Footnotes problems

[sersha]

I am using Scribus AppImage 1.5.8 on Linux Mint 21.1.
Before, I was working in Scribus on relatively small projects -  leaflets, booklets, posters and was very happy with it.

This time I am producing a book about 300 pages, mixed text and graphics. In Hindi language (which I do not really know).

And with a lot of footnotes. And here comes the trouble. More or less, any attempt to manage footnotes results in the crash due to Signal #11... And occasionally Scribus crashes without any seeming reason or cause.
So it goes like that:
Open Notes manager - Delete a footnote -Crash

Working with Mark Manager - delete 2 footnotes -  try to save - Crash

Any ideas what to do? Any way to circumvent the crashes? Is there due to Appimage installation?

PS Searching for solutions brought me to the following exchange from:
May 28, 2020, 07:32:24 PM

https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?msg=17536

describing exactly my situation.
https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=1879.0

All problems described then and there are still in 1.5.8. Very difficult is the absence of auto-sizing of the footnote frame beyond 3 lines.

So, I am stuck at this point of inserting footnotes, having done well more than half of the work. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

[PatJr]

yea, the footnotes seems to rough at best

I don't have use for these but some experimenting.
Did you try and un-weld the footnote frame and unlock the sizing?
When I tried it I also edited the footnotes so it was all in one line, no paragraph breaks,
so it was like
1) blah blah 2) blah blah 3) blah blah 4) blah blah
not
1) blah blah
2) blah blah
3) blah blah
4) blah blah

but yea, lots of unexpected things when using the Marks

[sersha]

If I understood it right, unwelding simply turns the footnote into the text frame. So it is sort of defeating the goal, which is to have an anchor into the particular piece of text.
For me, since I needed to proceed with the book, I resorted to creation of manual "footnotes" which of course do not have the connection with the main body of the text. Hope I will not have to change much there.

I wonder, are there other people who worked with the footnotes in Scribus? Maybe someone from the programming team would not mind saying a word on the matter?

[a.l.e]

i'm not from the programming team, but i can say four words about the footnotes:

"not ready for production"

[a.l.e]

btw, some time ago, i've added a ticket asking for disabling (by default) the features that are not yet ready for production:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15987

[Nermander]

But is that not the purpose of the stable releases? 1.5.8 is a development release, is it not?

Should there be a third type of release? "Almost stable"?

[a.l.e]

hi nermander

normally, i tend to avoid replying to this type of questions (talking about it makes me sad... after so many years...)

since you're a regular contributor,
and seem to be puzzled by the current situation,
and nobody has replied yet,
i will make an exception:

here is my (personal) point of view.

first: since january 2022 there are indeed three current releases of scribus:

• 1.4.x, which i would call the old stable: it's very old (like more than 10 years old!)
• 1.5.x is slowly been prepared for becoming the new stable release 1.6.0 (the official process started end of january 2022)
• 1.7.x is where the new development happens (some changes are "backported" to 1.5.x)

having said that, i think that one source of confusion is that "stable" and "development" do not share "the same meaning":

• "stable" tends to mean that something works reliably: the "companion" would be "unstable".
• "development" means that it changes: the antonym would be "frozen"

i guess that in the case of scribus, the best would be to have a "frozen" version and a development branch... but with release cycles longer than a decade there is no chance to have a meaningful naming scheme...

often, in the software world, "development" releases used to be "unstable", but that has not been the case for the scribus releases in ages and, nowadays, is less and less true for most programs.

so, in the case of scribus, development releases are (mostly) any less "stable" than the stable ones (except for experimental features like the footnotes).

in short: a development release should not crash more than a stable one.

so the naming is at least misleading.

this having been said, what makes the difference between a stable and a development release?

the big difference  is probably, that stable releases (mostly) share the same set of features, development releases can have new features and changes in the UI or file format.

on top of it, this is specific to scribus, development releases do not guarantee that the layout won't change from release to release.
(but, due to changes in the library used by scribus, in the future it's very likely that stable releases won't be able to keep the layout either... even worse: the same release might have different layouts on different computers!)

with all that background information, what should you use / suggest other people to use?

this is what i suggest:

• 1.4.x is a legacy version that cannot installed on most modern computers and is not really maintained anymore (there won't be any new release: even if there are fixes, you won't ever get them) : it should only be used by people who (for some reason) have to use it.
• 1.5.x is what most people should be using; some features are not ready for production, yet (and won't be ready for production in the 1.6.0 release that might come out of it)
• 1.7.0 is where the development happens and should only be used by people who are following the scribus development or otherwise know how to cope with software that changes under their feet (some features might not work as expected and things might change "suddenly", but it's otherwise as stable as the other two releases).

so, for almost all purposes, 1.5.x is the stable version of scribus and 1.7.0 the almost stable one : - )

[$cribu$]

Hmm. I am new to Scribus, and I have not seen the sort of tools built into Scribus with which to produce full-fledged books. Yes, Scribus is very good for working on image-dominated communication such as brochures, pamphlets, and so forth. But getting text to flow from page to page, with each page having different images (as I think you are suggesting---not just a decorative item in one corner, or a watermark).

For what it is worth, I would suggest switching to LaTeX or ConTeXt, which not only is a full-fledged typesetting system (with capability to add images in a flexible way), but also has all the tools you will need in a book (such as footnotes, headers, footers, indices, tables of contents, citations, bibliography, hyperlinks, internal linkages, line drawings, professionally set equations......you get the idea). And, all the support you will ever need for Hindi and other non-Latin-alphabet work.

[PatJr]

For what it is worth, I would suggest switching to LaTeX or ConTeXt, which not only is a full-fledged typesetting system (with capability to add images in a flexible way), but also has all the tools you will need in a book ...

that is like comparing a gui to the command line
yes LaTeX is awesome but Scribus is more human relatable.

I haven't done a TOC, appendix, index, ... in scribus but I do think there is enough capability there to get the job done if you need those things.
Scribus is amazing for things like magazines, postcards, flyers, ... especially is you intend on sending the job for a commercial print run.
banana meet orange