Scribus 1.5 is becoming the best open source DTP program

New Developments in Text Processing

One of the primary tasks of a DTP program is to arrange texts in an organized fashion. The main focus of the developers has therefore been to polish the text functions. As a result, they have now implemented some of the functions that users have long been asking for. For example, you can now change the appearance of individual words found in a scrolling text if they do not fit with the surrounding text because of things like boldface or italics.

The handling of widow lines and orphan lines is important for professional-looking results. These expressions may sound strange, but they are common terms from the language of printers. A widow line is the last line of a paragraph, which is in a new column or on a new page. An orphan line is the first sentence of a paragraph that is the last line in a column or on a page.

The new version of Scribus takes control from the less experienced user when these issues appear. Double-clicking on the second frame divides the text between the frames so that these errors disappear.

Additionally, the program has mastered footnotes and endnotes. Probably few academics will use a DTP program to write with, because classic WYSIWYG tools like LibreOffice and LaTeX are much better suited for the task. However, books and flyers intended for academic use can profit from the new Scribus ability to place footnotes and endnotes into a common section at the end of the document.

Place holders in a text are practical. Starting with version 1.5.0, Scribus also provides this function. The software dynamically replaces placeholders with the desired text.

The program implements cross-references as well. These are also dynamically adjusted as soon as either the reference or citation in the text changes.

The topic of tables was a sore spot for Scribus for many years because these were not actually implemented as such. Instead, they were simple text frames that needed to be arranged accordingly. This made it difficult to use tables in the same was that other DTP tools did.

Up to now, it has been impossible to create a consistent appearance for these objects by clicking. This is no longer the case in the new version. New table objects work as an individual group and offer corresponding functions for editing. Within a short amount of time, you can change the appearance of a table so that the result looks cohesive rather than pieced together.

New Graphics Administration

The process of working with images was also not a joyful task in past versions. Aside from a simple dialog for inserting a graphic into a document, there were practically no functions that made it easy to work with images. The administration of images was better done outside of Scribus. This was because images used for multiple documents had to be individually placed in each of the documents.

The current version has the new Picture Browser , which lets users manage the graphics that are used and loads imported images and photos via mouse click. This is especially good for photos having a high recycling rate. Users who often deal with hand-drawn graphics and graphs also have a lot to be happy about with Scribus 1.5. The developers use more external tools and libraries, which in turn makes the handling of these types of files easier. The software now has better support for vector graphics, such as those in SVG format, and also makes it more intuitive to use them.

The import plugin for vector graphics from Adobe Illustrator is not quite finished. However, it already shows impressive performance and handled graphics in text very well during testing. Many other formats such as CGM and ORA are celebrating their inclusion in Scribus 1.5.

Visio files from the Microsoft world and Corel Draw files are also now part of the portfolio of formats being supported. A library from the Document Liberation project serves as the technical foundation. The program can also even administer Vector curves that you have created with other programs and then exported in dialogs, such as the Custom Shapes dialog that handles Photoshop Custom Shapes (CSH), which have been created for this purpose.

GraphicsMagick serves as the graphics library and makes sure that Scribus can open and edit almost any image format imaginable. Cast shadows are now also a part of the repertoire. If you want to create vector drawings yourself, you will find the suitable tool in Scribus graphics. Scribus now also supports things like the specification of arches and spirals.