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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

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:

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