Scribus is a GPL desktop publishing program for Linux. In line with the trend to supporting open file formats, The program stores its data in XML files, allowing for exchange with other programs and the ability for simple scripts to automatically generate documents. Scribus is designed for final page assembly - you should use other tools to write your text - but the program is designed to integrate with KDE, so that you can drag and drop objects into the program and its supporting scrapbook. After a quick exploration of the menus - expecially the pop-up menus on the various kinds of objects - operation is straight-forward and intuitive.

Scribus features include PDF creation, EPS and PDF import/export, creation of colour separations, comprehensive colour management and support for both Adobe Type 1 and True Type fonts. The program has its own Postscript printer driver, which supports all of Level 2 and most of Level 3.

The current stable release is version 1.0.1, but for those who like to live a little dangerously, development has reached version 1.1.3, which boasts a Python scripting subsystem, better text editing, support for Open Type fonts

Installation is from source code:

tar xzvf /path/to/scribus-1.0.1.tar.gz
cd scribus-1.0.1
./configure
make
make install

Compilation can take some time, even on reasonably fast systems, but startup and operation are impressively quick. Scribus is a very nice piece of software that neatly fills a gap in the Linux desktop software market.

Price: $0

Home Page: http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/

Download from: http://scribus.planetmirror.com/download.html
Page last updated: 01/Jun/2004 Back to Home Copyright © 1987-2010 Les Bell and Associates Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. webmaster@lesbell.com.au