Scribus () is

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...

(DTP) software available for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout,

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random ...

, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can also create animated and

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

presentations and forms. Example uses include writing newspapers,

brochure A brochure is originally an informative paper document (often also used for advertising) that can be folded into a template, pamphlet, or leaflet. A brochure can also be a set of related unfolded papers put into a pocket folder or packet or can ...

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of ...

poster A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text ...

s, and books. The Scribus 1.4 series are the current stable releases, and the 1.5 series where developments are made available in preparation for the next stable release series, version 1.6. Scribus is written in Qt and released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

. There are native versions available for

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

, BSD,

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

Haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a '' kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a '' kigo'', or ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

(including

ArcaOS ArcaOS is an operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM. It was codenamed Blue Lion during its development. It builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing defects and li ...

and

eComStation eComStation or eCS is an operating system based on OS/2 Warp for the 32-bit x86 architecture. It was originally developed by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV under license from IBM. It includes additional applications, and support for new hard ...

) operating systems.

General feature overview

Scribus supports most major bitmap formats, including

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word process ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

, and PSD. Vector drawings can be imported or directly opened for editing. The long list of supported formats includes

Encapsulated PostScript Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a Document Structuring Convention (DSC) conforming PostScript document format usable as a graphics file format. The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Ado ...

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium s ...

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program developed and marketed by Adobe Inc. Originally designed for the Apple Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began in 1985. Along with Creative Cloud (Adobe's shift to month ...

, and Xfig. Professional type/image-setting features include

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

colors and ICC

color management In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printer ...

. It has a built-in scripting engine using Python. It is available in 60 languages. High-level printing is achieved using its own internal level 3

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...

driver, including support for

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mo ...

embedding and sub-setting with

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...

, Type 1, and

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...

fonts. The internal driver supports full Level 2 PostScript constructs and a large subset of Level 3 constructs.

support includes transparency, encryption, and a large set of the PDF 1.5 specification including layers (OCG), as well as

PDF/X PDF/X is a subset of the PDF ISO standard. The purpose of PDF/X is to facilitate graphics exchange, and it therefore has a series of printing-related requirements which do not apply to standard PDF files. For example, in PDF/X-1a all fonts need ...

-3, including interactive PDFs form fields, annotations, and bookmarks. The current file format, called SLA, is

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

. Old versions of SLA were based on XML. Text can be imported from

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was develope ...

(ODT) text documents (such as from

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite co ...

Writer), OpenOffice.org XML (

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

Writer's SXW files),

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

's DOC, PDB, and

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

formats (although some limitations apply). ODT files can typically be imported along with their paragraph styles, which are then created in Scribus. HTML tags which modify text, such as bold and ''italic'', are supported. Word and PDB documents are only imported as plain text. ScribusGenerator is a

mail merge Mail merge consists of combining mail and letters and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings from a form letter. This feature is usually employed in a word processing document which contains fixed text (which is the same in e ...

-like extension to Scribus.

Forthcoming Scribus 1.6 (by way of Scribus 1.5 development branch)

Scribus 1.5.1 added PDF/X-4 support. Initially, Scribus did not properly support complex script rendering and so could not be used with

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

text for languages written in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, Indic, and

South East Asian Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...

s, even though it supported Unicode character encoding. In August 2012, it was announced that a third party had developed a system to support complex Indic scripts. In May 2015 it was announced that the ScribusCTL project had started to improve complex layout by integrating the OpenType text-shaping engine HarfBuzz into the official Scribus 1.5.1svn branch. In July 2016 it was announced that the text layout engine had been rewritten from scratch in preparation for support of complex scripts coming in Scribus 1.5.3 and later. In December 2016 Scribus announced they got support for OpenType advanced feature in 1.5.3svn, as well as complex script and RTL direction. Scribus 1.4.7 did not have OpenType alternative glyph support, so ligatures, for example, were not inserted automatically; this became available from v1.5.3.

Support for other programs and formats

Scribus cannot read or write the native file formats of other DTP programs such as

QuarkXPress QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and ...

InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, bo ...

; the developers consider that

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

those file formats would be prohibitively complex and could risk legal action from the makers of those programs. Due to licensing issues, the software package does not include support for the Pantone color matching system (PMS), which is included in some commercial DTP applications. Pantone colors can be obtained and incorporated within Scribus without licensing issues. Scribus is shipped with more than 100 color palettes, most donated by various commercial color vendors, but also including scientific, national, and government color standards.

Forthcoming Scribus 1.6 (by way of Scribus 1.5 development branch)

Support for importing

Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft, differing from Microsoft Word in that the emphasis is placed on page layout and graphic design rather than text composition and proofreading. Overview Publisher is includ ...

is incorporated into version 1.5, and QuarkXPress Tag files, InDesign's IDML, as well as InCopy's ICML formats were added to the development branch. Scribus 1.5.3 onwards contains more than 300 color palettes. German Organisation freieFarbe e.V. built last HLC Colour Atlas for real colours based on CIELAB. This free Colour Palette is also available in Scribus 1.5.4+. Scribus 1.5.6 supports native pdf export with embedded open type fonts and pdf 1.6.

Python 3 The programming language Python was conceived in the late 1980s, and its implementation was started in December 1989 by Guido van Rossum at CWI in the Netherlands as a successor to ABC capable of exception handling and interfacing with th ...

is now default in scripts. Scribus 1.5.7 improves undo and redo action. Qt 5.14 is new base for compilation and 3rd party components have newer versions. Next version is 1.5.8 as perhaps last step before 1.6.0. From view of developers Version 1.5.7 is stable. There are no new Versions in pipe with Backports for the 1.4 tree with the near end of QT4 support in most systems. Scribus 1.5.8 supports full Python 3 support also for MacOS and modern UI features like Dark Mode.

Books

Books about Scribus are available in several languages, including an official

manual Manual may refer to: Instructions * User guide * Owner's manual An owner's manual (also called an instruction manual or a user guide) is an instructional book or booklet that is supplied with almost all technologically advanced consumer ...

for v1.3, published through FLES Books in 2009.

Significant users

Janayugom ''Janayugom'' is a Malayalam daily newspaper published in Kerala, India. It is the official organ of the Kerala State Council of the Communist Party of India. It is the first newspaper in India using free software. Originally started in 1947 as ...

'', a

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam wa ...

daily newspaper in

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Ca ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, migrated all desktop publishing to Scribus and

Gimp GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized ...

in November 2019, saving over 10 million Indian rupees (approximately US$130,000).

References

External links

* * on

Libera.chat Libera Chat, stylized Libera.Chat, is an IRC network for free and open source software projects. It was founded on 19 May 2021 by former Freenode staff members, after Freenode was taken over by Andrew Lee, founder of Private Internet Access. ...

Tutorials

From Jacci Howard Bear at LifeWire

Book_HowToSCRIBUS-Digital.pdf
* For Scribus 1.

* Scribus 201
hexagon
* Scribus 1.5.
create a book cover
* scribus 1.4.

* scribus 1.5.
path and Bézier curves

Articles

at World Label

by William von Hagen at IBM {{Authority control Cross-platform software Desktop publishing software for Linux Desktop publishing software for macOS Desktop publishing software for Windows Free desktop publishing software Free educational software Free multilingual software Free PDF software Free software programmed in C++ Free typesetting software Software that uses Cairo (graphics) Software that uses Qt