Slashdot Mirror
Scribus 1.0 Released
McShazbot writes "Graphics.com has this article about the release of Scribus 1.0 (homepage, mirror) desktop publishing software. Check out some screenshots. If it can even marginally compete with the industry leader, this is a big deal -- I know a lot of people for whom Quark is the killer app that prevents them from moving to Linux, and most of them are tired of paying a grand for the privilege of using it."
Just a couple of weeks ago, we read about the release of ardour. A very competent audio-editing program. And now this. OSS is really emerging as the future for desktop content creation also, and not only server appliancies. And also the prop. software vendors are finding linux. (Maya 5 from Alias|Wavefront is availible for Linux). This is truely exiting times!
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Quanta + is turning into a pretty damn good web designer thingy - it uses a modified khtml to do Wysiwg or visual page layout as they call it. Thats in cvs. Should be out with KDE 3.2, sometime in the autumn. PHP support is strongest atm, 'twould be good if it got some more JSP and Zope support in there. Maybe even asp.net for mono....
Kivio and Dia are visio like tools.
Kivio is getting some active development after a bit of a lull, and Dia has AFAIK been actively developed for quite some time.
have been in Cooker (RC?) for a while.
for i in `cat suckers`; do mutt -xs "MAKE $100 BILLION IN 10 SECONDS!!!!!!!!!" $i <spam; done
(I actually used something like this recently to send out notices to members of the local homebrew club that the newsletter was up. It'd work as well for spamming people, and would even have the added advantage of defeating the recently-discussed graylisting.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Maybe Scribus is currently ready for high-end DTP, maybe it isn't yet. Doesn't matter -- I am genuinely no-kidding pumped to see this. Whenever it is ready, I'll be one step closer to ditching my Windows box, where to date I have been shackled by PageMaker. Linux has LaTeX, but I don't need a document design program, I need pica-precision page layout. And I hear Wine is getting better at handlingPhotoshop too. Any year now....
What's Scribus like for long-document support? I laid out a 192-page roleplaying game, and PageMaker 6.5-7.0 handled it pretty well -- not as well as FrameMaker, but better than Quark. So far as I can tell, it looks like Scribus is currently targeting a lower document range. But any year now (ohboyohboy)....
Macs are only 1-5% of the total desktop market, this is true.
But Macs are almost...but not quite...100% of the printing market. There are a few out there use PCs, sure, but they are in the vast minority when it comes to 4 color printing and page layout.
I work in the industry. I've worked in printing for almost 20 years at a number of companies. PC's just simply are not used in production at any of these pre-press houses...Macs have this multi-billion dollar industry sewn up. I don't know how many times over the years where we hear of Microsoft or another company claiming they're going to squeeze out the Mac in this area, and yet they fail every time.
But I welcome a different page layout program instead of Quark on OSX.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I appreciate the time you took to call around.
I have had brochures, newspapers and magazines printed from PDF files without issue. Including among them were a map containing a 600MB Photoshop TIFF, and a number of 133 lpi magazines. They have been printed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Colorado, and England. There have been no image quality issues.
I have also worked for a web printing company that worked with them quite successfully (and still does). Many, if not most, new RIPs will handle them as well as the Postscript files they are made from.
If the PDF files are produced correctly, there is no need to worry about image quality. If they are not produced correctly (ie: the wrong compression options), they can be a nightmare - they are very difficult to change. I do not doubt that many printers would be wary of taking them, but I doubt you would have any real trouble finding a printer to take them for any substantial ($) job. They are, however, still unsuitable for spot color work.
I would be surprised if you found anyone who had heard of Scribus. I hadn't either. I don't use it, and I wouldn't bet a job on it. But I will watch it, and I'll play with it. It won't give Quark any worries for quite a while, but it should provide an alternative for those who want one.
The next time I install linux I'll be sure to check it out.
No need to wait, it also runs on Windows.
I'm not sure what you mean by "vector" text layers, but Gimp 1.3 does have real text layers (the text is editable, etc.). I don't think it has the others, but I'm not sure what "image slicing" and "intelligent masking" would be, so it's possible those are there. Adjustment layers are not.
The other things I know Gimp doesn't have are support for more than 8 bits per color plane (no 48-bit color) and no support for color separation, though Scribus does do color separation, so you might be able to get by with the combination (and maybe the Gimp will steal that code from Scribus...).
What the Gimp has that Photoshop does not, however, is awesome tools for scripting image manipulations, in the language of your choice (C, C++, perl, scheme and python, at present).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
But how many professional Graphic Designers know C, C++, perl, etc? My educated guess (as someone who knows more than a handful of graphic designers) is not many. Writing a script for the Gimp in the language of your choice may be appealing for your average Slashdot reader, but for just about anyone else (myself included) creating a Photoshop action to do the same thing is much easier...
1) Select New Action
2) Name New Action
3) Start recording steps for the new action
4) Stop recording
5) Save action
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe writing something in whatever programming language is easier than that...
I don't think Microsoft uses "heavily hacked" fonts so much as they use well-hinted fonts.
Look at a microsoft font in a font editor sometime. You won't find much special hinting. You cannot make a single font outline look good at all font sizes. What they do is program the font (yes, it is a program that runs in a VM kinda like postscript) to radically change the outlines so that the font renders differently at small sizes. This is not hinting -- it's more like putting 3 or more fonts into one. Hinting does not help when your goal is to make a font render well at a ridiculously low resolution. Hints are good when you are rendering at 6000 or even 600 DPI, but not when you have to render to a 75dpi screen.
By the way, this has nothing to do with the patents. The MS fonts render almost as well on Linux even on the stock freetype engine. In fact, I can't even see the difference between the 'legal' and the 'patented' versions.
There's no way it's going to be able to compete on an industry standard level, but on an amateur basis, it looks like a great program.
On a side note, I'm not sure how long Quark will be an industry leader for - many former Quark users are have switched to InDesign due to the ridiculously long wait for Quark for MacOSX and many are considering switching (amongst the designers I know, anyway)
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
... is what's most important.
:-) since this is the best way to test adoption of a new DTP package.
:-)
I for one appreciate what you guys are doing, too. I'm syadmin at a Quark house, and we've got extensive experience with the "pitfalls" in PDF workflow with quark. Especially Quark 4, where it's PDF import is apallingly unreliable and quirky.
Scribus looks interesting, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. Helping out if I can (mostly a non-programmer) and testing. What many people don't realise is that you don't have to pick ONE DTP platform. We're considering buing some win2k boxes with InDesign for ad design and layout. They'll just save PDFs or EPSs that'll be imported into pages being prepared on MacOS 9 machines with Quark. Maybe Scribus will be suitable for the same role someday
I'll second your sentiments on GIMP and CMYK support, and add a "please please please please" into the bargain. GIMP is not really comparable to Photoshop for prepress uses, but good CMYK support is the last major hurdle in that direction IMHO. Of course, we'd need some CMS support in XFree86 too for it to be really useful under Linux.
I might do up a small house ad in Scribus, slip it into our workflow, and see what happens
OH, just one question. You mention that the Scribus format is XML - would that happen to be loaded with verification + good error checking? A DTP app that didn't just crash on damaged documents would be a godsend. "EPS Element 'bobsyouruncle.eps' is damaged and cannot be loaded" not "*blurk*The application QuarkXPress unexpectedly quit with an Error Type 2".
Craig Ringer