Bug#362266: ITP: scribus-ng -- developmental version of the desktop publishing program Scribus
* Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net> [2006-04-15 08:58:31 -0500]:
> On 12-Apr-06, 23:44 (CDT), Oleksandr Moskalenko <malex@debian.org> wrote:
> > This package contains "new generation" branch of
> > scribus that is still in active development, but is a lot more featureful
> > compared to the stable 1.2.x branch ("scribus" package) and sufficiently
> > stable to warrant its inclusion into the Debian distribution.
>
> Then why not just upload it as the new version of 'scribus' in unstable? Why
> do we need a whole new package?
>
> Steve
Steve,
I've been maintaining separate packages of stable and developmental trees of
scribus in an upstream repository for more then a year and decided to
introduce scribus-ng into the Debian archive after a long deliberation. The
experience shows that the way Scribus is developed and usage patterns of
different classes of Scribus users e.g. casual versus professional publishers
ratify having two packages. My personal communications with the upstream
developers and users of the -ng package and respective bug handling over a
long time also supports this conclusion. For example, scribus-ng has features
that some users "must have" for certain projects, but using it may require
more effort then what many casual users expect to produce. Developmental
timetable also calls for disruptive changes in the next few point releases
before 1.4 is finished. Then, there is the question of people who wouldn't use
anything outside the main Debian archive i.e. upstream repositories and yet
would benefit from using Scribus 1.3.x series. More widespread testing would
also be a plus for the development as the recent experience of the upstream
team with porting Scribus 1.3.x to Windows shows.
Regards,
Alex.
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