Scribus - Open Source Desktop Publishing

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.



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.


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, called SLA, 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).

Scribus cannot read or write the native file formats of commercial programs like QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher, and InDesign; the developers feel that reverse engineering those file formats would be prohibitively complex and could risk legal action from the makers of those programs.

Although Scribus supports Unicode character encoding, it currently does not properly support complex script rendering and so cannot be used with Unicode text for languages written with Arabic, Indic and South East Asian writing systems.

Download: Download Scribus
Sources : http://www.scribus.net/
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