[OFFICIALLY RELEASED] Scribus Portable 1.4.0 Development Test 12

And thanks to you for taking this over.

Scribus 1.3.7 Test 1 does not work. I tried on two machines.

Machine 1
Running Windows XP, SP3, without administrative rights (work pc).
Splash screen appeared, disappeared after 2-3 seconds. No traces of Scribus.exe or other threads looking like Scribus files in task list.

Machine 2
Running Windows XP, SP3, with administrative rights.
Splash screen appeared, disappeared after 10 seconds. Nothing else happened.
Scribus.exe took 100 % of CPU doing something and it stayed that way until I had to terminate this scribus.exe process.

Is your version the same as the one found on framasoft ?
http://framakey.org/Portables/ScribusPortable?from=Portables.PortableScr...

This one works perfectly for me and is compatible with PA. I haven't test yours.

Have a nice day.

Any chance of further progress on this app?

on Win XP sp2 32Bit, and I found a couple of major issues with it:

1. All settings files where left on my C: drive in the '%USERPROFILE%\.scribus' folder and all saved documents ended up there, you where somehow trying to redirect it with 'APPNAME_HOME=%PAL:DataDir%\settings\' but that variable is not valid in Scribus, or any other env.var. to redirect it (accept for USERPROFILE it self, which is no option)
2. Everytime I tried to save a document I got the following error:
   

   Error
   --------------------------
   could not read directory
   C:/Users/Ang
   --------------------------

   I presume the path is from your OS.
   Please try to keep anything what is not needed out of DefaultData. For example: checkfonts.xml is in DefaultData but Scribus recreates it itself (in a split second), so no need to include it. Maybe you could test if Scribus updates it when ScribusP is on a different machine, if not, consider deleting it on every run.
   Actually I think the only file needed in DefaultData is scribus13.rc, as that contains the path to which .scribus wants to save it's documents, it's in xml format so it needs to exist to be able to modify it !

3. another minor thing, I do not think it is necessary to get the user to accept a GPL license agreement

These are my findings, but I'm also not perfect so please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points.

To back-up my above arguments I done some modifying and testing on ScribusPortable. I got all issues fixed plus a working language switching. It would have been a waist of time if I wouldn't give them to you.
Here is a copy of the launcher.ini, due to the use of the XML handling you will need to use PortableApps.com Launcher 2.1 Beta 1(official soon)
The reason why the language stuff got the XML handling commented out is because I found a bug in the plug-in PAL uses for this, for the moment it uses ConfigRead/Write without issues. Once the bug is fixed I advise you to switch over as the ConfigRead/Write methode could stop working on future versions of Scribus (I actually got the fix sitting on my desktop )
You still have to do some additional testing yourself thought. And make sure all the Localeglibc language values coexist with Scribus' language values (most do), like the one I included (see the PAL manual for more info):

[LanguageStrings]
zh_CN=zh

if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them.

Regards

edit: I've found the environment variable to use for Scribus, HOME, it was actually documented in PAL's manual
see: Worked Example: Scribus.
Notice the way it has 'WaitForProgram=false' cause the launcher does not need to clean-up anything on exit. I've tested this, and it works. no need to do the DirectoriesMove anymore.

If there are no objections, I'm going to double check 1.3.3.14 and finalize it with a splash for release next week Monday or Tuesday.

What's the deal with v1.3.3.14 versus 1.3.9? Is this a format compatibility issue, or is it more than that? (separate development branches for example).

Assuming no concerns with prior version document compatibility is 1.3.9 the preferred version?

Sorry if I'm missed something obvious.

Tried upgrading from ScribusPortable 1.3.3.14 DT5 to DT6.

Scribus now complains that Ghostscript is missing (but it’s there).

Also, I think that

[FileWrite4]
File=%PAL:DataDir%\.scribus\prefs.xml

in ScribusPortable\App\AppInfo\Launcher\ScribusPortable.ini
should actually be

[FileWrite4]
File=%PAL:DataDir%\.scribus\prefs13.xml

And

[LangaugeFile]

better written as

[LanguageFile]

I guess the problem might have something to do with updating the file scribus13.rc correctly. While Scribus is running, my C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\username\.scribus\scribus13.rc file contains the following:

<EXTERNAL AlphaGraphics="1" GIMP="gimp" GS="gswin32c.exe" Resolution="72" AlphaText="1" />

while it probably should contain something on the lines of:

<EXTERNAL AlphaGraphics="1" GIMP="G:/PortableApps/GIMPPortable/GIMPPortable.exe" GS="G:/PortableApps/ScribusPortable/App/Ghostscript/bin/gswin32c.exe" Resolution="72" AlphaText="1" />

Or am I mistaken here?

The whole directory tree

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\username\.scribus

is left over on the guest machine after closing Scribus. (This doesn’t always happen. I didn’t yet find any systematic behaviour.)

Even after manually modifying the line

<EXTERNAL AlphaGraphics="1" GIMP="G:/PortableApps/GIMPPortable/GIMPPortable.exe" GS="G:/PortableApps/ScribusPortable/App/Ghostscript/bin/gswin32c.exe" Resolution="72" AlphaText="1" />

in G:\PortableApps\ScribusPortable\Data\settings\.scribus\scribus13.rc, Scribus didn’t find Ghostscript, so maybe there is more to change?

Very good tharing thanks

I'm still using 1.3.3.12 and have been looking forward to the updated version, so I've been watching and waiting for months and months... Now it seems like no development has happened since February 2011 and here we are halfway through November.

Has this project been abandoned, or is there really just no dev time available to put into it? (If I could, I'd offer to help, but I don't have the skills.)

Looking forward to your portable version!

I used many versions of the *non-portable* versions of Scribus (1.3.7, fx) and after installing 1.4.0 I experienced strange things in Scribus, fx that shapes came with defaults that did not match those in preferences and whatever I did in preferenced had no effect.

I deleted the settings directory in my user folder in Windows 7 and since then I did not experience problems like this one again.

Keeping or converting settings from developer builds like 1.3.9 might not be a good idea.

One suggestion or an issue: Why doesn't the installer reads / remembers the initial selection for the options - i.e. I selected "additional fonts" but when update-ing with the next revision I have to re-select it which is not usual for the installers of other packages.

Cheers.

Hello,

I just tried to install both Scribus 1.4.0 & Ghostscript 9.0.4 portable release.

I installed Ghostscript 9.0.4 portable to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ghostscript.
But then Scribus portable keeps telling me that it cannot find Ghostscript.

Should I do some setting changes on the INI to make it work?

Regards,
-zero0w