Both installations are painless and Scribus runs up to a rather atypical blank page display. On Windows you’re advised to install GhostScript, the open source PostScript and PDF rendering engine, first. It has just moved to version 1.3.4 but since this developers’ release is only currently available as source code, our review is based on version 1.3.3.9. The program is a free download and is cross-platform, with versions available for Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mac OS X, OS/2 and Linux. Scribus is an open-source DTP application, started in 2001 and written by people who are clearly opinionated on subjects like typography and page design. There is a third contender, though, from a rather unusual source. This stems from a long-running reluctance to provide review copies and a long-running desire to produce an under-featured, over-priced heavyweight that still has trouble with tables. A few might add QuarkXpress to that, though Quark seems to have alienated virtually all journos over the years. Scribus has been translated into more than 25 languages, and more are coming in the future.To read most of the digital press, you’d think InDesign was the only big-league desktop publishing (DTP) application anyone took seriously. The file format is XML-based, allowing for even damaged documents to be recovered with a simple text editor. Scribus includes many useful features, such as powerful vector drawing tools, support for a huge number of file types via import/export filters, emulation of color blindness, or the rendering of markup languages like LaTeX or Lilypond inside Scribus. It supports many quality publishing features, such as CMYK colors, spot color support, ICC color management, and versatile PDF creation. Scribus is now completely cross-platform and runs natively on Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4, eComStation, and Windows. You can make your PDF documents even more 'intelligent' by using Javascript from within Scribus. Scribus is also a great tool for authoring PDF documents with advanced features such as forms, buttons, passwords, and more. Scribus will help design and produce magazines, newsletters, print advertising, brochures, calendars, and pretty much anything that requires text to look visually appealing on paper.

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