Don, I'm glad that we seem to have answered your question. Sorry about hijacking the thread but I hope you - and other people - are finding the conversation interesting, if not useful.
a.l.e, I think I can see where you are coming from with the "non tools" toolbars.
I sill use the open and save buttons quite a lot but, on the other hand, I don't ever use any of the copy/paste buttons, and I sometimes use some keyboard shortcuts but not a lot of them. (Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I ever used a copy/paste function from a toolbar in any application.) I use a mix of all three which is something I've got used to doing from the very early days of GUIs. People just use what they're used to using.
Having said that, I think you're also right that most of the file functions are the same in most applications. Again, back to early GUI days, operations like opening files and copy and paste were not things that most people were used to doing and so the designers put the tools up-front where people could see them.
Nowadays, however, if someone doesn't know about stuff like opening files and pasting then they're probably so new to computers that they really need to learn how to do the basics first and Scribus is not for people who know so little. That might sound a bit harsh but an application shouldn't have to teach people how to use GUIs, not these days.
So I can see your point about not having the file and edit toolbars shown. As an experiment I've changed my Scribus configuration to match what was in your screenshot. If I haven't tried it I can't complain about it. I'll see how I get on with things.
As you say, this matches how applications like Inkscape and GIMP work. It does seem to have a more "modern" feel and getting Scribus to look more modern is normally going to be a good thing. To be blunt the Scribus UI is still very much stuck in the mid-to-late 90's and it could do with a bit of a spruce-up. I'm hoping that the excellent work that Martin has been doing on the IndigoDock will eventually make it into mainstream Scribus (people can find it here
http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,1617.0.html if they don't know about it). That will be a huge step in the right direction.
So, anyway, yeah - I think you're right. There should always be a way for people to get whichever toolbars they need but they don't all need to be there from the start.
P.S. And yes, the PP should always be displayed every time that Scribus starts up. Scribus isn't very usable without the PP and it can confuse some users who close it simply because it can be closed. The PP
is the Scribus tools really. Thought: Could the tools on the toolbar be integrated into the PP in some way? Hmm... Drag a text frame icon from the text tab to create a text frame, drag a colours icon from the colours tab to use the eyedropper, etc. Interesting...