Scribus Community

Over the next few weeks I will be making an effort to connect with the communities surrounding the software that I use to create my works. I have been concerned with the direction of my blog posts, worried that people are perhaps more interested in the tools of the trade than the process. Although I intend to show a mix, process is the part I enjoy the most. Tools are agnostic, meaning if you know one tool you can quickly figure out another that does a similar task. So in-order to balance the blog, I will try to do a post each week that will highlight an Open Source Software application and its surrounding community.

An underlying philosophy of Open Source Software is to release often. So errors in Open Source programs can be reported to the developers, and there is a great chance that change will be worked into a future release. The release cycles are much longer with commercial software, and it is more likely you will have to buy the next version of the software to take advantage of the fix.

Scribus is an open source desktop publishing application. I use it to create the layouts for my books and print materials. I have even used it for creating wire-frames for websites. Similar to Adobe InDesign, Scribus gives you all the tools you need to create multi-page dynamic layouts and even control character and paragraph styling. It runs on both Mac and PC, but runs the best in a Linux environment.


Everyday I use Scribus I venture more into its advanced features. Like every program it has its hick-ups and their are some interface issues that I would like to bring to the attention of the the Scribus development community. As a new member of the Scribus forum I posted a new topic to introduce myself and have already started receiving feed back and valuable information. Please check out Scribus and if you are a designer its not a bad idea to put this one in your tool kit.

Open Source Software is for the community by the community. Help build the tools you need go Open Source.