I was looking for an alternative to buying Office X since switching completely to OS X. I bought ThinkFree a couple years ago after a positive review in Mac Addict magazine. ![]() In a few weeks time, Low End Designer will be running a Mac OS X test of this application. You don’t expect the local bureau to support Scribus, do you? Once the design was finished, it was a simple case of export to PDF. Without it, you’ll be guessing how any given color will come out in print. With LittleCMS installed, PDF files produced in Scribus should be printed just as they appear on screen. Some users may not need to install LittleCMS, but for professional output it is a must. Color management standards are dictated by the International Color Consortium, and now Linux has a compatible solution in the form of LittleCMS. Color ManagementĬolor accuracy is one of the major advantages of the Macintosh as a print production platform – and one of Linux’s major disadvantages.įor years now the Mac OS has included Apple’s own color management software, ColorSync. Earlier editions of Scribus could not handle multi-columnar text frames the designer was forced to use text frame linking, a technique for running text from one frame to another that is more usually employed when spreading text across two separate pages.Īdding text or images is a simple case of drawing a frame on the page and importing the relevant plain text or image file. Scribus handles columns in a slightly different manner from other DTP apps, but it is efficient and very useable. Within this central rectangle, I went on to define the main layout. On some pages, items can be outside this central rectangle, on others it would result in items not being printed. The margins are set unevenly in order to create a box of 265mm x 340mm – this is the minimum printable area on each page. When testing Scribus, I set up a 297mm x 386mm document this page size slightly squatter than most tabloids and roughly analogous with the size of the UK’s Independent newspaper. Quark cannot open any InDesign files whatsoever, nor can version 6 “save down” to version 4! Showing a degree of forward thinking and openness to competition that neither Quark nor Adobe display, Scribus uses open standards for its native file format, meaning that Scribus files may eventually turn out to be openable in other layout applications. Adobe InDesign can open files from Quark 4, but not Quark 5 or 6. This is something of an impediment, but it is not an uncommon problem. Creating import/export filters is a task far more complex than importing a spreadsheet or simpler word processing file formats.” The developers themselves say, “DTP file formats are very complex internally – probably the most complex on a PC. The first step in DTP is to define the shape and size of your page, along with some common parameters: margins and columns.Īs Scribus cannot import Quark or InDesign documents, it is necessary to set up the pages manually. Well, yes, but in a week or two we’ll be checking it out under Mac OS X. ![]() Not only is Scribus easily capable of even midrange design work, given time it looks like it will be a credible challenger to Adobe InDesign and Quark XPress.Īt present, it is lacking some niceties such as Word file import, Quark import, and Pantone support, but none of these will pose a problem to a designer on a budget. The last place one would expect to find professional-level design applications is in the open-source world, but with a lot of hard work and collaboration, a free, powerful layout application has finally arrived: Scribus.Īdobe has been busily gobbling up as many of Quark’s customers as it can, but it may be facing some competition soon. In the software field, competition is a healthy thing that brings lower prices and more features.īut there’s more. Not only has Adobe ramped-up development of InDesign, but Quark has come back with XPress version 6.5 – and a new entrant has come into the field in the form of MLayout.Īll good news. In terms of software, these are interesting times for designers. This week The Low End Designer is taking a break from the beloved Macintosh to have a quick squint at what the open-source world of Linux has to offer designers. Another alternative to the big boys of design – and this one is free.
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