Test Driving Linux

Scribus: Designing Magazine and Advertisement Layouts

The professional publishing world is dominated by just a few programs, most of them from Adobe. Chapter 7 already described the GIMP, an image editing tool that seeks to challenge Adobe Photoshop. This section introduces Scribus, an open source desktop publishing tool that seeks to rival Adobe InDesign and Quark XPress. Scribus is a long way from replacing either of these programs in all situations—even the commercial programs aren't adequate to all tasks—but still, Scribus has a few "wins." It is already being used by a small commercial newspaper, and recently the first professional book designed entirely in Scribus was published. Small victories to be sure, but all great things must start somewhere.

You might be interested in Scribus if you want to create a greeting card, design a flyer, or lay out a report for school. If you are a professional, you might have more ambitious needs, such as creating a marketing report, laying out an advertisement for a magazine, or designing a catalog to sell your products. Figure 12-14 shows the main Scribus window with a page spread loaded.

Figure 12-14. A page spread displayed in Scribus

Visit the main web site for Scribus at http://www.scribus.org.uk/index.php to find out more about the program and see some screenshots that show off some of its features.