Scribus is an open-source program that brings professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows. It is powerful software that helps you create great looking documents of all kinds. It also comes with a lot of support options to help you achieve the best result. There is an enthusiastic and friendly community around Scribus that assists beginner and pro alike through the mailing list, IRC channel, wiki, contracted support, and the bugtracker. Scribus supports professional features, such as CMYK color, spot color, separations, ICC color and robust commercial grade PDF.
Scribus 1.6.0 most important changes:
- User interface overhaul from 1.4.x including new icons, and support for light/dark mode.
- Resource Manager for online resources such as dictionaries
- Improvements to the canvas rendering on Hi-DPI screens.
- The Barcode plug-in has been updated and offers new features such as “GS1 Digital Link URIs” for retail barcoding.
- Several new commands have been added to the scripting engine, so as to make the document creation via scripts easier and more versatile. Many new Scripter commands were added as well as updates to the Scripter documentation
- A new feature is the possibility to search for a particular function, like one can in GIMP, G’MIC or Photoshop. If possible, the new dialog also shows the menu path.
- A new PDF-based output preview is now available.
- Python scripting was migrated from python version 2 to 3
- Addition of XeLaTeX support to Render Frames
- With the new “Weld” feature, objects can be combined and moved without being “grouped”, i.e., each object remains fully editable.
- Scribus offers a “Symbol” or clone feature similar to Adobe® Illustrator®: If one master object (Symbol) has been modified, all of its copies (clones) are modified as well.
Text / Typography / Fonts
- Scribus 1.6.0 provides some of the most often requested text features, among them:
- vertical justification of text;
- orphans and widows control;
- foot and end notes (experimental feature);
- text variables (experimental feature);
- cross references (experimental feature).
- Scribus enables applying a background color for selected text and also offers this option within character and paragraph styles;
- Font embedding code was completely rewritten from scratch to enable support of complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and Hindi that arrived in the 1.5.x development series. We are more than grateful for the magnificent work that the Oman House of Open Source Technology team completed, led by Khaled Hosny.
- Scribus provides access to advanced OpenType features, such as ligatures and alternate glyphs.
- Typing on the canvas and text rendering in general has become a lot faster.
- Previews for fonts are now available in font selectors.
- The “Text” tab was moved from the Properties Palette to a new palette.
- Fonts that have been rejected are now listed in a separate tab in the Document Setup / Preferences dialogs. This enables users to know why a certain font installed on their system doesn’t show up in the font selectors.
- Important Note: Those with a collection of older Scribus documents can and should keep their older versions installed or at least the installable distribution/package as text layout will change due to the improved text layout engine.
Graphics
- A feature-rich plug-in called ‘Picture Browser’ enables asset management for graphics files by tagging them or creating graphics collections. Graphics files can be dragged into a Scribus document from the Picture Browser.
- Scribus supports all advanced gradient types available in Adobe® Illustrator® and XARA® Designer, including mesh gradients.
- One of the most-requested features, drop shadows, is available, albeit still experimental.
- For documents that comprise many large (in terms of file size) bitmap images, a configurable image cache has been added. It can buffer image files to the hard drive and free RAM, so Scribus can continue to run smoothly. [full release notes]
Download: Scribus 64-bit v1.6.0 | 119.0 MB (Open Source)
Download: Scribus 32-bit v1.6.0 | 104.0 MB
Download: Scribus for Other Operating Systems
Link: Scribus Home Page | Scribus Screenshot | Release Announcement
