From COKS - Open Source Center - Slovenia

Scribus
Developer	The Scribus Team
Latest release	1.3.3.11 / January 11, 2008
Preview release	1.3.4 / May 30, 2007
OS	Cross-platform
Natural language(s)	Multilingual
Genre	Desktop publishing
License	GPL
Website	www.scribus.net

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application. Native versions are available for Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. It is known for its broad feature set of page layout features comparable to leading commercial applications such as Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign.

Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting, and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.

Released under the GNU General Public License, Scribus is free software.

Capabilities

Scribus supports most major graphic formats in addition to SVG. Professional type/image setting features include CMYK colors and ICC color management. Although written in C++, it has built-in scripting using Python. It is available in more than 24 languages.

Printing is achieved via its own internal level 3 PostScript driver, including support for font embedding and sub-setting with TrueType, Type 1 and OpenType fonts. The internal driver fully supports Level 2 PostScript constructs and a large subset of Level 3 constructs.

PDF support includes transparency, encryption and a large set of the PDF 1.4 spec as well as PDF/X3, including interactive PDFs form fields, annotations and bookmarks. However, although PDF export is very good, it is not currently able to import/edit PDF files, and PDFs exported from Scribus are not searchable in Acrobat Reader if the document contains proportional fonts.

The file format is based on XML and is fully documented. Text can be imported from OpenDocument text documents, as well as RTF, Microsoft Word .doc, and HTML formats (although limitations apply).