Page MenuHomePhabricator

Allow Scribus (.sla / .sla.gz) file uploads on Wikimedia
Closed, DeclinedPublic

Description

Just sticking this in Bugzilla as a reminder for further possible discussion, since it's been brought up or requested a couple times.

Scribus is an open-source, cross-platform desktop publishing package, which some folks like to use for things like brochures and other PR-type materials. It would be helpful to be able to share work in the original editable format.

The .sla file format is XML based, and can optionally be gzip-compressed direct from the app (saved as .sla.gz).

Problems:

  • Images can only be included by reference, not embedded. A complete document may require multiple downloads, or else manually zipping up the data set.
  • Scribus files are XML, but there's not a doctype or xmlns requirement on the current version, so they might be harder to verify. (Root element is <SCRIBUSUTF8>.)
  • Quick peek at format refs indicates there's some JavaScript embedding features. Any security issues? Sigh. :P :)

http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=scribusfileformat&page=scribusfileformat
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/File_Format_for_Scribus_1.3.x


See Also:
T42504: can't upload scribus file (.sla) (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40504)

Details

Reference
bz18845

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 10:41 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz18845.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Apparently people want to use wikimediafoundation.org to house these files for now, as no other wiki will allow them to be uploaded. :-)

Dereckson added subscribers: gpaumier, Dereckson.

@gpaumier How many Scribus do we have currently? Do you have further comments about this issue as a Scribus confirmed user?

@gpaumier How many Scribus do we have currently? Do you have further comments about this issue as a Scribus confirmed user?

I haven't used Scribus for Wikimedia-related documents in years (I'm not really involved in that area of our movement any more) so unfortunately I don't have any useful insights to share at this point.

Krinkle subscribed.

Given there doesn't appear to be a specific purpose or use case for these files that is in-scope for Wikimedia projects, it seems like the only use case is sharing of files within chapters or WMF, or for historical purposes preserving the file used for a particular publication in a way that is publicly accessible.

If any private or internal wiki wants to allow upload of such files for those reasons, I'm sure that could be arranged with less concern for security.

If WMF wants to host these files on wikimediafoundation.org, I'm sure that could be arranged as well with relative ease since that wiki, despite being public, could have its upload capacity limited to a certain subset of users.

However for any regular public wiki I don't think this will happen given there wouldn't be any way to preview these files or otherwise use them in a way that seems in-scope. If Wikimedia Commons feels otherwise (e.g. for preservation reasons if a certain archive happens to be in this format), I'm sure this could be considered, but in that case we'll need to find resources to do a proper security audit and potentially a way to preview these files through thumbnails would be useful in that case.

Until such request comes, closing this for now, given it was filed originally in 2009 with little activity since.