Feedback: Getting better Scribus support in K/Ubuntu; bug rundown

[Paul Sladen]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, MaHan wrote:

Hello Maciej,

We got to hear about your email via the Ubuntu marketing list as the result
and Ubuntu Weekly News feature showing off Scribus.

> Scribus users, contributors (like myself), developers have been trying
> to attract Ubuntu makers' attention to various grave issues in Ubuntu
> for many months,

Scribus is one of several very high quality applications in the Free
Software world---and the flag-carrier for Desktop Publishing.

You can rest assured that everyone connected with Ubuntu *wants* to have the
best Scribus support possible, even if things aren't quite there (yet).

I'm sorry that nobody has picked up some on the issues that we need to
improve to create a feeling of excellent support for Scribus on K/Ubuntu
earlier.

I have located the meta-bug in the Mantis-based Scribus bugtracker, listing
all those issues that look like they might be related to K/Ubuntu. I've
tried to go through each of the reports linked from the meta page:

  Meta-page list of Scribus<->K/Ubuntu issues
  http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4423

There are links to both the Scribus and Launchpad bug trackers;


  Scribus crashes on File->New from template.
  http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=4338

I've had a look at this one and I can't replicate it specifically under
Ubuntu edgy.  Hopefully this one can be tracked down when the original
reporter's package version and distribution are known.  At a guess this
template crash may be more general, such as missing templates or not having
the correct fonts to render a preview.


  Scribus translations in Rosetta
  http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=3990

Rosetta is used for making it easy for non-developers to contribute to
translations.  Various Qt/KDE programs, including Scribus are now using a
new XML-based '.ts' translation format.  After helpful follow-ups on the 
scribus bugtracker, I've filed a report:

  https://launchpad.net/bugs/68959

that Rosetta and the build-time Ubuntu language-pack stripping should both
support detecting/collecting '.ts' files aswell as '.po' to avoid
duplicating translation work already performed by the Scribus teams!


  Default Qt Font-face setting needed
  http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=3291

I think from reading this bug it is actually about whether Qt is configured
to perform glyph substitution automatically;  and it maybe that on an 
GNOME-based Ubuntu, Qt has not been configured in this way.  I've asked for
confirmation and example of how Qt can be configured to perform substitution
for missting characters automatically.


  Qt Spinboxes are broken on Dapper if 'scim_qtimm' is installed
  http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=3826
  https://launchpad.net/bugs/37711

In the shipped Dapper there were four separate issues, that together
made/makes SCIM (input for far-eastern Asian languages) less useful.
Matt Zimmerman eventually got to the bottom of these multiple issues in:

  https://launchpad.net/bugs/57081

In K/Ubuntu we try to make input for as many languages as possible out of
the box, so some form of SCIM input maybe enabled quite widely.  I am,
myself, not entirely clear about the root cause of the problem, but it
appears to be to do (possibly) with patches made to Qt to allow extra SCIM
input functionality beyond the stand 'XIM' protocol.  The solution maybe the
following bug which askes for an UVF exception for a new version of
'scim-bridge'.

  https://launchpad.net/bugs/66205

Some hints as to what may be happening are at:

  http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/suse-cjk/kde-input-style.html

and it seems to come down to whether possibily completions are displayed
*in* the widget (such as a spinbox), or *over* the widget.  Over the Widget
means that the completion is not pasted back to the widget until the
completion is finalised.  A spin-box having a constraint (eg. "great that
zero") may complain at a half-completed result and instead set the spinbox
value to zero.  I have added a comment to the Launchpad bug.


  Gnome offers no GUI way to manage fonts
  https://launchpad.net/bugs/66833

GNOME (used in the Ubuntu environment) currently has no GUI-based font
manager, as found in KDE (used in the Kubuntu environment).  There is a
feature request open upstream in GNOME and I have forwarded on this request.


  Qt/SCIM issues
  https://launchpad.net/bugs/37711

Qt/SCIM issues are covered above.  I'm unsure which Qt/'qtimm'/'scim-*'
package this should actually be assigned to.


  Lohit Punjabi Regular font is broken
  https://launchpad.net/bugs/45565

When 'qt.rc' is unconfigured, it seems that a random font is selected;  in
this case a broken font.  I have reassigned this to 'ttf-indic-fonts' which
generates the 'ttf-malayalam-fonts' package.  It would be useful if somebody
could track down /what/ is actually broken about this Truetype file.


  qt doesn't work properly due to broken scim-qtimm
  https://launchpad.net/bugs/68142

One suggestion offered was moving 'scim-qtimm' to Recommends: so that
'kubuntu-desktop' doesn't have to be removed if the 'qtimm' package is
removed.  This cause behind this bug is actually broken Qt/SCIM support and
I've marked it as a bug of the earlier issue mentioned above:

  https://launchpad.net/bugs/37711


Summary:
========

Hopefully the exhaustive round-up above pushes most of these bug reports to
the correct locations where they should be.  Here's what we're left to work
on and improve:

  Scribus uses '.ts' into '.po' translation, which are not handled yet.

  Add a 'qt.rc' to allow Qt glyph subsituation when KDE is not installed.
  Qt/SCIM badness (Ubuntu patch that broke the ABI?  Probably fixed)
  Broken Punjabi font that needs fixing.

  Wishlist for GNOME to have a GUI font management applet to match KDE.
  Crash on New Template.  (Probably best handled by Scribus developers)

That sounds a much easier bite-sized list to cope with now.  =-)

Here's to even better Scribus, Kubuntu and Ubuntu experiences in the future!

	-Paul
-- 
High on a tall bridge, surrounded by noisy lorries.  London, GB