Scribus 1.4.6 repeatedly crashing when opening file

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mwatkins

I've been working on an .sla for some months now (it's about 2MB), and in recent times I've been having a lot of trouble opening it in Scribus 1.4.6. What usually happens is that it loads to 22% or 74%, and then the software stops responding and/or crashes. I'm using Windows 8.1.Sometimes it takes a couple of dozen attempts to get the document to open (and even then, it takes far longer than I think it should, getting slower as it approaches 100%). Currently I'm struggling to get it to open at all. My solution has to be to keep Scribus open all the time, but occasionally it'll crash for some other reason and then I'm stuck spending hours trying to get my file open.

Anyone know what's going on? The fact it always gets stuck at the same few % marks makes me think that there are some "glitches" of some sort in the file. Is there any way I can find these and eliminate them?

I've tried reinstalling Scribus, to no avail.

Thanks in advance for any help.
MW

GarryP

Without being able to handle the actual file - and its related fonts and images - it's difficult to say what's wrong.

Scribus is an all-in-memory type of application so it could be a memory issue. Try checking the Task Manager and seeing what kind of free memory you have before opening Scribus. Then add up:
* The size of the Scribus EXE;
* The size of all of the images in the document;
* The size of the SLA document itself;
* The size of all of the font files for the fonts used.
It's a very crude calculation, but if the total comes anywhere near to your free memory size then that could be where the problem is coming from.

Also, Scribus can have problems with either its undo stack or some other kind of memory leak. On OSX - I don't know about other OSes - prolonged use can start to fill memory up to a point where it can become unresponsive. I used to bounce Scribus every hour or so to prevent this from happening on my old memory-starved Mac.

If you have access to another machine (or a VM if memory is not tight) you might be able to try loading the document there - without the fonts you're using being installed - to see if there could be an issue with one of the fonts.

Sorry that's probably not a lot of help but, as I said, without being able to see what's going on for myself I can't really help much more.

CGood

Can the document be broken into smaller chapter sized pieces?

And a question for more expert folks than I, is there any value to trying his document on other machines with the same version of Scribus?

mwatkins

Yes, @Garry P got it right. My image files were far too big. I just changed the name of the folder they were in so Scribus couldn't find them, and the document opened immediately.

So now my challenge is to reduce my image file sizes. Perhaps I should be posting elsewhere about this, but could someone let me know the minimum resolution I should be working with so that I don't lose any image quality? With GIMP I can adjust both pixels-per-inch and image size. This allows me to cut the image size down considerably... but I've noticed Scribus (when I look at image 'info') seems to interpret GIMP's PPI as DPI, whereas I thought they were different things...so I'm a bit confused basically. Any helpful suggestions would be very welcome!

Thanks!
MW

GarryP

Glad I could help.

Try these links:
http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,1867.0.html
http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,1861.0.html
and the pages they link to.

There's a lot of information in there but they should give you a good idea about DPI/PPI and how to use images.

utnik

hi matthew

Quote from: mwatkins on February 07, 2017, 01:42:46 PM...the minimum resolution I should be working with so that I don't lose any image quality?

the required resolution depends on the print raster – ask your print shop!
300 or 350 ppi should be ok in most cases... (as the resolution of the placed image – check under 'extras' → 'manage images' → 'layout' → 'effective dpi')

Quote...I've noticed Scribus (when I look at image 'info') seems to interpret GIMP's PPI as DPI, whereas I thought they were different things...

unfortunately scribus (like many other program) calls it dpi – ppi would be correct!

utnik