Category:FAQ

Other languages: Polski (pl) Portuguese (pt_BR)

Work in progress
a.l.e: i'm trying to reformat this FAQ as a list of question *and* answers which -- i hope so -- will be easier to search through. if i don't succeed, please revert to the last version before the 13 december 2008.

How to fill a FAQ entry: you're welcome to add your entries to the FAQ. If possible, try to keep the FAQ entries as short as possible (and add links to one or more other wiki entries if necessary) and write about one topic at a time.

When to add a FAQ section?: the goal is to make simple to find a FAQ entry. So there should not be too many titles but the sections should not get too long or general either...

Installing and running Scribus
Which Scribus should I install on my computer?

How do i get Scribus for Linux?

 * If you don't need anything fancy, use your packet manager to install Scribus (synaptics, yum, apt-get, ...). This is the preferred way to install Scribus.
 * If you want to be more up to date than your distribution is, you can add Scribus own repositories. They are available for Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu. This is the preferred way to install Scribus.
 * If you want to test the newest feature (or if there are no binaries for your platform) you can compile the source code you get from sourceforge or from the subversion server (svn://scribus.info/Scribus/)

How do i get Scribus for OS X?

 * The stable version is only available through Fink or Darwinports
 * Snapshots of the development version are availabe on Sourceforge.
 * At the moment, there is no (easy) way to compile yourself Scribus for OS X
 * You can get a Ghostscript .dmg from here

How do i get Scribus for Windows?

 * Binaries are available on Sourceforge
 * stable (1.3.3.13)
 * development (1.3.5+)
 * svn snapshots
 * It's not easy to compile. The BUILDING_win32.txt explains how to do it.

Which version should I use?
New users doing productive work should stick with stable versions. One big exception, that currently (as of the july 8th, 2009) it may be better to use 1.3.5 for new project, since it has much more features than 1.3.3.x and should evolve in the near future into a stable version.

As a rule of thumb: all versions which have an odd number as a second (minor) version number (1.1, 1.3, 1.5, 1.7) are unstable versions (the playground for the team), all version with an even minor number are stable versions (1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, ...)

1.3.3.x is an exception and has been declared stable because 1.2 was too old and 1.4 was too far away.

Stable version
1.3.3.13 is the stable version: use it for your normal work.

Unstable version
1.3.5.1 is the unstable version: use it if you are evaluating Scribus for a long term project where the productive work won't start right now; use it also if you want to use features wich are not in the stable version. (link to a page which describes how to protect yourself when you're using the development version)

1.3.4 is an old unstable version which should have disappeared few weeks after its release but is still downloaded and used after almost two years: DON'T TOUCH IT!! Please use the stable version or a recent development version.

Development branch
1.5 is the current development branch: Only for people wanting to do experiments with Scribus should use it.

Compatibility
You can't load a 1.3.5 file into 1.3.3.13, but you can load 1.3.3.x files into 1.3.5.x and 1.5.

So which one should I use?
If you are still wondering, please do use the stable 1.3.3.13

How do I compile Scribus?
There are a few reasons, why you may wish to compile Scribus
 * There is no current Scribus for your platform (like Linux PPC)
 * You need a fix which has been applied after the last snapshot/release has been produced
 * You want to follow the Scribus development and be uptodate.

In the first case, you should download a snapshot/release source package from Sourceforge. In all the othe cases you're better off if you get the source code through subversion.

Further reading:
 * Scribus 1.3.5svn (Ubuntu; in french)

Libraries needed
There is no list of dependencies for compiling Scribus. Just run cmake and the error messages will mostly be clear enough to find the packages you need (we have tried to add the cases which are not straight forward in the table below).

Be aware that you need the headers of the libraries on top of the libraries themselves: sudo apt-get install g++ libqt4-dev subversion libcairo2-dev cmake libaspell-dev libtiff4-dev libjpeg62-dev libcupsys2-dev python2.5-dev libxml2-dev libboost-dev
 * For the .deb based distributions you need the *-dev pacakges; here is a (non exhaustive) list of packages you may want install:
 * For the .rpm based distributions you need the *-devel pacakges

Language

 * Scribus picks up your environment language automatically. If you want to use another language for your GUI, just go the menu "File / Preferences", and in the "General" section set the language you prefer.

Text

 * tagged text (tbc)
 * You can import Openoffice.org .odt files and Scribus will recognize most formattings and style sheets. You can manage how the formatting is handled from the import dialog. (link)
 * You can direclty import Microsoft Word (.doc) documents but you will lose all formattings. You'd better use Openoffice.org and save the document in .odt format.
 * Microsoft RTF documents can't be read from Scribus: you should use Openoffice.org to convert them to .odt or save them in .doc from Microsoft Word.

Render frames
First, you have to install a Latex distribution (like MiKTeX); If Scribus fails to find pdflatex, you should add the directory where "pdflatex" is located to the Path environment variable (using Control panel > System > Advanced > Environment variables > User variables > Path (if it does not exist, create it); running set at the command line ensure that the path is up to date)
 * I'm using MS Windows and the Latex Frames don't work

Books

 * Currently, Scribus isn't very good at managing documents which are longer than 30 pages. You should split your work in several Scribus documents and join them to a simgle pdf afterwards (link)
 * You can set the value for the first page number (more)
 * You can't automatically create a table of contents over several files.
 * You shouldn't make too long chains of text frames
 * You can automatically create text frames which are automatically chained (link)
 * You can create (multilevel?) table of contents (TOC).
 * No index, no footnotes.

Flyers
Create a file of the size of the whole flyer and use the guides to separate the different "columns". (more...)

Typical errors

 * If you're using Windows and have a custom theme installe, you won't get any new page displayed when creating a new document: use the default Win theme or "Classic", and everything will work fine

Page formatting

 * When creating a new document you can choose a "Document Layout": in most cases you can safely ignore this option (it will only affect the way the document is shown on screen). You certainly don't need it if you are trying to create a flyer or a leaflet! (more...)

How can I insert page numbers?

 * Why is Insert > Character > Page number grayed out?

In order to insert a page number character into a text frame, you have to be in edit mode (using the icon on the toolbar, double-clicking the frame, or by entering the Story Editor. In the 1.3.3.x versions of Scribus you have to insert as many page number characters are there are digits in the page numer (## for the pages from 10 to 99)
 * Why do I only see the page numbers up to 9?

How can I do Pagination?
There is no pagination concept in DTP, still the word is often used and may have several meanings:
 * If you want to add a page number see the page number howto.
 * If you want to impose the pages you have created with scribus please have a look at the howtos about imposition.
 * If you want to layout several pages into one scribus page, please refrain from doing it. There are some exception to this rules: (like creating a threefold brochure).
 * If you want to create some pages and add a text flowing through them, you will learn more about it by reading the Scribus tutorial

Language

 * The hyphenation language can be choosen in the "Hyphenation" section of the menu "File / Preferences".
 * The language for the spell checker (if available in your version) is to be set in the character style.

Loading fonts

 * You can get good free fonts from (link)
 * Scribus will automatically discard fonts which could lead to problems in a printshop

PDF

 * The PDF generated by Scribus is of very high print quality and should never be a problem when delivered to a Print Shop
 * Bugs related to the PDF generation are handled with very high priority by the Scribus-team.

Print preview
Scribus Print Preview depends on the installed Ghostscript: (is it true for Windows, too?)
 * If no Ghostscript is installed, you can generate a PDF to preview your work. Since at the end of the workflow, you probably will hand a PDF to a print shop, previewing through the PDF creation makes sure that the final result will match your expectations.

Print

 * Scribus uses the system's native Printing subsystem.
 * Even if you should always be able to print with Scribus, finding the correct parameters may be complicated: you may prefer to generate a PDF and print from your preferred PDF-reader.

Scripting / Command line

 * You can write Python scripts which will run inside of Scribus (link)
 * The scripting API for 1.3.5 is not yet fully published.
 * If you have questions about scripting you should post them to the mailing list.
 * You can use scripts to read Data from an SQL-database.
 * You can run shell, Perl or Python scripts for:
 * transforming Scribus' .sla files
 * impose PDFs produced by Scribus

Hardware & other software

 * How can i profile my monitor? (tbc)
 * Scribus can't edit files created by other DTP programs (Latex, Indesign, Quark, Publisher, ...; more...):
 * Most of the time you can import in Scribus the pictures and texts you've used to layout when working with another program.
 * For recreating the templates in Scribus, you can import in the backround an image (PDF, PNG, ...) of the original work (you can put the background in its own layer).

How can I contact the Scribus community?

 * You can contact the Scribus-Team throug the irc channel (#scribus on irc.freenode.net; a web interface is available at http://www.scribus.net/?q=irc
 * You can subscribe to the Scribus mailing list where you can ask your questions and get informations on most news related to Scribus (it's not a high traffic list, but you can get up to 20 mails per day).
 * The main language of the project is English but every language is welcome on the mailing list and in the irc channel. If you're not comfortable with English, you try to use your preferred language: with a bit of luck you will get an answer (the language you can expect to be understood are German, French, Finnish, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Spanish; you may be understood even if you write in some other language).

I have a problem: how can I show what doesn't work?

 * Share the .sla and the .pdf files
 * If there is a bug, put the files in the bug tracker (you can mark the bug as private if you only want the developers to see it).
 * Make a screenshot and show how you see your file.
 * If you're reporting the problem in IRC or in the mailing list you can upload your files
 * to your FTP or WEB server
 * to a file hosting service

Installation

 * Where can I get Scribus builds for Solaris?
 * Building Scribus on Windows

Usage

 * How can I make a document of 100+ pages? – Scribus is getting slower and slower
 * How can I make a booklet using Scribus? – perhaps the most FAQ
 * How can I launch Scribus in my language?
 * Where can I get a monitor profiler for Linux?
 * How can I execute scribus on a remote machine and display it on the local machine?
 * How do I do text flow between frames in Scribus?
 * How can I move a Scribus file to another computer along with its images?
 * How can I execute a Python script from within Scribus?
 * Can I use a commandline interface with Scribus?

PDF issues

 * For whom is PDF/X-3 really desired?
 * How can I preserve transparency while exporting to PDF?
 * How do I prevent fonts from looking ugly in the exported PDF ?

Fonts

 * What is the difference between good and bad fonts?
 * Where can I get good fonts?
 * How can I see what fonts Scribus is loading

Other

 * How can I contribute to Scribus?
 * Is it necessary to ask or answer questions in English on the mailing list?
 * What are some good references to learn about layout and design?
 * Why Scribus doesn't support QuarkXpress and other major publishing applications