A look at Scribus 1.2 [LWN.net]

September 8, 2004

This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.

With the release of Scribus 1.2, we thought we would take it for a test-drive and see whether Scribus was up to the task of professional desktop publishing (DTP). This writer used QuarkXPress fairly heavily a number of years ago and missed QuarkXPress quite a bit after moving to Linux. It took a while, but Scribus has finally matured into a suitable replacement.

The first thing any user will notice, of course, is the interface. Anyone familiar with popular DTP programs like QuarkXPress should be able to pick up Scribus in no time. Scribus also offers a few features that weren't available natively in QuarkXPress years ago -- such as PDF and SVG export, CYMK preview and the ability to edit lines as bezier curves, to name just a few.

One feature that is particularly nice for repetitive publishing tasks is the ability to create paragraph styles to apply frequently used styles to a block of text. With one click of a button, the user can set the typeface (font), size, alignment, color and much more for a block of text.

The ability to easily create tables is also a welcome addition. Rather than needing to group together multiple text boxes, a user can create a table in two easy steps. It's also possible to easily ungroup a table, if it becomes desirable to create separate objects out of the table's columns and/or rows.

Scribus's "Story Editor" is also a handy tool that makes it much easier to edit and format text inside Scribus. It also makes it easy to save a document's text as a separate document. Combined with the paragraph styles feature, it's very easy to mark up a document for publication from plain text. The only tool that seemed awkward is Scribus' tool to to link text frames so that text will "flow" from one text box to another, something that's pretty easy to do in a program like QuarkXPress.

Only one thing comes to mind that may hinder adoption of Scribus, aside from the lack of a huge advertising budget to compete with Adobe or Quark, is that one cannot import from a QuarkXPress or InDesign file. There's good reason for this, as documented in the Scribus FAQ, but it may prove to be an issue for companies with a number of documents in proprietary DTP formats.

However, Scribus does offer the ability to import SVG, Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PostScript files. Scribus also allows the user to export documents in SVG, EPS, PDF, or as one of several image formats. Scribus' SVG import features are quite excellent, allowing users to import an SVG file and use it whole or to ungroup the object and manipulate the component parts of the object. Unfortunately, my system's version of gs was not quite up-to-date, so importing EPS and PS files failed. This is in no way a flaw on Scribus' part -- just the fact that it requires a later version of gs than is installed on my desktop.

Scribus is capable of creating some fairly complex documents, but it's also easy to use to create simple documents as well. It's suitable for creating a family newsletter, or for creating a complex document for distribution as a PDF or to be printed professionally. Users who lack a background in DTP applications will find the beginner's tutorial quite useful.

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A look at Scribus 1.2

Posted Sep 9, 2004 13:55 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

One feature I look for in any program that handles documents is the ability to split a document into multiple files and store the data in a format that diff and patch can usefully manipulate (i.e., loosely-structured text with line breaks between independant parts). File formats like this can be version controlled effectively with CVS, which can be very helpful for collaboration and record-keeping. Anyone know what Scribus's file format is like?

(Someday, somebody has to get a diff format for XML standardized so that competant version control and structured data will play well together)

Overlooked details -- UNDO feature

Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:03 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

I have been keeping up with the production releases of Scribus and
downloaded 1.2 as soon as I was aware that it was available. One feature
that is painfully missing, unless the binary build I downloaded was
somehow flawed, is UNDO. UNDO only works for the last action (if at all)
and there is no UNDO history feature. For me, not having a real, working
UNDO is painful and should be an obvious defect in the product. It is
short of a show stopper though. I find it odd you didn't mention it in
your review.

Other than that, Scribus rocks and is maturing nicely. I work part-time
at a newspaper that uses QuarkXpress and I can see switching to Scribus in
a year or two as a posibility. For home and small business on Linux,
Scribus is a no-brainer.

A look at Scribus 1.2

Posted Sep 9, 2004 17:25 UTC (Thu) by mrdocs (guest, #21409) [Link]

You do not need KDE, only a recent version of Qt 3.1+. Qt 3.3.3 is recommended. See: Scribus Installation for all the requirements.

A look at Scribus 1.2

Posted Sep 9, 2004 18:40 UTC (Thu) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Oops! Sorry!

Yes, I know that Scribus does not require a full KDE installation (guess my brain was on a brief vacation there; still waking up). However, I'm also considering doing a full KDE install, in case my normal GNOME environment goes haywire (happens rarely, but it does happen, usually as a result of my twiddling), so maybe my wires just got crossed and I got the two thoughts mixed up. Sorry 'bout the mixup!