Scribus Indesign
Creating great vectors and editing raster images are essential, but graphic design usually requires the added steps of putting them together into a layout. For print, we’d usually use something like Adobe InDesign, that’s made for placing images and text just so and preparing the files for printers. If you’re looking for a FOSS tool, the only tool that’s really worth mentioning is Scribus. Here are a few examples of items made with Scribus.
Scribus is a desktop publishing freeware and open source app mainly used for creating books, posters, brochures, magazines, flyers, newspapers, etc. Given its support for exporting projects to epub format (regarding e-book creation), it is one of the best alternatives to Adobe’s famous InDesign available in the market. Scribus is available for many operatings systems and comes in basically two flavors, stable and development. For almost all production work, we recommend that you use the stable version. In our development version lots of things may be regularly changing as we fix issues and introduce new features. Currently the stable branch is the 1.4.x series. Scribus is a stone knife that may one day evolve into an electronic publishing. But for now it is maddeningly non-intuitive. My one suggestion to its developers is: Try to anticipate the basic objectives of the entry level user. Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe.
Installation – If you’re unaccustomed to open source projects, installation is usually not a one-click deal. Scribus, like many open source tools, sends you to a page of many links and options. Start on the Scribus site and you’ll want to download the stable branch, unless you’re interested in developing or in previewing the next release. Then you’ll need to pick from the correct download for the various operating systems. Because Linux has many distributions (aka modified versions), there appear to be many options, but PC and Mac are listed first thankfully!
Important for Mac users: You’ll need to install Ghostscript first, so read the documentation on installation for Mac.
Tutorials – Heres’s a pretty popular set of Scribus video tutorials to start you off. Mahalo to Kevin Pugh for putting them together. The Scribus user manual is wordy but provides a wealth of information.
Compared to InDesign, Scribus has a clean but slightly dated look. You’re greeted with the New Document window, which has all the same controls you get in InDesign, except for the ability to add columns. (You can add vertical and horizonal guides under Page > Manage Guides.) See the two below:
Scribus’ new document window.
The rest of the interface is pretty standard, similar in feel to Inkscape and GIMP. In Scribus, you can split up the icons into groups on the toolbar by dragging icons to create space between groups, see Kevin Pugh’s tutorial cued up. Again no palettes are open by default, so you’ll need to go in and open them up. These palettes are located under the “Window” menu, which is a good name for them because they don’t dock.
Interface looks more simple than InDesign’s
With palettes open, (Layers, Pages, Properties & Align) found under “Windows” menu. Palettes don’t dock.
Menu
Scribus’ menu and submenu feels disorienting, compared to InDesign.
- The Item menu does loosely align to “Object.”
- Insert is a way to insert items like shapes and textboxes, but InDesign you’d rely on the toolbars for this.
- Page loosely aligns to “Layout”
- InDesign has the table menu, a new feature set that Scribus doesn’t have (yet?). See Tables section below.
InDesign’s menu
Working with Text
This is where Scribus feels very different from InDesign. Thus, Scribus separates working with text and images, while InDesign allows you to place either text or image. Scribus’ wiki on “Working with Text” is a must-read.
- Scribus actually recommends using what’s called the “Story Editor” to import content, which is a separate WYSIWYG window for editing the content. According to their wiki, they say this is useful for editing the text directly, especially for long passages that may be linked through the document. I can actually see their point on this.
- Scribus doesn’t support placing .DOCX files, but it does have support for .DOC which requires an extra step.
- Scribus supports a number of other files types, mostly open standards, such as .ODT (LibreOffice) and .txt (text file). This means you’ll likely need to find an open standard doc type to save to, that will import cleanly.
Strange UI, if you’re used to InDesign. However, it can be useful to edit long or linked blocks of text.
Tables
A notable missing feature in Scribus is the ability to do tables. The InDesign feature is quite robust allow you to design a custom table, including alternating row stroke/background color. Scribus’ wiki purports to have a table workaround, but it is basically creating a table from text boxes & shapes.
InDesign’s Table Options feature! Pretty slick! You won’t find this in Scribus yet, but you can build it the old-fashioned way, of course.
This is where Scribus has fallen short the most for me. According to this article by Techwalla, Scribus can import EPS files, exported out of InDesign. I have tried this and it hasn’t worked for me after multiple attempts and troubleshooting. There is a potential fix listed on this thread by mnawj, but the tool “Gsview” is only available on Windows so I couldn’t replicate the fix on my mac.
Adobe’s file formats are proprietary and they haven’t release the .INDD file type; therefore Scribus developers cannot program an import script. The issue is a prime example of why FOSS tools are advantageous. An open standard will not lock you into a particular tool or company. One lesser option is to edit the .EPS files in Inkscape as vectors. I was able to import an .EPS created in InDesign and edit it in Inkscape successfully.
Although file compatibility is a pain, it’s still worth considering a move to Scribus to take advantage of the no-cost, open standard file format option moving forward. Having files in Scribus’ .SLA format, you could even hire a programmer one day to open and convert your files, if Scribus went belly-up! I don’t see Adobe going away any time soon, but their subscription model will keep us paying them indefinitely!
Keyboard shortcuts, of course important to us designers, are not the same as InDesign. However, there is similarity with Inkscape and GIMP. Scribus does have support for the Apple/Command key (unlike Inkscape). You can also edit the keyboard shortcuts, as noted in the Scribus wiki.
I haven’t found any performance issues using Scribus! As I’ve mentioned on posts about GIMP and Inkscape, the tools don’t have Finder integration. Therefore, when you open a file, you get a Scribus “finder” window. The Scribus finder window doesn’t do search natively, so you really need to know where you’re file is or at least be able to navigate through your folder structure. Things like this can slow down your workflow, but definitely not a dealbreaker and may help you to become more organized with your files.
Scribus’ open window, doesn’t have the same features of Mac’s “Finder,” most notably Search.
Scribus seems a hair less polished than Inkscape and GIMP, but it is still an fine, more than adequate FOSS tool! I hesitate to recommend Scribus for professionals especially if you collaborate on designs with others and need to be able to import/edit InDesign files. If you work with large books or longer text files, it will be a pain to deal with in Inkscape and you’ll want something like InDesign.
However, if you don’t use InDesign much or work mostly on one-page posters, flyers and such that can be edited in Inkscape as an .EPS, it’s something you should consider.
This being said, I recommend keeping an eye out for future versions of Scribus or getting involved in the Scribus community to help shape future features. Scribus developers may just add the tools and features that would make it worth switching!
Review past part of the guide: Why FOSS?, Gimp, Inkscape
Updated 10-Feb-2021
Scribus is a maturing publishing tool which has much to like. The upcoming (when? who knows?) release of 1.6 should put it squarely in direct competition with Adobe Indesign, it's proprietary competitor. Scribus is free and open source software, developed with love. However, there is one bad part which is the development lead who believes that new versions (e.g., 1.6) should be released over several years, rather than several months. Too slow for my tastes, though they are doing incremental releases at a faster rate, and frankly it is a nice piece of 'ware.> Note, my own use of Scribus fell down with several issues, including this bug that may not be around anymore, and I've gone back to an older approach using Inkscape for vector graphics and Markdown, Pandoc, and XeLaTeX (XeTeX + LaTeX, which handles unicode fonts and is the only real solution for non-latin script support) to generate epub and pdf programmatically.Scribus is basically damned awesome and should be tried out. It is the future (and possibly current) replacement to Adobe Indesign. Along with GIMP, Inkscape and Blender, Adobe can be retired (and I personally have not used any of their software since 2010 (and any Microsoft software since 2007).
Current Status of Scribus and Download
- Development Status: Active
- Tone of Community: Friendly, Helpful, Informative
- Latest Stable Build Date: 17-May-2016
- Latest Stable Version 1.5.2
- Support for: OSX, Windows, Ubuntu
Scribus FAQs, Help, Documentation
Scribus Indesign Table
- Scribus Help see especially the Help Table of Contents
- Scribus Documentation and Scribus Wiki
- See also this YouTube-generated channel of Scribus videos
Scribus Community, Bug Tracking, Development
Development Roadmap and Status
Indic Script Unicode Support
- In August, 2012 Indic Unicode Support was announced to the Scribus mailing list. A third party created a solution for this. See also the support page for the Complex Script Functionality (where text samples are submitted). This now appears to be working in a 1.5x beta.
ePub Export in Scribus
This is in the 1.6 roadmap, and was assigned in June 2012, but may or may not be completed by the time of that release.Update June 2016 - Since the 1.6 version won't be out for, maybe never, this useful e-pub export plugin for Scribus still exists and is updated.
PDF/X-1a Export in Scribus
This seems to be present in 1.5x beta.
Scribus Indesign Import
Tables in Scribus
This seems to be present in 1.5x beta.
Books on Scribus
There are several books on Scribus (and made with Scribus)!
Install Development Version on OSX
Note: this was my workflow in 2012, so likely out-of-dateThis works on OSX Mountain Lion as of November 2012.* Install XCode * Install the XCode Command Line Tools (also available from Preferences > Download inside of Xcode) * Open Xcode and accept the license or type: xcodebuild -license* Install X11 Quartz* Install MacPorts* Enable and set password on SuperUser if not done yetRun the following from the console:* sudo port -v selfupdate* sudo port install cmake* sudo port install freetype* sudo port install lcms* sudo port install cairo* sudo port install libxml2* sudo port install subversion* sudo port install ghostscript* sudo port install qt4-macNow create and build the SVN version* mkdir -p ~/scribus/150* cd ~/scribus/150* svn co svn://scribus.net/trunk/* mkdir builddir* cd builddir* cmake -DBUILD_OSX_BUNDLE=1 -DWANT_CAIRO=1 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/Applications/ ../trunk/Scribus/* make* make install
Scribus Indesign 2020
Epub development branch
Scribus Indesign Software
Note: this was my workflow in 2012, so likely out-of-dateThis git branch is for the current Epub export functionality under development* mkdir -p ~/scribus/epub* cd ~/scribus/epub* git clone git://git.scribus.net/scribus.git scribus.git* cd scribus.git* git pull* git branch --track epub origin/epub* git checkout epub* git pull* cd Scribus* cmake -DBUILD_OSX_BUNDLE=1 -DWANT_CAIRO=1 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/Applications/Epub/* make* make install