On July 15, 2003 the Scribus project had a milestone release. They released Scribus 1.0. I have used Scribus both personally and professionally since the early development times. 8.0 was when I first used it. 1.0 came with so many bug fixes and has become so refined I decided to do a review of it. What is Scribus?
Scribus is a open source Desktop Publishing Lapp. It is written in QT so it can run on a variety of Operating Systems. It is developed by
Franz Schmid and his team of many contributors.
Scribus is meant to one day replace Adobe InDesign, Quark Express and if it continues on its current path it will meet its goal.
Installing Scribus
Scribus does not have any prebuilt RPM’s or binary packages available for it. The source code is downloaded and easy to configure and make. But for some people RPM’s or . Debs are an efficient way of installation. The configure script looks for QT 3.0.3 at least, CUPS, Tifflib, FreeType2 and LittleCMS. It is good to have these but CUPS and LittleCMS are not required, but you will not be able to utilize all the features of Scribus without them. SuSE Linux 8.x has all the necessary packages and they are installed by default, but Red Hat Linux and Debian Linux do not have TiffLib or Little CMS and they need to be downloaded and installed. LittleCMS packages can be downloaded from here.
To install CUPS and QT on Red Hat install the KDE Desktop and KDE Developer packages. I have compiled Scribus for SuSE Linux 8.1 and 8.2, Yellowdog Linux 3.0 and Red Hat Linux 9. There are some reports that Scribus can be installed on Mac OS X through Fink, although I have not tested it or had a look yet. There are efforts to port Scribus to Cygwin and Windows 2000 Professional. Basically any machine that you have that has QT on it you can compile Scribus.
Features of Scribus
Scribus has a very clean interface and very easy to learn. Scribus has some professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, create PDFs easily, Encapsulated Postscript import/export. Graphics formats that can be utilized by Scribus are, jpeg, PNG and Xpixmap. One feature that I like is that the Scribus file format is based on XML, meaning that if you have a document that got damaged you can recover some of that document using a text editor. You can also embed fonts into PDF. PDF/X-3 files and you can assign presentation effects and you can encrypt PDF’s. You can create Python scripts for Scribus and you can import and export SVG’s. With PDF’s it can also handle transperencies. Scribus as of 1.0 now has the Multiple Document Interface, where you can work on multiple documents at one time.
Performance
I found Scribus 1.0 to work very well in comparison to the developer builds. Everything worked properly as they were supposed to. I had no adverse effects and no unexplained crashes. It loads rather quickly and all the fonts on my system were picked up and ready for use by Scribus. All the distributions I tried Scribus on, it worked well except for Red Hat 9. I had problems with Font rendering, but after a visit to the mailing list, I found out that it is a Red Hat problem with its font engine. Printing with Scribus was handled very well. It kept everything in format and the output looks professional.
Peeves
As usual with all software, everyone has their pet peeves or things they would like to see changed or added. The major peeve I had was with the tool bar icons. They look old. They are the same Icons that you would see with KDE 1 or KDE 2, this makes the Application look dated. They should update the tool bar icons to something more modern, either crystal or an aqua type theme.
Uses for Scribus
To be honest, I do not see Quark Express users or Adobe InDesign users flocking to Scribus. But, if you use PageMaker or Microsoft Publisher, then you will find similar functionality to Scribus and will probably find Scribus to be a great alternative. I use it personally to create all the howtos on my site. Professionally my company uses Scribus to create our brochures and press releases and we use it to create our customer manuals, basic lightweight Desktop Publishing. Schools and Churches who also do lightweight publishing and are on a tight budget and cannot see spending, hundreds to thousands of dollars on a commercial product , will find this tool very useful. If you work on Magazines or newspapers or are a professional publisher, I suggest you wait. One of the things I have heard is that Scribus does not import or export Quark or InDesign files, but I have never had a lot of luck in that department with the commercial products anyway.
Conclusion
I was very pleased with this application. This application is another step in the right direction. While it may not be ready for Quark or InDesign users, give it time. It will only be getting better. Massive Linux adoption on the desktop is becoming closer to a reality and products like Scribus and OpenOffice are only going to make the transition a lot easier for some people.
About the Author:
Roberto J. Dohnert is a Unix/Linux Consultant and software developer. His first introduction to UNIX based systems dates back to NEXTSTEP. He is a member of the GNU Darwin Distribution and has made several contributions to that and other projects. His personal webpage is here.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy hearing about OSS alternatives to mature professional-level applications, but…
Wake me up when Scribus supports ICC profiles, Pantone colors, placing DCS, and can use Level 3 PostScript when printing to plotters…
I don’t expect it will be long before people will be touting this program as being on-par with QuarkXPress in the same way that OSS zealots tout Ardour as being the same caliber of application as ProTools…
I will have to agree. Scribus is a good personal DTP solution, but as it stands today, it stops there. It is a honest effort though, as there is nothing similar for Unices so far, so it is a good thing to have a free alternative. Not that it will take away any market share from PageMaker, InDesign or Quark Xpress (it won’t), but it is still good to have it around.
> people will be touting this program as being on-par with QuarkXPress in the same way that OSS zealots tout Ardour as being the same caliber of application as ProTools
Or Gimp on par with Photoshop.
I did notice this (on the System Requirements page of all places):
Optional Libs for the extended Features of Scribus:
[…]
Some ICC-Profiles, see the Readme for further Information.
However, there is no information on support for ICC profiles in the README file for the stable version. Perhaps I need to check in the developer snapshot…
But regardless, support for ICC profiles seems to be virtually nonexistant.
I would use Gimp over anything else if it would provide a decent OSX interface without requiring X, and fixing that stupid right clicking scheme they chose. Give me proper menu bar. It will work for what I would want it for 🙂
It might be worth looking into if it werent for KDE widgets. But at least it’s not called kSCRIBUS or kDTP or anything else like k*.
>I would use Gimp over anything else if it would provide…
I suggested Gimp to my husband who has a great passion for photography lately, and he immediately dissmissed it when he found that it doesn’t support 16bit per channel.
Yes, Scribus ICC profiles since a long time.
You have two ways:
* Create your profile using the tools provided by littlecms
* Use the windows or macos profiles copying them to /usr/lib/scribus/profiles
The Readme is on /usr/lib/scribus/profiles/Readme
Two good links are:
http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/cms.html
http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/lcms/moncal.html
And now on Scribus 1.0 you can embed ICC profiles on a PDF file.
< It’s not that I don’t enjoy hearing about OSS alternatives to mature professional-level applications, but…
Wake me up when Scribus supports ICC profiles, Pantone colors, placing DCS, and can use Level 3 PostScript when printing to plotters…
I don’t expect it will be long before people will be touting this program as being on-par with QuarkXPress in the same way that OSS zealots tout Ardour as being the same caliber of application as ProTools… >
You will never hear that type of response from a professional DT publisher. As I stated for what I do and what my employer does it is great. You sound like a professional, so no you probably wont switch to Scribus anytime soon. Anyone who is to tell me that Ardour is as good a ProTools will get nothing but a laugh out of me. I think thats funny. But, if you have Linux test the App, use it, join the mailing list and tell them what is missing. If you know how to code submit some of your ideas. That is the beauty of Open Source software, you do not need to know how to code. Do bug reports, submit ideas, help us make it better. No one on the mailing list is going to make you feel stupid, or call you silly. It will either be ” Thats a coold idea lets work on it ” or it will be ” we dont know how to do that yet but lets work on it “. I remember when Mozilla was released, I couldnt even get the thing to execute, same with OpenOffice, when it was first released it was the buggiest peice of software out there. But now, those two are considered the shining stars of the Open Source Community.
>I suggested Gimp to my husband who has a great passion for
>photography lately, and he immediately dissmissed it when he
>found that it doesn’t support 16bit per channel.
FilmGimp supports over 48bits per channel.
Cameleo from caldera.fr is a total solution for Linux
but is not free. http://www.caldera.fr, we use this for our photo/print and repro work.
The Gimp is a fine program with lots of plugins and tools other programs do not have, since your husband is a programmer why not let him work on the 16bits per channel in the Gimp?
You could help him make a better interface for the Gimp…allthough i find it ok like its now.
I will take over OSnews for the time being and will off-course be most objective just like you.
Thanx in advance.
One detail that I missed before is that when you copied the icc profiles you have to activate the color-management on Edit – Preferences – Color Management.
Later right clicking on a image you can choose one specific profile, and when exporting to a pdf you also can embed a icc profile.
On the Readme also says where to find icc profiles on windows:
Another source for Profiles is a modern Windows installation,
in C:WindowsSystemColor on Win9x/NT4 or C:Winntsystem32spoolcolor
on Win2k and XP are normally some ICC-Profiles.
A hint for MacOS users: you can use your ColorSync-Profiles, which will be recognized by Scribus
if they have .icc or icm extensions.
i think film-gimp (or whatever they’ve renamed it to these days) does support 16bits per channel and more.
update: its called cine-paint and supports 32bits per channel.
http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net/
to quote:
“The 32-bit per channel color range of CinePaint appeals to 35mm cinematographers and professional still photographers because film scanners are capable of greater color bit-depth than can be displayed on an 8-bit per channel monitor or can be manipulated in typical programs.”
Actually, if you’d read either the writeup OR the website, you’d notice it doesn’t use KDE widgets. This is a strictly QT application.
> since your husband is a programmer why not let him work on the 16bits per channel in the Gimp?
My husband doesn’t even have time to eat and sleep because of his daily day work, I would never suggest to him to do extra programming work. The solution here is to just buy Photoshop and stays happy, without adding more stress to him for something that it supposed to be a hobby.
Has anyone got it working through x11 yet?
I’ve been wanting to switch to mac but I can seem to find an ms publisher alternative…
>> …8.0 was when I first used it. 1.0 came with so many bug fixes…
wouldn’t it be 0.8? or maybe I’m just lost..
Where can I get that fine looking window decoration?
Good to see that scribus is going to be a nice application for hobby-layouters like me. I tried scribus when I first adopted Suse 7.1. It was very buggy at this time and I couldn’t get ral work done on it, but it seemed promising. After a longer time I didn’t use Linux I installed Mandrake and tried Scribus 0.97 and it is still in use. I am not on a professional level, I do that only for fun. I think it is the right app for private use and I am looking forward to version 2.0 😉 This is one cool piece of the puzzle to get Linux on the desktops of the everyday-user like me.
It is the SuSE Window decoration from 8.1 or 8.2. I don’t know if it is available for other distributions, but kde-look.org will help, I think
You could help him make a better interface for the Gimp…allthough i find it ok like its now.
The interface in Gimp 1.3 (unstable development version) rocks. I actually like it better than Photoshop.
This “Quark” Application everyone keeps talking about is such a steaming pile. Not only does it not run on my OS, it doesn’t even include source code so if there’s a problem, I can’t dig in and fix it/figure it out! I certainly can’t write my own extensions without the source code, and if I did they’d be derivative works and the Quark people would just own them anyway.
Until they start shipping the source with Quark, it will never measure up to Scribus.
Cinepaint is going to get CYMK support sometime this year or so their roadmap states, if they can deliever this there’s going to be alot of happy linux users out there (as well as cinepaint users on windows and OSX)
Your comparison makes no sense. Scribus isn’t even in the same league as Quark. Neither is Framemaker, or a number of other tools, but they still have a market because not everyone needs or can afford Quark. There are a large number of people who need DTP, for flyers and posters and handouts and whatnot, but don’t need the power of Quark. Heck, my DTP needs are limted to the occasional handout. If Scribus means that I don’t have to hunt down a machine with Publisher installed, yay for me.
On the Gimp vs Photoshop type debates, there is stupidity on both sides. There are people who dismiss OSS apps offhand (some because they get Photoshop free from kazaa) with no consideration to their actual needs and Gimp’s actual capabilities. For example, its well known that Gimp is unsuitable for pre-press work. But there are lots of people who need a photo-editor that don’t come anywhere near hardcopy. For people like 3D artists that need a texture editor, Gimp can be a perfectly wonderful Photoshop replacement. In the Film industry, Cinepaint (Film Gimp) is sometimes used because films have no need for prepress capabilities. On the other hand, there are OSS people who give people a hard time about how they could possibly want to use Photoshop when there is Gimp available.
There are tons of those applications for the Mac, some at 0$ (Ragtime Solo, but I can’t remember if there is an OS X version), some cheap (M-Layout, IIRC), Create, and others I don’t remember.
Thanks for the information. It seems the color managment in Scribus goes well beyond any other open source application in existance (it’s certainly in a deplorable state in the Gimp)
I’m glad the author is taking the time to address color management. It sound like for the time being that acceptable print quality on modern plotters could be reached using the Acrobat toolchain and running documents through Acrobat Distiller to handle proper conversion from a PDF with an embedded ICC profile to Level 3 PostScript before the document is printed.
The complexities of digital pre-print have always seemed to be enough to keep open source applications from pursuing the area with too much vigor, and I’m glad to see that one is taking the time to try to tackle the issues.
I’ll have to take a look at Scribus again when it releases its next milestone and see if it is ready to print directly to a Level 3 PostScript plotter with an embedded ICC profile. Until then, it sounds like Scribus users will still be dependant on a Mac or Windows system to handle the final, color-corrected printing.
Now I wonder what CMYK conversion algorithms are being used and what color profiles those can handle…
The development version of Gimp (1.3) has had support for traditional menu bars for some time now.
Did I miss something on the homepage?
Are there no screenshots?
Oh, come on, screenshots are a MUST. They are the best advertising for an application. Every time there is a promising app and the home page has no screenshots I’m a bit disappointed (especially because I’ve heard that scribus is a great program)
Is Gimp separated the library / interface code yet so that a program can be made to use it without overlap ui code?
Unfortunately (IIRC) XFree86 doesn’t support Type3. If you were to run it on Solaris, which supports Postscript type3 fonts, Scribus would be able to run but only users on Solaris would be able to use that feature.
Regards to the “product”, it looks very professional and it appears the developer as taken the time and effort to implement a good UI, which alot of Free Software lacks.
I will have to agree. Scribus is a good personal DTP solution, but as it stands today, it stops there. It is a honest effort though, as there is nothing similar for Unices so far, so it is a good thing to have a free alternative. Not that it will take away any market share from PageMaker, InDesign or Quark Xpress (it won’t), but it is still good to have it around.
Considering that Adobe does have UNIX version of their Photoshop, Illustrator and Framemaker, it would be nice if they ported them from Motif to qt, update them and make them available for Linux and other *NIXs.
Well, I have heard about Quark XPress and their apparent anti-customer attitude. Alot of people I know are extremely happy that indesign has some along to threaten Quarks monopoly in the DTP space.
I am not convinced this is right way to have DTP on free Unices: it’s awfully slow and unresponsive (on a dual 1,4 MHz Athlon box).
Why make free bloatware?
Years ago I had a better alternative with PageStream 2.2 on Amiga: granted, it was only free (as in beer) not free (as in speech), but it worked quite well on a 40 MHz 12MB 68030 Amiga.
No, definitely not convinced…
some of you people are amazing, Scribus is how old? developed by how many people?
Quark, Adobe, etc…have been around a LOT longer and have a huge amount of commercial backing.
Of course there is no comparision, why would you even think so. when these products came out they didn’t just automatically become as mature or have the feature set that they do now.
Like some other people have said it works well for what it CAN do now and will satisfy SOME peoples needs. It is a good START and will only get better.
While I agree with you that software is not as fast as it used to be back in the day (developers don’t care optimizing as much anymore, as the hardware is now plenty fast), it is not Scribus fault that it might have this or that slowness. Scribus is not a talking to XLib directly, it is using KDE libs and it is using Qt. Same goes for the Gnome apps, they use GTK, GDK and a whole slew of other libraries. All the new software is not fully optimized as it used to be 10 years ago as it doesn’t matter as much anymore to most people, so the slowness is built up upon, library upon library etc. See GTK+ 2.x for example, it is many times slower than GTK+ 1.x, and is making Gnome looking below par when compared to any other DE, because of all these ugly and slow redraws of GTK+. But hey, what can you do? I filed a bug report and all I got back from Owen Taylor and Havoc was “It is good enough, it works well on my 1.1 GHz box”.
Eugenia
i’m very proficient in photoshop, and have no regrets having payed for it (and the upgrades). i run it on my main workstation.
but i also use gimp quite a bit, for when i’m not working on my own personal computer (at work, friends house, on site consulting job)…it allows me to deal with most tasks just fine.
both have a time/place.
This “Quark” Application everyone keeps talking about is such a steaming pile. </p>
Yeah, that’s why just about every major layout shop, printing concern, magazine, and newspaper has used it at one point or another during its exisitence. Those companies are staffed with uneducated dolts that have no training in traditional publishing and wouldn’t know a good product if it bit them in the left nut.
[i]Not only does it not run on my OS
Heaven forbid it should run on an OS that has a large installed user base.
it doesn’t even include source code so if there’s a problem, I can’t dig in and fix it/figure it out!
Seriously now, please list the number of OOS programs that you’ve actually sat down and read the entire source code too. Ok. Now list the number of applications that you’ve read the source code to that you’ve understood enough to make a noticeable fix to. Please provide information on the patches you’ve submitted back into the source tree so that we can check your claims.
I certainly can’t write my own extensions without the source code
You can’t write extensions using a published API and SDK? Are you honestly saying that you can’t code to any platform (aka Linux) without access to the entire source tree? What in the world do you need the source code for if a plugin architecture is provided?
, and if I did they’d be derivative works and the Quark people would just own them anyway.
Please cite section and chapter of the Quark EULA where it says any end-user written plugin or extension becomes the sole property of the makers of Quark.
Until they start shipping the source with Quark, it will never measure up to Scribus
Yeah, I’m sure the makers and users of Quark are up at night crying themselves to sleep over the fact that an OSS lightweight publishing program running on a niche window manager and a niche OS exists…
You’re just as bad has he is. You’re tone is so damn condescending. Linux is hardly a niche OS. Used on everything from ILM graphics workstations to high-school CS labs
Anyone working in real DTP work these days knows that Quark is basically dead anyways. Adobe grabbed a lot of former QuarkXPress users (including myself), with Indesign, along with their own former PageMaker users. I was a hardcore QuarkXPress user from 1994, when I started doing DTP work, to ~2001. In that time, I didn’t even *think* of using PageMaker. This was probably because of the large amount of QuarkXTentions available that I used on a daily basis. However, in the last few years, I too joined the exodus from QuarkXPress and PageMaker to InDesign.
This Scribus application does look interesting considering how far it’s gotten in such a short period of time with so few people working on it. I haven’t used it yet though, so I’ll reserve judgement on how it has features compared to the heavyweights.
As for GIMP, I’ve tried nearly every version of it (including the unstable 1.3 series), and I’ve found the UI absolutely horrid. I run screaming back to my OSX box for some Photoshop goodness. Photoshop’s workflow simply rocks. GIMP, unfortunatly, still has a UI that wasn’t made for how artists work. Adobe did a lot of studies that culminated in the revamped UI’s of Photoshop 3.0 and 6.0 (and partially 7.0).. for right now, I just don’t see many *artists* using GIMP unless they are totally commited to OSS software. I guess I’m a outsider looking in (linux and OSS software is basically a very minor hobby for me, while being an artist is my job), but I hope to see things change in the future.
Years ago I had a better alternative with PageStream 2.2 on Amiga: granted, it was only free (as in beer) not free (as in speech), but it worked quite well on a 40 MHz 12MB 68030 Amiga.
I liked PageStream, too. The only downside to it was running it on a 640×400 screen. Amiga 3000 users with enough money for a multisync monitor could at least get that as 640×400 double-scan.
Amiga 2000 and 3000 users with some $ could even buy a (then quite expensive) 24 bit graphics card and a nice monitor and get 800×600 or even 1024×768 delinterlaced displays.
Most of us, though, were stuck at 640×400 interlaced, at 60Hz. I’m surprised my eyes didn’t get destroyed trying to work like that.
< Where can I get that fine looking window decoration? >
It is the Default Window Decoration for SuSE Linux 8.1. When I updated to KDE 3.1.2 it is still available. There is a mock up of it at http://www.kde-look.org, the only thing missing is the lizard heas and that is because it is a registered trademark of SuSE. It is my favorite Window Decoration.
All the new software is not fully optimized as it used to be 10 years ago as it doesn’t matter as much anymore to most people, so the slowness is built up upon, library upon library etc.
Hear, hear!
I still look back (rose-coloured glasses notwithstanding) at the days of the Amiga and similar machines and remember just what it was like to have hardware limitations.
These limitations were always meant to be broken. 😉
Many coders, through innovation and optimisation, did break these limitations. I still chuckle when I think of how some smart arse got 32K colour on the Atari 520STfm back in 1992-93 via a software library. [For those who never played with an Hasbro (nee Atari) box, the STfm series could only manage a paltry 16 colours on screen from a pallette of 512 colours! No, that’s not a misprint. How you can get 32K colours out of 512 I don’t know…)]
Programmers would squeeze every last drop of performance out of the machines – Things were tight in space and processor speeds. These were the days when men were real men and real programmers would sneer at anything that wasn’t 100% assembly. Anyone remember Bullfrog’s earlier works?
As for GIMP, I’ve tried nearly every version of it (including the unstable 1.3 series), and I’ve found the UI absolutely horrid.
Well, to each his own, I suppose. But I wonder, since I’ve heard this a lot: what element of the UI do you find so horrid? Is it just because you’re not used to it? Personnally, I love the new docking dialogs in 1.3, and the icons in the menus help navigate to the correct option quickly. I also think the “Save” dialogs (especially for JPG) are superior to Photoshop’s.
The only thing I’m still not used to is the way you select empty space in GIMP vs. Photoshop. But apart from that I enjoy using both apps (GIMP at home, Photoshop at work).
I’ve used both Photoshop and Gimp and don’t seem to have a problem with either interface, they are just different. But then I’m not an artist (picky as hell) either. For Mandrake users, RPMs do exist and can be had at Texstar’s excellent FTP site, catch the link via pclinuxonline.com. As far as Scribus goes, I don’t know squit about DTP so I’ll leave that for those that do. Something new to play with though. IMO, what these free programs provide is a launching point for people who want to see what this stuff is about without having to purchase outrageously price applications before they are ready to. I hate when people rage against free software because it doesn’t have this or that feature. What do you expect? It’s free for cryin out loud and a gift. I suppose you all return Christmas gifts too.
Anyone working in real DTP work these days knows that Quark is basically dead anyways.
Perhaps for the DTP market, but consider the far larger market of newspapers and magazines who are still running OS 8 and 9 on their systems because they have not felt a compelling reason to upgrade in recent history.
Adobe grabbed a lot of former QuarkXPress users (including myself), with Indesign, along with their own former PageMaker users.
Yes, Adobe grabbed many of those doing small scale publishing/DTP who were on programs like PageMaker or possibly an old version of Quark and were ready to upgrade to a new OS X system. The magazine and newspaper markets remained largely based upon Quark, with a few notable exceptions.
I was a hardcore QuarkXPress user from 1994, when I started doing DTP work, to ~2001. In that time, I didn’t even *think* of using PageMaker. This was probably because of the large amount of QuarkXTentions available that I used on a daily basis. However, in the last few years, I too joined the exodus from QuarkXPress and PageMaker to InDesign.
Carbonizing of extensions will be a major hinderance to the acceptance of QuarkXPress 6 on OS X as well… however newspapers and magazines will eventually transition to newer Macs running QuarkXPress 6 on OS X…
>I’ve been wanting to switch to mac but I can seem to find an >ms publisher alternative…
OpenOffice? The draw program is very suited for taking over publisher needs
>The solution here is to just buy Photoshop and stays happy,
>without adding more stress to him for something that it
>supposed to be a hobby.
On Linux you can use: FilmGimp, Photopaint, Cameleo Light,and
Hancom Pianter if you need more then 16bits channels
A Beos user would go for:
http://pixel32.box.sk/index.php?cat=Download
Passepartout is an Open Source Desktop Publishing application for the X
http://www.stacken.kth.se/project/pptout/
Thanx, first time i hear about it..
Its look fine but a little feature less for now.
Its real small and loads very quickly, i sofar tried
to import (32bits CMYK) tif pictures and put some text around them worked fine. It is already very usable for a small brochure or folder. Nice project
Quark is not dead..the newest Quark had a very warm welcome by its users..remeber they have a huge userbase.
Ever tried to import a complicated Quark document into Indesign..well it does not work very well. I know a couple of studio’s who switched from Quark to InDesign but are again using Quark for more then 60% of the time agian.
In our studio we use Quark and Indesign, new projects are being done in InDesign mostly but older and always running projects (maps/brochures/magazines) are ALL done in Quark.
We even orderd the newest Quark last week. Quark got lazy when they thought there was not alternative, boom and there was InDesign!
Hello,
An easy-to-use and partly word processor. My seven year old version is partly more powerful than MS Word. DTP features. Costs only 99 EUR. If you buy it, tell Ulli Ramps that it is because of my recommendation
regards, Ludwig
If Scribus is QT-only and not KDE has it been ported to Windows? Is it possible?
It runs in cygwin
There are rpms available for Scribus at – ftp://ftp.webtrek.com/pub/rpms
These were built with the checkinstall utility.
There are also rpms for it in the Fedora repository at http://www.fedora.us
How do you do it?
Yes, there is a port in the works as we speak.
I am well aware this will modded down. Your comments Eugenia are plainly biased. Scribus will get better over time and eventually the missing features you imply make it worthless will be added in. The “it doesn’t have (insert name of feature here) so who cares” attitude absolutely reeks. I have been a regular visitor to this site for a while and have noticed the increasing bias displayed by you and some of the Windows trolls who hang out here.
Goodbye I am removing your site from my list of news sites and will no longer visit this site…cause it sucks.
I disagree partly with what you’ve said. While it’s true that the (most likely paid) Windows troll are becoming increasingly vocal and numerous on the discussion threads, Eugenia has remained pretty objective. I often get the feeling that she is very critical of GNU/Linux systems and software (especially on the UI side) not becomes she thinks it sucks, but because she wants them to be the best that they can be. In my view it is similar to an army officer having its son serve under him – in order to avoid accusations of favoritism, he will most probably be more demanding of his son than of the others. I could be mistaken, but this is how I see Eugenia’s criticism. It’s sometimes unfairly strict, but never overly so.
Anyway, as a die-hard Linux advocate (and part-time Windows user) I really enjoy this site, though I do wish that the more zealous Windows advocates (Windrones, as I call them) would actually stick to the facts and not invent defects Linux doesn’t have (or refer to problems that have already been solved) in their criticism of the Free OS.
However, I must say that I won’t consider becoming a paying member until the comments section uses a threaded/nested structure, like those one found at Slashdot or Newsforge. I personnally don’t like the “one big thread” model…sorry!
>Your comments Eugenia are plainly biased
Huh? Which ones exactly??
>The “it doesn’t have (insert name of feature here) so who cares” attitude absolutely reeks.
Well, if it doesn’t do the job the way some people might want, doesn’t do the job. End of story. It is not about supporting an application when it can’t do the job for someone. There is no point, until that app is capable is able to do so. There is no bias there. It is REALITY. I use computers to do my job, not to advocate its internals for political reasons. Thanks God, I am freed of those.
I think this is a wonderful GPL product and I’m including it in my build for Release 1.4! Yes I built a RPM package on Red Hat Linux 8.0 for Gnome Environment and it works beautifully.
Thomas
LinuxInstall.org Proejct (http://linuxinstall.org)
[i]Years ago I had a better alternative with PageStream 2.2 on Amiga: granted, it was only free (as in beer) not free (as in speech), but it worked quite well on a 40 MHz 12MB 68030 Amiga.
I liked PageStream, too. The only downside to it was running it on a 640×400 screen. Amiga 3000 users with enough money for a multisync monitor could at least get that as 640×400 double-scan.
Amiga 2000 and 3000 users with some $ could even buy a (then quite expensive) 24 bit graphics card and a nice monitor and get 800×600 or even 1024×768 delinterlaced displays.
Most of us, though, were stuck at 640×400 interlaced, at 60Hz. I’m surprised my eyes didn’t get destroyed trying to work like that.[i]
Well, surprise, surprise. People who are actually into DTP do buy professional graphics card and get good monitors. A suitable Macintosh Quark/Pagemaker setup neither was nor is cheap, either. That is hardware, you can’t really expect Pagestream to do anything about that.
Second of all, stop speaking in the perfect tense, will you? Pagestream is still being developed and sold, and there is even a Linux port in the works. And Pagestream users certainly aren’t using interlaced 640×512 screens.
Well, surprise, surprise. People who are actually into DTP do buy professional graphics card and get good monitors. A suitable Macintosh Quark/Pagemaker setup neither was nor is cheap, either. That is hardware, you can’t really expect Pagestream to do anything about that.
Second of all, stop speaking in the perfect tense, will you? Pagestream is still being developed and sold, and there is even a Linux port in the works. And Pagestream users certainly aren’t using interlaced 640×512 screens.
Did you even think for a second that maybe he was just reminiscing about how the Amiga *as a system* operated and wasn’t bitching about PageStream at all?
The output from low end Amiga’s was great for certain things, but for illustrative work the 60Hz interlaced display was pretty painful to look at.
Please continue to be a PageMaker fanboi and don’t see the forest for the trees.
I’ve done a bit of work for some friends using MS Publisher and loathed it professionally – it’s okay for Mum and Dad putting together scrap-books of their grand0children, but no good whatever for even half-serious work.
I found the scribus site and downloaded it, compiled it for Linux, then downloaded the free-but-non-GPLed QT-win32 library and tried compiling it (for myself) in Windows using OpenWatcom1.0
It hasn’t been optimized to compile for Windows, but I don’t doubt that with the growth of the GPLed Windows port of QT, it will happen, and very quickly too.
When that happens, I’ll be approaching my friends again, and telling them that Scribus is now part and parcel of my terms for working with them – take it or leave it, Publisher’s not scriptable and is thus a complete waste of my time.
Geez, every time a free software app that reaches a previously untouched market hits 1.0 we hear the same line of crap coming from both sides.
“Now everyone can throw out ExpensiveVerticalApp! The game is ours!”
“Only if you’re a total n00b! NewFreeApp is completely worthless!”
In fact, I bet Scribus could presently be used by maybe 5% to 10% of shops that are using Quark or Indesign presently to do stuff. I attribute that to the fact that sometimes companies tend to buy software they don’t actually need, rather than Scribus’ innate capability at this stage in its development.
But of course Mozilla, the Gimp and OpenOffice were all at the 5% to 10% stage at one point in their existence, and while there are certainly trolls who would like to tell you that those apps never got much further than 5% to 10% (“My porn site won’t work in Moz! That means no one could ever use Moz as their primary browser!”), the truth is that they have, and Scribus probably will eventually too.
Finally, don’t forget that the target isn’t even 100% equivalence, but maybe 50-60%, to be a threat to the proprietary app it’s trying to displace. MS regards Linux and OpenOffice as threats even while their actual use is way less than 5% presently, and Adobe and Quark’s markets are that much more vertical and thus vulnerable. Every 2 or 3 sales Adobe loses to the Gimp because some corporate user just wants to knock off some web graphics is a thousand dollars less in revenue, and Quark’s margins are that much higher. Scribus, at very least, will set the cats among the pigeons.
Very good points. Something I have tried telling people for a long time, Im glad someone else besides me gets it.
Did anybody actually read this before it was posted? It’s a decentish review, but a little bit of editing would have been very welcome. If this guy’s involved in GNU/Darwin, he’s probably pretty technically skilled, but that doesn’t make him a writer.
< Did anybody actually read this before it was posted? It’s a decentish review, but a little bit of editing would have been very welcome. If this guy’s involved in GNU/Darwin, he’s probably pretty technically skilled, but that doesn’t make him a writer. >
I am hispanic, english is not my native language. I apologize for editing and grammer mistakes.
I tried it on a 550 MHz AMD K6-2 and found it so slow as to
be utterly unusable even on a very simple task. The program kept redrawing the whole screen at every keystroke.