1.5.0 Release

=Scribus 1.5.0 Released= After many years of work, the Scribus Team is pleased to announce the release of Scribus 1.5.0. Scribus 1.5.0 is a preview of the upcoming stable version 1.6.0 and has been primarily released for testing purposes, so more users can help us with identifying and fixing bugs. It is not intended to be used in real production scenarios, although it can help users to become familiar with the new interface and the amount of new features, the number of which has almost doubled in comparison to the stable 1.4.x series.

Most Important Technical Changes

 * For Windows and Mac OS X, two different versions are available, one with support for GraphicsMagick (GM) plus OpenSceneGraph (OSG) and one without. The former requires GM and OSG to be installed on your computer and will allow for importing all bitmap and 3D formats supported by these programs. If GM and OSG are not available, the Scribus 1.5.0 versions with GM+OSG support might crash.
 * Scribus 1.5.0 uses Qt 5 as its UI toolkit. The minimum version to compile Scribus from source is Qt 5.2.
 * The file format has undergone significant changes and may change even further before the release of 1.6.0. Thus, files created or edited in 1.5.0 cannot be opened in earlier versions of Scribus. Potential changes to the file format on the road to 1.6.0 notwithstanding, the Scribus Team will work very hard to make sure that files created by 1.5.0 and the following technical previews can be opened reliably in the next stable release.

General

 * The user interface has been overhauled and restructured in many places. For example, the context menu takes a lot less screen estate than before, and the Document Setup / Preferences dialog has been rewritten from scratch. The Scribus Team is aware of the remaining deficiencies and will work on resolving these issues before the release of 1.6.0.
 * Scribus can now store bitmap images in its native file format. Previously it was only possible to link to external images.
 * Scribus 1.5.0 comprises a preliminary version of a manager for external resources. For the time being it supports dictionaries (spellchecker and hyphenation) as well as fonts.

Graphics

 * A new feature-rich plug-in called 'Picture Browser' enables asset management for graphics files by tagging them or creating graphics collections.

File Import / Export
Scribus 1.5.0 is being shipped with a huge number of new or rewritten import filters, although not all of them are of equal quality and some are still experimental.

DTP Files
For the first time in its history, Scribus 1.5.0 can import files created by other DTP programs, namely: Adobe InDesign XML (IDML), Adobe InDesign Snippets (IDMS), Adobe PageMaker (P65, PM7), Apple iWorks PAGES, Microsoft Publisher (PUB), QuarkXPress Tags (XTG), VIVA Designer XML, and XARA Page & Layout Designer (XAR).

Vector Drawings

 * The import filter for Adobe Illustrator files has been rewritten from scratch and Scribus's graphics capabilities have been expanded accordingly, so almost all AI files can be imported or opened flawlessly.
 * The import filter for OpenDocument graphics files has been rewritten from scratch and expanded, so Scribus can now open ODG drawings and ODP slide shows without issue.
 * Thanks to the libraries provided by the Document Liberation Project, Scribus can now import native MS Visio and CorelDraw files.
 * Other important new import filters: Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM), Enhanced Metafile (EMF), Xara Designer (XAR).

Bitmap Files

 * Scribus 1.5.0 supports the open standard Open Raster (ORA) for complex bitmap files.
 * With GraphicsMagick installed, Scribus can import all bitmap files supported by this program, including GIMP's native XCF format.

Other
For a complete list of all new features, see:

A data sheet is available here:

The complete change log is available here:

Primary Download Locations

 * Installation packages for Windows, Mac OS X and the source code are available here:
 * Fedora and CentOS RPMs:
 * OpenSUSE, SLED, and SLES RPMs: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/mrdocs
 * A portable version for Windows is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Scribus%20Portable/.
 * Packaging for *BSD, Solaris and OpenIndiana is beyond our influence. We recommend updating the respective repository data on a regular basis.

Credits
The Scribus Team would like to thank Anduin.net and Modirum for their continued hosting of all of the Scribus websites. We are grateful to the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and Linux New Media (Germany) for sponsoring. The Scribus Team is also honored to have Resene Colours (New Zealand), dtp studio Oldenburg (Germany), GiveLife Color System (Spain), Scientific Illustration Services Corp. (USA), the Newspaper Association of America (USA) and Software Consulting Services (USA) as Special Supporters and donors of color palettes and other content since the 1.4.x release, just like we are grateful to the owner of Vector Portal for the permission to distribute some of his work as Scribus Templates. Porting Scribus to OS/2 and eComStation is being supported by Mensys BV (The Netherlands) and Serenity Systems (USA). Finally, the Scribus Team would like to thank the many end users, translators, testers and contributors who helped us with this release.