Scribus

Scribus is an Open Source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

Download Scribus from www.scribus.net. The Windows version works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7. There is an extra installation step for Windows 2000. The stable version is 1.3.3.14 and the latest version is 1.3.7. If you use Photoshop PSD files, you need the latest version.

Installation

The Scribus 1.3.7 installation on Windows XP 64 is described in Scribus installation on Windows XP 64.

Converting Microsoft Publisher files

Scribus does not read Microsoft Publisher files. Scribus can import a variety of files including EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) and OpenOffice Draw files. Zanzar converts Microsoft Publisher files to other formats including EPS and OpenOffice Draw. One of the Scribus documentation pages recommends importing from OpenOffice via the openOffice Draw program. Yes, if you use Openoffice Writer, first convert the file to OpenOffice Draw then import the Draw file or use Draw to export to EPS and import the EPS file.

You will lose formatting along the way and a lot of other information.

Document templates

There are few document templates provided with Scribus. There are some more in the download section of the Scribus web site. The ones you will miss first are the Avery label templates. I created one for Avery C32028 smooth edge business cards in about 20 minutes using the same techniques I used in Microsoft Publisher. You can download the template from the following link.

• C32028.sla.gz (8.35 KB)