Scribusby SchoolForge updated January 30, 2012
Scribus is an Open Source program that brings 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 design. Software Details
Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.
Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Requirements
Windows, Linux, MacOSX
Reviews
Scribus is a desktop publishing program that allows users to create professional layouts.
Scribus offers easy to use templates as well as more advanced “build-it-from-scratch” options. I used this program in a previous job to create monthly newsletters. I had no budget, and so had to search for alternate ways to do things- luckily I came across Scribus, which permitted me the freedom to create eye-catching and engaging designs for my monthly newsletter. (Getting people to read the darn thing was always an issue; but with Scribus' help, I was able to make it fun and engaging and upped the number of responses I got from people regarding newsletter content)
Scribus can be used in an educational setting to teach design layout and general publishing. I used to work with teens to create a “teen newspaper”, and we struggled through laying it out using our only available option (that I knew of at the time)- Word. Had I known about Scribus back then I definitely would have used it instead.
The pros of Scribus, unlike the cons, are numerous- it's easy to use, supports creativity in design and layout, makes it easy to have text flow from one box to another, etc.
Scribus is great for middle school and up. It's fairly easy to learn and use. Even without knowledge of the more advanced tools you can make a good looking layout.
I'm assigning Scribus 5 stars because of its power, it's ease of use, and how fun and satisfying it is to use!
Scribus is a desktop publishing program. This software has a slight learning curve. I would recommend it to users that have experience with page layout software. I would say it is a bit more advanced than Apple Pages and Microsoft Publisher, but slightly more user friendly than InDesign. The user interface is somewhat plain and not particularly exciting. Depending on your needs it will allow you to design a number of different layouts for projects such as worksheets, newsletters, fliers, and brochures. If you are interested in creating simple layouts, there may be other software that is easier to use.
This is not appropriate for younger users. I would recommend this to students in at least secondary educational settings. This would be useful for students that work on newsletters, yearbooks or web design. It allows for the insertion of the the usual elements (shapes, images, text, etc.) as well as common editing functions.
I tried setting up a tri-fold brochure as I have done in Pages and Indesign. The template chooser in the beginning allows you to pick tri-fold, but additional formatting is required. After some Googling, I was led to the Scribus wiki (http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Creating_a_threefold_brochure) which was able to quickly show me how to adjust the gutters and margins.
Scribus is a fine program for users that are interested in a no-frills page layout application that is comparable to Publisher and InDesign. If you possess the basic skills necessary to format a simple page layout, this should not be too difficult to learn. It lacks the polish of its proprietary counterparts, but does the job for free.
From the perspective of someone new to the Ubuntu environment, installing Scribus on Ubuntu was simple, quick and easy. I was able to quickly find Scribus in the Software Center and installed it in a matter of a couple minutes.
Teachers are constantly creating worksheets, flyers, forms and various other paper-based material used in the classroom. Scribus is a program that is very useful when creating many of these types of projects because it gives you much more flexibility than you would have in a word processing program. Trying to do simple page layouts using word processing sometimes brought me misery. I had to force what I needed to be done by using MS Word features in very unconventional ways. Using Scribus eliminates the headache and gives you the freedom to create your projects with ease. The built-in feature to convert my project to a pdf was a definite plus.
Scribus has many similar features offered in Word but with added benefits and less limitations. The interface is very simple looking but looks somewhat dated. All of the buttons for the most used and basic functions are easy to find because they are logically placed. The learning curve for me was fairly moderate, but that's probably because I am new to desktop publishing software. If you are familiar with desktop publishing, you'd probably find Scribus easy to use. Overall, for what the program offers, Scribus is a must have program for educators who like to create.