Scribus Version 1.3.0 Readme
What's New ?
The Scribus 1.3.0 is the first development release of the next generation for Scribus. While it is fairly stable, there are a number of under the hood changes which are on-going.
The file format has changed and is NOT backwardly compatible. You have been warned.
We have specifically disabled the ability to open 1.3.x files in the stable 1.2.x versions. Our plans for a new file format should be settled in the 1.3.1 development period.
- Because of the new enhanced menu/keyboard shortcuts code, 1.2.x keyboard
short cuts are not migrated and will be recreated once on the first
launch 1.3.0. There are vastly more keyboard shortcuts and they can be exported to use on other machines if customized.
- On initial launch, 1.3.0 will offer to convert preferences to the new 1.3.0
format. This is recommended. Scribus 1.3.x will store its preferences
separately from 1.2.x.
- You can install both versions in parallel and run them at the same time.
The only caveat is to install them using different prefix/ directories e.g
1.2 in /usr/local and 1.3 in /opt or $home/bin. You can use the --prefix
argument to configure to set where Scribus should be installed.
Scribus 1.3.x is based on the latest 1.2.x branch code, but also includes:
- Undo with objects specific undo capabilities. The number of undo/redo steps can be set in the preferences. There is also a new palette which has the undo history with details of each action.
- Much more extensive support for CMYK images, including clipping paths in TIFF files, as well as new support for native Photoshop ® PSD files. 16 bit CMYK TIFF and PSD support will follow soon. Use of CMYK images is recommended with color management properly setup and active for best on screen appearance.CMYK-JPEG is also supported.
- Completely revised document and application preferences. They are independently set of each other. New documents will inherit the current application preferences. Moreover 1.3.x preferences can exist side by side without issue.
- This documentation is based on 1.2.x, but there are some updates for 1.3, notably concerning the preferences.
- Scribus now has true facing pages and images and other objects can span them.
- Scribus now has "scratch space" which can be used to store objects partially or fully off the page.
- Scribus now has its own built-in pre-flight file verifier for printing or exporting PDF. The default settings are to ensure images and fonts are of sufficient quality to provide trouble-free printing or PDF export. You can choose to ignore them in settings, but they are carefully chosen to ensure a minimum of quality or avoid known limitations of PS3 or PDF versions.
- Work is on-going to make Scribus more platform independent and alpha quality builds of Scribus are already working on Win32 and MacOSX.
For detailed changes please see the ChangeLog and the Roadmap on http://wiki.scribus.net/.
To use Scribus in your native language be sure that the environment variable
LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LANG, Qt locale, OR the command line option
of -l/--lang is set correctly. This also can be changed in the preferences and takes effect immediately.
The EPS/PS import features in 1.3.x uses advanced features of Ghostscript.
We recommend ALL users update to the newest version of Ghostscript available
for your distribution. There are detailed hints on docs.scribus.net for installing
GS 8.x in parallel to the GS installed by your distribution.
Activating Color Management requires installation of CMYK and RGB ICC
profiles. Please see the included help files and http://docs.scribus.net for
details. Grey scale icc profiles in images are not supported in this release.
If you have a 64-bit version of Qt, sometimes ./configure will not detect the
64-bit version headers. Try :
./configure --enable-libsuffix=64
to test for 64-bit
versions of libraries.
Other notes/known issues at the time of release:
There is a bug in font outline handling for some fonts in the freetype
libraries. It's being worked on upstream. Don't file a bug report. Instead
change the font used if you need the outlines. This is not a Scribus bug.
Some testing has shown that this bug is not present in freetype 2.1.9+, but
we counsel caution trying to upgrade freetype2. Upgrading freetype2 on some
distributions can be quite difficult.
Issue with gradients:
If you have gradient (e.g. with black color) with 50% shade in both beginning
and end of gradient, you end up with darker center than edges. One expects the
gradient to be with equal shade from beginning to end, especially if there is
no other Color-Stops in-between them.
This we believe is a libart issue and not fixable by us. The gradient will export
and print properly.
For Debian Users:
If Scribus does not start while complaining about the absence of
PostScript fonts please install either xfonts-scalable or gsfonts-x11.
They are in the "Recommends" and will be installed by all sensible apt
front-ends.
For Suse 9.x Users:
- The littlecms libs 1.10, which shipped with Suse 9.0 does not offer complete
support for all the the latest CMS features in Scribus 1.2. There are updated
Suse 9.x RPM's available on the Scribus.net site. We also recommend using the
latest version of lcms.littlecms 1.1.4 is the current version.
- We recommend using the latest Qt-3.3.4 rpms from Suse.
-
To enable direct CUPS support which we recommend, make sure both cups-devel and
openssl-devel are installed. Suse enables ssl support in CUPS.
Fedora/RH with Qt 3.3.2-6+ has the same fixes.
There is a separate file, PACKAGING for detailed hints and notes on building
packages for Scribus.
More hints and other information are on the http://www.scribus.net and http://docs.scribus.net
sites. Full compile, install and FAQs are available there.
There is a lively on-line community, both on IRC @ #scribus on irc.freenode.net
and the mailing list. Mailing list info can be found at:
http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus
For the Scribus Team,
Franz Schmid
Peter Linnell
in July 2005