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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."
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.
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).
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... 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