How to Recover My Files

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a.l.e

is "Adventures in the Land of Fate.sla" your real file?

all other files are rescue files and if you're having issue, there are good chances that they are broken...
anyway, "Adventures in the Land of Fate.sla" is 2.2Gb... not sure i will be able to open it... i also have limited memory... but i'll give it a try...

gmlent

Yes, Adventures in the Land of Fate is the main file. That's the one i was working on when it crashed and I have since been unable to open it.

I didn't know there was a size limit to what Scribus could handle.

Thank you for your help!

a.l.e

There is no hard limit to the size of the documents.

It all depends on the RAM (and speed of the processor / hard disk) you have.

The simplest rule is: if Scribus is getting slow because of the size of the document, create multiple files.

gmlent

I guess that makes sense, and I sure wish I'd known/thought of it last week!

a.l.e

i could open Adventures in the Land of Fate.sla by first removing all images.

probably, i can  provide you with a set of files with parts of the document (one per section?) in each and the images as separate linked files...

... but this will require some work, so if you're planning to earn money with this document,  it would be nice if you could compensate my effort.

gmlent

Interesting. So the issue I was having is due to embedding the images? The whole reason I embedded them was because the file kept crashing trying to load them every time. This really feels like a no-win situation.

Compensating you for your time and help only seems fair. What were you thinking?


a.l.e

no, the issue is not that the images are embedded.

the issue is that scribus does not manage "well" the resources.

embedding the images will increase the need for resources, but even if you did not embed, the amount of images and pages in your document would probably become an issue at some time.

finally, i'd suggest that i recover the files and, then tell you how much time it took to me (i think it will be something between 1 and 1 1/2 hours) plus the half an hour i l already spent on your issue, and you will define how much it is worth for you.

gmlent

That sounds fair enough, and thank you!

It doesn't need to be a new file per section, though. Could we do Chapters 1-3, Chapter 4, then the rest? So 3 total .sla files. Chapter 4 is the most image-intensive portion of the book.

Does that work?

Thank you!

a.l.e

i've sent you a link to the "rescued" file in a private message.

it's all in one single document, but i'm able to open this as "fast" as the backup from january, so you should also be able to open it.

if you can't open it, just say so and i'll split it in multiple files for you.

for splitting it, you can simply open the file, save it as a copy and then delete the pages you don't want to keep in that part of the document.
repeat until you have small enough chunks you can comfortably work with (most of the time the limit is by 50 to 80 pages...)

later, i'll upload the script i've used for extracting the images from the .sla... if somebody is curious or for those who will have a similar issue in the future.

ciao
a.l.e


a.l.e

hi

for future reference, this is the script i've used to extract the embedded images from the scribus file:

https://github.com/aoloe/scribus-script-collection/blob/master/extract-embedded-images/extract-embedded-images.py

it runs outside of scribus.

the hard part has been to find out how to convert the base64 gzipped (with qcompress) string to an image file...

gmlent

Quote from: a.l.e on March 22, 2020, 06:11:32 PM
i've sent you a link to the "rescued" file in a private message.

it's all in one single document, but i'm able to open this as "fast" as the backup from january, so you should also be able to open it.

if you can't open it, just say so and i'll split it in multiple files for you.

for splitting it, you can simply open the file, save it as a copy and then delete the pages you don't want to keep in that part of the document.
repeat until you have small enough chunks you can comfortably work with (most of the time the limit is by 50 to 80 pages...)

later, i'll upload the script i've used for extracting the images from the .sla... if somebody is curious or for those who will have a similar issue in the future.

ciao
a.l.e

Thank you! You really saved the day here.

How long did it end up taking you? And is the email you sent it from connected to your PayPal?

jack_cat

It does seem that you might try re-arranging your work flow. I have been through several iterations.

> It's not necessary to embed all images in Scribus files in order to embed them in the PDF. It just makes the .sla file
huge. I think  that .svg images do have to be embedded. But if .png, they don't, and they still will embed themselves in the PDF file, which will be just as huge as ever with those 600 DPI images.

> I have learned to keep each Chapter in its own scribus file so that the files are smaller, not overloaded with images,
and Scribus does not cludge down as it did with larger files.

> I also export every chapter to an individual PDF file, and I can deal with these 12 or 15 smaller PDF files a lot easier
than one big one. _Anybody_ can then assemble them in order with a PDF tool. Note that you have to go to the setup and set the page numbers for each chapter individually before you go to PDF.

> Having a whole lot of images scattered around the hard drive is a royal nuisance if you want to edit one. IMO it is much better to copy each image to a "graphics" sub-folder under the one the .sla file is in, so that you can find the file when you want to. If you have to go back to a GIMP (or, Illustrator, Photoshop, Inkscape, etc.) file to edit one, then when you are first collecting the pics into your subfolder, just put another subfolder where you can put the associated Gimp files as well, so they are handy. 

> the "Collect for Output" function is a piece of gold, it really works well for collecting all those graphics files that you have already got scattered around. Check it out. The only thing it won't do is bring your GIMP or INKSCAPE source files along.

> Here is a proposed course of action to consider: Take that giant file, when you get it repaired, and immediately do "save as" a dozen times or so as necessary as Chap_1, Chap_2, etc. Then, open each file individually and chop out everything else except one chapter (careful). Then, do "Collect for Output" to a completely new folder structure. Each Chapter needs its own folder for "Collect to Output", so set these up first. The .sla file and all of its associated graphics will be dumped together into a folder. Note that you cannot cut and paste the .sla file anywhere else, because it will break the internal links, but what you can do, if you want all of the .sla chapter files to be in the folder above where all the folders with the graphics are, then you have to do a save-as individually for each one, and then you can delete the .sla file that is in the folder with all the images.

Make a separate folder called PDF_output, and put all of your exported PDFs in there, where they can be assembled, or zipped, or whatever. When it comes time to send this all to your printer, if you have to do that online, it will be a lot easier to transfer the smaller PDFs. If your POD company is sympathetic, they will assemble the PDFs, but in fact that seems unlikely. But check it out. Hope your get your files fixed.

jack