Multitherad (Project)

Well, in 2011 we have more and more computers with more than one CPU core. We must make Scribus utilize this power!

Where we can improve Scribus responsibility by multithreading?

• - Preflight Verifier - there are few tasks which can be done in threads, some checks not dependent on over checks - they can be done parallel each over;
• - thumbnails / previews - they can be done in separate threads IMHO;
• - UNDO - it can be done in thread, but I think only with big undo/redo data we can expect improvement (like changing parameters for whole big book story text);
• - text formatting;
• - I/O for big documents;

Generally we should find extremal cases where multithreading make the difference for user. We must keep in mind that for old computers multihreading is not the solution (because one thread only machine), but new machines can get some benefits from this. Big benefit should be noticed even for very old machines with more than one CPU or one CPU with MT technology (like P4 with MT). We must investigate which tasks takes to many time and even if we think that only few users meet that case, we should made these tasks get less time. If Scribus get less time in that cases than competitors it get users love and more users at all by this.

Problem is that most of developers don`t use Scribus for very large layout projects. Developers should make Scribus ready for extremal task even if they don`t use it in that way. I saw case of dropping one application for another by not sufficient time of response (car advertisement magazine - Ventura was dropped for Quark).