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Like most open source solutions, Scribus is so close to being usable, but ends up failing on the most basic of usability issues. Why can't I change the text pro

by franga2000 5y ago

Like most open source solutions, Scribus is so close to being usable, but ends up failing on the most basic of usability issues. Why can't I change the text properties of multiple text boxes at once? Why does text formatting reset when I delete all content in a box and start typing again? Why does the page stick the left side of the screen until I get to a certain zoom level when it starts being draggable again? Where are multi-color guides?

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I think we can safely say that desktop open source applications are never going to have the polish of their commercial counterparts. None of the things you asked for are hard but the volunteer labor you are relying on is interested in other things. The only time open source really works is where it happens to intersect with some commercial interest.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  Desktop open source applications is a broad category. I can list a few that are decidedly better than their commercial counterparts: VLC media player, qBittorrent, Firefox*, Calibre In fact, their commercial counterparts are and were so terrifically terrible, it put teenage me on a journey to discover better alternatives and how I discovered FLOSS in the first place. What you probably mean is 'Professional' desktop applications are provably never going to match commercial counterparts. In which case, at least for Software Dev work, it hasn't been true for decades. For creative work, commercial vendors have a tendency to squeeze out more from their customer base after a while, and that provides an opportunity to sneak in. FLOSS can also keep on trucking under the radar and suddenly appear to be good enough one day. Blender is an excellent example.
- criddell 5y ago
  I think open source developers are also limited by their tools. They often want to make something cross platform so they end up using Qt or Gnome or Electron and these already put you behind. Thinking about it now, I guess it's another example of prioritizing differently, or as you said, interest in other things.
raffraffraff 5y ago
My wife uses it, hates it, finds workarounds for its weird issues. After several years using it she still doesn't like it. Her biggest complaints: bold/italic, and hitting return in a text box switches back to the default font. To be fair to her, she's not what you'd call "into tech". Not clueless by long chalk, but not into exploring every inch of a product. I've offered to sit with her and go through some of the issues, but she just stick to her current workflow and bitch about it occasionally. Part of me knows what she feels like. A lot of people never learn vim, bitch about it when they find themselves on a remote server having to edit a long config file in vim, but still never learn vim. In the case of Scribus, her biggest gripe isn't a bug it's a "WON'T FIX STOP ASKING"

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

I think we can safely say that desktop open source applications are never going to have the polish of their commercial counterparts. None of the things you asked for are hard but the volunteer labor you are relying on is interested in other things. The only time open source really works is where it happens to intersect with some commercial interest.

e3bc54b2 5y ago
Desktop open source applications is a broad category. I can list a few that are decidedly better than their commercial counterparts: VLC media player, qBittorrent, Firefox*, Calibre In fact, their commercial counterparts are and were so terrifically terrible, it put teenage me on a journey to discover better alternatives and how I discovered FLOSS in the first place. What you probably mean is 'Professional' desktop applications are provably never going to match commercial counterparts. In which case, at least for Software Dev work, it hasn't been true for decades. For creative work, commercial vendors have a tendency to squeeze out more from their customer base after a while, and that provides an opportunity to sneak in. FLOSS can also keep on trucking under the radar and suddenly appear to be good enough one day. Blender is an excellent example.
criddell 5y ago
I think open source developers are also limited by their tools. They often want to make something cross platform so they end up using Qt or Gnome or Electron and these already put you behind. Thinking about it now, I guess it's another example of prioritizing differently, or as you said, interest in other things.

raffraffraff 5y ago

My wife uses it, hates it, finds workarounds for its weird issues. After several years using it she still doesn't like it. Her biggest complaints: bold/italic, and hitting return in a text box switches back to the default font. To be fair to her, she's not what you'd call "into tech". Not clueless by long chalk, but not into exploring every inch of a product. I've offered to sit with her and go through some of the issues, but she just stick to her current workflow and bitch about it occasionally. Part of me knows what she feels like. A lot of people never learn vim, bitch about it when they find themselves on a remote server having to edit a long config file in vim, but still never learn vim. In the case of Scribus, her biggest gripe isn't a bug it's a "WON'T FIX STOP ASKING"