1.5.x Roadmap

1.5.0

• Color work (jghali) Jean, please specify!
• Rewrite file loader with QXmlStreamWriter (jghali)
• Move files around in the svn tree ... gui to gui subdir, docs out of source tree etc. (cbradney) #8071 - IN PROGRESS
• Rewrite preferences load and save functions (cbradney) IN PROGRESS
• Rewrite preferences GUI (cbradney) IN PROGRESS
• Add in Status Bar information strings (perhaps not in GUI until 1.5.1) (cbradney)
• Improvements to SVG import 4732
• CVG importer (fschmid) DONE
• WPG importer (fschmid) DONE
• Improvements to colour support in the Barcode Generator 6781 (subik) - DONE
• Preflight Verifier error counter 7906 (subik)
• Preflight checker: report underfull image frames 7563 (subik)
• Enhancements to the Documentation 6058 - IN PROGRESS
• Some render frame code refactoring (Herm) -- IN PROGRESS
• Code optimisation (jghali, pierremarc, mecirt) IN PROGRESS
• Additional import filters for colour sets (fschmid) IN PROGRESS
• Integration of GSoC 2008/2009 projects:
  • Picture Browser (pierremarc) IN PROGRESS
  • Uniconvertor + GraphicsMagick (Herm) IN PROGRESS

Post 1.5.1 and later

These may appear post 1.4.0 if 1.3.5 is stabilized to be our 1.4.0

• Scripter cleanup - GSOC
• New file format IN PROGRESS, final version will not be done before 1.4.0
• Tables rewrite
• Usable inline frames
• Cursor positioning bugs (#3157)
• Undo bugs (#5745)
• Rewrite the Properties Palette
• Rewrite the Story Editor
• Text import filter for TextMaker (TMD) files (fschmid)
• Integration of successful GSoC/Sarai 2009 projects:
  • Import of XPress Tags, Xtags, INX and IDML files, InDesign Snippets (Mentor: TomZ)
  • Import of OpenDocument Text documents (Mentor: Tsoots)
  • Improvements to Master Pages (Mentor: avox)
  • XPS export/import (Mentor: jghali)
  • More PDF/X export options (X-1a, X-4, X-5) (Mentor: pierremarc)
  • Rewrite of Search and Replace (Mentor: subik)

Ideas

Internal

• New file format and DTD, 100% XML compliant #111 IN PROGRESS
• performance with large amounts of text present - IN PROGRESS
• New file open and save dialog class to handle multiple file location options, eg local, NFS, kio, WebDAV. These would be used in import and export plugins, SLA open/save, get/save text functions. They would pass a stream pointer/filename etc to the resulting plugin for the operation. *#1693
• New Colour Storage Format with various options eg, index, name, number, rgba, cmyk, spots, etc. See New Colours Format

Text Frames

• Make edit-in-frame more usable? I know, use SE - but that's not very useful when making hyphenation corrections etc. - IN TESTING
• Control hyphenation as part of paragraph style
• Maximum inter-word spacing control, or "willingness to hyphenate" control
• Bullet support in paragraph styles #102 Partly DONE
• Hyphenation improvements #417
• More improvements to styles
• Text refinements #415
• Non latin support #1547, #1079
• Support for OpenType alternate glyphs #1413
• Cursor placement fixes (so cursors know more about tabs, columns, alignment etc) #3157
• Related to inheritable pargraph styles: limited styles, presumably with a 'next-style' attribute. Think 'first paragraph' styles, etc.
• Ability to create TOC and Indexes #1371, #3349 IN PROGRESS, TOC done.
• Mail merge IN PROGRESS
• Spellchecker based on Enchant, aspell, or ispell (like it's done in KDE?) PARTIALLY DONE IN 1.3.5
• Support for footnotes and endnotes

Import/Export/Printing

• Rewrite the text import system to enable piping
• More Text Import slave plugins: XML/HTML/(XHTML+CSS)/OO.org Calc/Kword/Kspread)
• Add Word Perfect Importer #3589 IN PROGRESS
• Add RTF Importer IN PROGRESS
• Investigate the use of libabiword and AbiWord filters for import of formatted text, as it would provide about 30 new text formats that could be imported. IN PROGRESS
• HTML Exporter #2974
• Updatable Linked Text
• Move vector import to master/slave plugin format (EPS/SVG/etc)
• Integrate UniConvertor. This would enable Scribus to import CorelDRAW 7-X4 (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX), Adobe Illustrator up to version 9 (PostScript based), Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM), Skencil/Sketch/sK1 (SK and SK1) and Acorn Draw (AFF) files. DONE
• Xara Import/Integration #3863
• Calamus Vector Graphics (CVG) import DONE
• More import filters for colour palettes (fschmid) IN PROGRESS
• SVG Layer support #1701
• Investigate the integration of GraphicsMagick for import of new bitmap formats. DONE
• PDF-in-PDF embedding of placed PDFs on PDF export (works only in PDF-1.4 and above FS) #1699 see also #1179 IN PROGRESS
• Warning on missing fonts in placed/imported PDF files #4464
• PDF/X-4 support GSoC 2009 IN PROGRESS
• XPS import and export GSoC 2009
• Enhancements to the PostScript Importer:
  • Fill patterns
  • Gradients
  • Type3 fonts; vector/bitmaps
  • Honour fill rule for clipping
• Transparency flattener #876, 377
• Enhance Qt pixmap image support (ie, the pixmap based formats Qt doesnt currently support) MOSTLY DONE
• Investigate what other file formats from the wish list could be imported. IN PROGRESS
• Option to print PostScript errors #1441
• RGB profiled export for bubblejets (Note: CMYK for PDF-X/3 only!) #1697, 1271
• Add Support for DeviceGray and Indexed Colors #3540
• Preflight Enhancements #4569
• Preserve fonts when we import a pdf in scribus.
• Convert pdf text in real scribus text block when we import a pdf in scribus.
• Embedding of 3D objects in PDFs IN PROGRESS

Usability/User Interface

• Better Selection for Copying #2777
• Add margin 'skipping' support for facing pages #2683
• Enhancements to canvas (text frames show column markers, better frame control options)
• New Start-up Dialog for new users on launch. #1709
• Enhancement to Scratch Space #1989
• Selection improvements: Multiselection in items Overview , Object selection with Ctrl, Un-prompted object resizing, Object creation and resize with aspect/angle constraint.
• Fix the drag code so its sane and familiar for users of other layout apps. See: #1907
• Responsiveness during long operations. Separate UI thread, progress bars?
• New dialog class for standard look and feel
• Shortcut profiles, eg "for adobe users", "for xpress users" IN PROGRESS
• Tool to create 3D preview to see leaflet and brochure "in real" and save it in *.tif or print it. Useful to present the graphic concept to the client.

Shapes/Vector Drawing

• Boolean Object methods (like Inkscape etc) PARTIALLY DONE IN 1.3.5

Image Frames

• Allow more options for allowing clipping paths to shape text #1564

Scripter

• Create ScripterNG
• Working PyQT for Scripter (see Using QT from the Python interface) IN PROGRESS
• Scripter functions enhancements (hangs together with "Scribus Objects via Scripter" IN PROGRESS
• Asynchronous or indepently threaded Python execution (qt will provide a lot of this for free without requiring real threads ... if it can be made to work) (see patches in Using QT from the Python interface) IN PROGRESS
• Access to the Scribus core from python outside of Scribus GUI/scripter. (DCOP? CORBA/XML-RPC?) #1675

Misc

• New non modal Resource Manager dialog
• Release procedure documentation
• Database publishing (with support of popular SQL databases both open source like MySQL, PostgreSQL and proprietary systems like Oracle/IBM DB2 as well as XQuery)
• Re-write the scrapbook with SAX #2054 also # 2457
• Ability to clone frames like Inkscape can, allowing, for example, text frames on various layers to have the same size and attributes, except different content (eg layers for various translations of a doc). When one is moved, they all move, when one is resized they all resize etc. .."Linked Layer Objects" ? #1704
• Transparency enhancements - IN PROGRESS
• Tables rewrite/feature enhancement
• OpenClipArt Integration #1263 IN PROGRESS
• Font Finder. As manually run item, or when a font is missing in a document, we can provide a method for a user to download and install a font from ANY of the free distro font repositories. Requires: List of fonts and repositories (and the code of course) (Fontmatrix ??)
• Automatic import fonts of the document if they are in the same file than the scribus document.
• Re-write the bookmarks code
• Make installation on OS X (PPC and Intel) as easy as on Windows and Linux
• Documentation updates for the Scribus file formats, the API and the Scripter
• Update all relevant online docs before the release of 1.4
• Prepare a new release of the Official Manual and its translations before the release of 1.4