As part of the research I've been doing into whether a Mac OS X user could find life on Linux acceptable, I took a look at the free Scribus open source desktop publishing application. In the past, I've done graphic design and page layout as a part of my job, and am intimately familiar with PageMaker 6.0 on the Macintosh platform (pre OS X). In appropriate places during this review, I'll compare Scribus to my memories of PageMaker.
What is Scribus?
The Scribus web site describes the software as "award-winning professional DTP" software which provides "a combination of 'press-ready' output and new approaches to page layout." They also boast that "Scribus has rapidly developed into one of the premier desktop applications for Linux." It supports a variety of features like separation previews, scripting, CMYK color, ICC color management, PDF import/export, Unicode text, vector (line) drawing tools, and more.
Review Environment
I reviewed this software on a 933 MHz Apple Macintosh G4 with 1.5GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.4 and the bundled version of Apple X11 for Macintosh. Scribus was installed on the review Macintosh using the open source Fink and Fink Commander tools. Installation was fairly quick and easy using Fink, and the software launches within a couple of seconds of clicking the Scribus icon in the "/sw/bin" directory.
Scribus' Native File Format - XML
The file format used by Scribus is XML-based and documented. Since XML is text-based, even corrupted Scribus files can be opened up using a text editor and perhaps partially or completely rescued. This is definitely an improvement over products like PageMaker which use proprietary, undocumented formats that can become corrupted and essentially useless.
Import and Export File Formats
Scribus accepts text input from CSV, HTML, SXW, and TXT files. It accepts images in GIF, JPG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, EPS, and PDF formats. Given that Scribus is first and foremost a Linux tool, this combination of formats is probably more than adequate for most Scribus users. The Macintosh and PC designers I'm familiar with would probably want to see more flexible text input, such as allowing for the importing of text in RTF format, Microsoft Word format, and perhaps others. The only image formats I see missing that a Macintosh or PC designer might use regularly are BMP (the Windows bitmap format), PICT (Apple's traditional bitmap format) PSD (PhotoShop), Macromedia FreeHand, and Adobe Illustrator formats. You could get by without these by using The Gimp or another package to transfer them to a supported format, though this would be an extra step most artists I know would find bothersome.
It can export pages as EPS graphics, PDF files, SVG files, PNG images, BMP images, JPEG, PBM, PGM, PNG, PPM, XBM, or XPM. This seems like a "more than sufficient" list of formats. EPS would work well for importing into other software and getting quality results. The Scribus PDF output options are extremely robust and complete, allowing for press-ready output (not examined in this review) as well as on-screen viewing. The other formats would permit Scribus designs to be used on the web or in other tools.
Extremely Flexible Text Layout Options
I was quite impressed with the ability to adjust the layout of text. Scribus allows you to lay out your text in typical geometric shapes (like circles, ellipses, squares, rectangles, and the like) but also customized shapes of your own design. For example, you could start with an oval and "put a dent in it" to flow around a nearby graphic. You could create your own path shaped like a car or train. In addition, you can bind text to a path. You can easily put background colors behind a block of text, change to smallcaps, "mirror image" the text, etc. When I last regularly used Adobe PageMaker on the Macintosh (around 6.0), you couldn't do anything like this with it. (Later versions of PageMaker or the replacement product InDesign, I realize, might be different.) The only thing I didn't like about the text layout capabilities was the tendency for the software to break a line "mid-word" causing something like "around" to become "aro" on one line, "u" on the next, and "nd" on the next. This is a very minor nit, however. I'm not sure PageMaker wouldn't have done the same thing if it supported custom text shapes. (See the graphic below.)
The text editor is pretty robust as well, offering as much flexibility as many commercial word processors in terms of editing and formatting text:
Output Capabilities
Like its Macintosh and Windows counterparts, Scribus allows the designer to collect files for output by a service bureau. As mentioned elsewhere in this article, you can also just output a complete PDF that provides a service bureau with everything they should need to produce your document.
The printed output I obtained from Scribus through printing one of its PDF files using the native Macintosh functionality was every bit as good as any PageMaker output I ever created. Exporting a layout to one of the supported export formats also produced output that was "more than acceptable".
Robust Feature Set
Scribus supports templates, paragraph styles, line styles, shading, using tabs to align text, and more. Text can be converted to outlines to allow some graphic manipulation of it. Scribus supports layering of design objects (graphics, text) and moving objects from layer to layer. It includes a scrapbook for storing frequently used graphics and text. A font previewer is provided, to allow you to see how a font will look when printed.
A hyphenator is included, which can merely provide suggestions or actually automatically hyphenate text as you type it.
Color Management is also supported. Pictures and solid colors within layouts can be profiled separately. Monitor and printer profiles are also supported.
JavaScripts can be added to layouts.
Python scripts can be used to extend the functionality of Scribus and to automate common layout and design tasks.
Images can be manipulated within a layout using The Gimp if it's available (which it wasn't on my test system).
Plenty of Customization Options
An extensive array of preferences allow you to manipulate the software's GUI to replicate Microsoft Windows, Motif, SGI, and others. You can change mouse behavior, switch measuring units from points to picas, millimeters, or inches. It supports document sizes from International standards like A4 to Folio, Letter, legal, Tabloid, and others. Custom document sizes are also supported. Autosaving can be enabled and the interval set within a very wide range of time from as little as 1 minute to an hour or more. You can change the on-screen rulers (or guides) and display grids to help you more precisely layout your design. You can set the default font properties for text objects, default image scaling, drawing object line weights/colors/fills, magnification tool ranges, and more.
"Acceptable" Performance on the Test Platform
This, too, may have been a function of the test system (a 733MHz G4 Macintosh running OS X 10.4 with Apple's X11) but there seemed to be a very visible lag during the review period between selecting a section of text using the mouse and having that text highlight inside Scribus. It didn't make Scribus unusable, but I can imagine that others would find it irritating. It's possible that such a lag doesn't exist on a Linux system (or other platform), so take this criticism with a grain of salt unless you're planning to use Scribus on a comparable platform (Macintosh).
The Help System
The help system in Scribus is more complete and extensive than that of most open source applications I've used. The text is generally very easy to read and understand, allowing you to figure things out pretty quickly. On the other hand, some sections were a bit disappointing. For instance, the imporing section doesn't really provide help importing items into Scribus layouts (i.e., it doesn't walk you through the process or even explicitly list what kinds of images you can import) but reads more like a rant from the author on why it's a bad idea to import JPG and other formats. While this is useful information, it's not what I expect to find in "documentation" when I'm trying to answer a question like "How do I import a graphic into Scribus?" or "Why don't I seem to be able to import that BMP file?" Since the product is really quite easy to use if you've ever used a comparable layout package on a Windows or Macintosh computer, this, too, is a minor nit to pick with Scribus.
Conclusion: A Very Usable, Stable, and Complete DTP Solution
Other than what has already been mentioned in this review, I could find nothing missing from Scribus that I needed from a page layout program. It worked fine in the testing I did. I saw no crashes, no unexpected error messages, and no other "undocumented behavior". It behaved like any well-implemented professional application. If, based on what you've read here, Scribus sounds like it would meet your publishing needs, I see no reason to hesitate recommending it to you.
Since I haven't used Scribus for any extensive DTP work yet, I will reserve the right to give it my usual "1 to 10 rating" until I've worked with it more seriously. Still, I can tell you at this point that based on my own needs, it delivers all the major functionality I would have expected from the (very expensive) Adobe product, and more than I probably need. I would therefore be inclined to give it a higher rating, likely in the 8-10 range.
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