Download Scribus 1.5.0

Version 1.5.0 of Scribus has been released. Scribus is an open source desktop publishing program. The program can be used to format and edit documents for printed matter, among other things, which can then be saved as a PDF or postscript document. on this page an overview of the various possibilities of this program can be found. Version 1.5.0 should be seen as a test release for version 1.6.0 and contains a large number of changes. Extensive release notes can be found on this page are found, this is a short section of it.

Scribus 1.5.0 Released

After many years of work and more than a thousand bug fixes and feature implementations, the Scribus Team is pleased to announce the release of Scribus 1.5.0. Scribus 1.5.0 is a preview of the next stable version 1.6.0 and has primarily been released for testing purposes, so more users can help us with identifying and fixing bugs. It is not stable enough for use in real production scenarios yet, but it can help users to become familiar with the new interface and the amount of new features, the number of which has almost doubled in comparison to the stable 1.4.x series.

Most Important Technical Changes

• Scribus 1.5.0 uses Qt 5 as its UI toolkit. The minimum version to compile Scribus from source is Qt 5.4.
• The file format has undergone significant changes and may change even further before the release of 1.6.0. Thus, files created or edited in 1.5.0 cannot be opened in earlier versions of Scribus. Potential changes to the file format on the road to 1.6.0 notwithstanding, the Scribus Team will work very hard to make sure that files created by 1.5.0 and the following technology previews can be opened reliably in the next stable release.
• Unfortunately we cannot offer GraphicsMagick and Open Scene Graph support for all platforms yet, whereas on Linux (and probably *BSD), GM and and OSG have become new dependencies.
• Scribus will detect an installed version of UniConvertor and use it to import some of the vector formats supported by this program into Scribus.

Most Important New Features

• The user interface has been overhauled and restructured in many places. For example, the context menu takes a lot less screen estate than before, and the Document Setup / Preferences dialog has been rewritten from scratch. The Scribus Team is aware of the remaining deficiencies and will work on resolving these issues before the release of 1.6.0. In some cases inconsistencies in the UI (eg the “Drop Shadow” tab in the Properties Palette) have been deliberately left in place to receive feedback from users as to which way they prefer.
• Scribus can now store bitmap images within its native file format. Previously it was only possible to link to external images.
• Scribus 1.5.0 now offers a “Symbol” or clone feature similar to Adobe Illustrator: If one master object (Symbol) has been modified, all of its copies (clones) are being modified as well.
• With the new “Weld” feature, objects can be combined and moved without being “grouped”, ie, each object remains fully editable.