Win32 version of Scribus

Native Windows version release information

• Scribus on Windows -- See this page first for all the important install info on the native Windows version.
  • This will not run on Win95, Win98 or WinME. Scribus requires the capabilities of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 200x, or Windows 7, 8, or 10. Attempts to run Scribus on Win9x or WinME will fail due to the absence of a number of system requirements which cannot practically be met.
  • With the release of 1.3.2, help documentation from docs.scribus.net has been integrated with the main package across all platforms.

64-bit Windows (of any of those compatible versions mentioned above)

Scribus 1.4.6 is available as a 64-bit version that can be installed on Windows Vista 64-bit, Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit, and Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit.
For previous versions, there is no 64-bit version of Scribus. Nonetheless, the 32-bit version works without a hitch, and without any other considerations as you use the installer for your Windows machine.

Python

If you install Scribus using the installer from Sourceforge, you should have a working version of Python 2.7 with Scribus 1.5.x. Some scripts that you may wish to use or write yourself may need Python packages not supplied with Scribus, and you cannot add them yourself. The answer in this situation is to install Python 2.7 on your system, along with any necessary or desired packages, such as PIL (Python Imaging Library).

In order for Scribus to use this system-based Python you need to deactivate the version included with Scribus. This is actually a simple matter. Go to C:\Program Files\Scribus 1.5.3\ (or whatever Scribus version you have installed), and look for a directory named python\. Just change its name to anything else, like oldpython\, and when you next start Scribus it will use the system Python.

Notes

• Ghostscript 8.53 or newer required for EPS, PS import and printing.
  • When you first run Scribus, you must go to Edit>Preferences>External Tools and change "name of executable" to wherever you have installed Ghostscript to. You must choose the "gswin32c.exe" version for Scribus to run! For example, set it to: "C:/Program Files/gs/gs8.53/bin/gswin32c.exe"

Obtaining GDI+

Scribus under Windows 2000 requires the GDI+ library from Microsoft. There are other legal sources for the library for those who don't use IE or don't want to go through the "Genuine Windows" validation process — which has come under severe criticism and has been reported to produces false negatives in some cases (at the Windows Genuine Advantage Forum, for example):

• GDI+ is also distributed here. This is part of the download archive within the portal of one of Germany's major ISPs. You don't need to understand German to use the page, just find the "zum Download" button and then, on the next page, the "Download starten" button. This will download Microsoft's own installer for the US English version of the library.

• Possibly the simplest way of meeting the GDI+ requirement is to search the file gdiplus.dll on your hard disk and copy it into the directory that contains the Scribus executable. (The "official" download does not install any files beyond gdiplus.dll either.) There are freely available applications whose installer puts the file into their application directory. Such applications are:
  • Mp3Tag

When obtaining GDI+ from an "unofficial" source such as one of the above, it is important to remember that older versions of the file were suffering from a critical bug that affected the processing of JPEG files. The bug was reported in September 2004, and as of September 2006, the current version is of gdiplus.dll is 5.1.3102.1360.