Phenquestions
All you geeks who want to make it big in the online publishing world - one of the best methods to do it is to write a book. And believe me or not, your good ol' Microsoft Word isn't enough to write a good book for you. You should instead, check out this open source cross-platform, desktop publishing software call Scribus.
Scribus is a free desktop publishing application that supports professional features such as color separation, CMYK and Spot Color support. It also supports ICC color management and includes a versatile PDF creation feature. We can say it is a full of features publishing application for Windows. It supports many image formats including SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and others.
Scribus Features
You can use Scribus to design and produce books, magazines, newsletters, brochures, calendars, etc. In short, anything that requires text to look visually appealing on paper. It also helps in authoring PDF documents and offers advanced features such as forms, buttons, passwords, and more.
If we talk about features of the application, the list may look endless. To give you an overview, here are some of its important features:
- Support for many image formats
- Professional image setting
- ICC color management
- Built-In scripting engine
- Available in more than 24 Languages
- Level 3 post script driver
- Unicode Character encoding
- Import option for Open Office
- Save it as a professional PDF file
- Interactive and professional looking interface.
It also uses some other software to boost its own functionalities. It uses Gimp for editing images and Open Office suite for some document editing features.
Scribus Interface
The interface might look quite very strange to some but it indeed is very powerful. It is a really nice alternative to Microsoft Publisher. The application was originally intended for Linux but was ported to Windows and Mac soon. The interface is a bit complex for the newbies, but uninitiated, but once you get your hands wet, you fill find that it offers a lot more than you expected.
Scribus tutorial
This beginner's tutorial on the use of Scribus for page layout and PDF creation will help you get started. They are also available in PDF formats. If you are looking for some Video tutorials, go here.
Scribus Download
If you think that you can be an author or already are one and want to make your publications look more professional, you might want to check out Scribus.
