand why it is useful to restate the color, size shade, scale, style, font name, character style, stroke, etc. etc. just because an 'A' gets kerned with a 'W'.

<ITEXT CAB="0" CCOLOR="Black" CSIZE="12" CH="A" CSHADE2="100" CSCALE="100" CSHADE="100" CSTYLE="128" CFONT="Bitstream Vera Sans Mono Roman" CEXTRA="0" CSTROKE="Black" />

<ITEXT CAB="0" CCOLOR="Black" CSIZE="12" CH="W" CSHADE2="100" CSCALE="100" CSHADE="100" CSTYLE="128" CFONT="Bitstream Vera Sans Mono Roman" CEXTRA="0" CSTROKE="Black" />

Try doing a short 100-page book with that kind of baggage! After about 10 pages, the computer is crawling. If you were driving a mechanical typesetting machine with those commands, you would wear it out. Change the font to 12 pt. Check first to see if you already have 12 pt. If so, then go to the next command. Scale the text 100%. Check first to see if the text is already scaled to 100%. If so, go to next command. This is fundamentally flawed. This is ugly. Books are out.

How about advertising? Most ads are a single page, Scribus works great for picking up pieces of art and type with your mouse and putting them exactly where you want them, but advertising demands lots of attention to manual kerning. Scribus embraces manual kerning, but you must use points to kern your text. Make an ad, kern the text by hand, send it to the art director. The art director (or client) says they want the headline larger. In the real world of setting type, you make your headline larger, the kerning also automatically scales. But in the Scribus world, you must re-kern everything you scaled. PostScript fonts are created with a unit system, 1000 units per em. In ancient days of photomechanical typesetting, there were 52 units per em. The unit system is an old standard. It works because it makes sense when you have a single font which is scaled mathematically. Kerning by points is stupid.

And a half a pica is six points, not .5 pica.

There, I feel better now. I'm just an old fart, but I did spend years working for Linotype AG, and am a master typographer (if I was still a member of the ITU). I know what I'm talking about and realize that I'm coming across as an asshole.

The CYMK tiff handling works perfectly for me, and I think the handling of svg graphics is great. Don't wast time writing an import filter for pdf files. You'll never be able to edit them well. Look at how awful it is to edit imported pdfs in Illustrator. Please forget new gimmicky features. Try and figure out a way to fix your file (internally and externally) format. Stateful is beautiful when it is a stream of beautiful glyphs. Fix the basics.

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Re: Maybe, Sort of
by Craig Bradney on Saturday 12/Feb/2005, @04:05

If you had bothered to perhaps read a little more of our plans you might have realised a new file format is due within our 1.3 development cycle. Most of the things you say will be gone in 1.3, if they even still exist in 1.3.

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Re: Maybe, Sort of
by ac on Sunday 13/Feb/2005, @01:31

> If you had bothered to perhaps read a little more of our plans

"(CB) The other attraction ... is the overall friendliness of the community, whether on the mailing list or on IRC."

I guess this doesn't include the KDE Dot.

Also if you live in AU then why do you have a business in Luxemborg?

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Don't rant, help!
by konqui-fan on Saturday 12/Feb/2005, @06:25

Allen,

can you please submit 5 to 10 well-written bug reports about your findings? That is way better than ranting. Or go to #scribus on IRC (irc.freenode.net) and talk directly to the developers.

The Scribus bugs database is here: http://bugs.scribus.org/

So if you really are a long-year typographic pro -- why dont you offer your help directly to the Scribus team?

I am sure, if your arguments make sense (I can't tell, I am not a DTP pro), then the nice people from the Scribus Team are the first ones to listen to and take advice from a pro, and not just dismiss it.

Belittling Scribus as a "hobby toy" may be regarded as a bit of offensive, though. Because Scribus *is* already being used to produce professional publications....

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Re: Maybe, Sort of
by Craig Bradney on Saturday 12/Feb/2005, @08:13

Adding to my previous comment. What you say is not entirely correct.

-The XML you quote results from a) hyphenation (needs fixing), b) overly explicit XML. Both of these will be fixed in 1.3. Fixing our file is fairly easy, so dont make a big fuss over it.
-The slowness you see with large amounts of text has almost nothing to do with a) XML b) the above formatting.
-Why shouldnt we write a PDF importer? Its not at all gimmicky, especially given the number of requests we have for it. Perhaps being in the industry so long means you are one of the many PDF haters out there.

Anyway, happy to see your bug reports, patches and fixes based on your DTP Pro knowledge on http://bugs.scribus.net.

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XML format
by Craig Ringer on Sunday 13/Feb/2005, @07:18

There are many other reasons to improve the file format, too. As Craig Bradney has noted, that's on the plans already - I understand the development team are aware of the issues and future needs in that area. Scribus doesn't work with the XML as you edit the document, however - it's interpreted on load and generated anew on save - so that's not behind the performance issues you mention.

The performance issues you've observed with large bodes of text are actually mostly to do with the current redraw and text reflow code. I understand that work is progressing on this, too, though like everything else it depends on time, manpower, and the personal priorities of those doing the work. I'm sure help would be appreciated ;-)

Personally I think it would be useful if you could file a feature request on http://bugs.scribus.net/ (user account required, but easy to set up) regarding the kerning issue. Assuming there's nothing along those lines up there already, that is - I'll admit I haven't had a look. It seems something worth keeping track of, as I tend to agree with you that one generally wants the kerning to be relative to the font size rather than a fixed point-size adjustment. Complaining about it on the dot won't solve the problem ... but filing a bug will at least make sure it's not forgotten.

I tend to agree on the matter of PDF personally - because it would be _extremely_ hard to get right. Even Acrobat can't do much to edit a PDF without an additional plug-in like PitStop ... and it's by the people who literally wrote the book on PDF. That said, Scribus is an open source project - so if someone wants to write a PDF importer, who's to stop them?

Ah well, I think that's enough of my blather for now. As always, all this is just my personal opinion as a regular user of the app and (allegedly) a DTP support pro.

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