1.6.0 Release: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:48, 23 February 2023

NOTE THIS IS A WORKING PAGE. NOT READY FOR RELEASE. IDEA COLLECTION IS WIP

The Scribus Team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.6.0.

Scribus 1.6.0 is the long awaited release in the next stable series, replacing 1.4.8.
All users of versions of 1.5.x and lower should eventually migrate to 1.6.0. Those with a collection of older Scribus documents can and should keep their older versions installed or at least the installable distribution/package as text layout will change due to the improved text layout engine.

Like previous releases, work on version 1.5.8 focused mostly on bugfixes and code optimizations, the latter of which are expected to lead to reliability and speed improvements. We have also begun to prepare Scribus for using Qt6, which will make our work easier for future releases.

Most important changes

General

User interface overhaul from 1.4.x including new icons, and support for light/dark mode.
Scribus offers a "Symbol" or clone feature similar to Adobe Illustrator: If one master object (Symbol) has been modified, all of its copies (clones) are being modified as well.
With the new "Weld" feature, objects can be combined and moved without being "grouped", i.e., each object remains fully editable.
Resource Manager for online resources
Improvements to the canvas rendering on Hi-DPI screens.
The Barcode plug-in has been updated and offers new features.
Several new commands have been added to the scripting engine, so as to make the document creation via scripts easier and more versatile. Many new Scripter commands and updates to the Scripter documentation
A new feature is the possibility to search for a particular function, like one can in GIMP, G'MIC or Photoshop. If possible, the new dialog also shows the menu path.
A new PDF-based output preview is now available.
Python scripting moved from python 2 to 3
Addition of XeLaTeX support to Render Frames

Text / Typography / Fonts

Scribus 1.6.0 provides some of the most often requested text features, among them:

vertical scaling of text;
orphans and widows control;
foot and end notes;
text variables;
cross references.
Scribus enables applying a background color for selected text and also offers this option for character and paragraph styles;
Rewritten font embedding code was completely rewritten from scratch in preparation for support of complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and Hindi coming in Scribus 1.5.3 and later. We are more than grateful for the magnificent work that the Oman House of Open Source Technology team, led by Khaled Hosny, completed.
providing access to advanced OpenType features, such as ligatures and alternate glyphs.
Typing on the canvas and text rendering in general has become a lot faster.
Previews for fonts are now available in font selectors.
The "Text" tab has been removed from the Properties Palette and is now a separate UI palette.
Fonts that have been rejected are now being listed in a separate tab in the Document Setup / Preferences dialogs, so users who know that a certain font has been installed on their system know why it doesn't show up in the font selectors.

Graphics

A new feature-rich plug-in called 'Picture Browser' enables asset management for graphics files by tagging them or creating graphics collections. Graphics files can be dragged into a Scribus document from the Picture Browser.
Scribus supports all advanced gradient types available in Adobe Illustrator and XARA Designer, including mesh gradients.
One of the most-requested features -- drop shadows -- is finally available, albeit still experimental.
For documents that comprise many large (in terms of file size) bitmap images, a configurable image cache has been added. It can buffer image files to the hard drive and free RAM, so Scribus can continue to run smoothly.

File Import / Export

Scribus can now store bitmap images within its native file format. Previously it was only possible to link to external images.
Scribus includes a large number of new or rewritten import filters, although not all of them are of equal quality, and some are still experimental.
RTF and DOCX importers
Major PDF import improvements
Krita's KRA format
Support for PDF 1.6 export, including embedded OpenType fonts.
A Markdown import filter has been added.

DTP Files

Scribus 1.6.0 can open / import files created by other DTP programs, namely:
- Adobe InDesign XML (IDML)
- Adobe InDesign Snippets (IDMS)
- Adobe PageMaker (P65, PMD)
- Apple iWorks PAGES
- Microsoft Publisher (PUB)
- QuarkXPress Tags (XTG)
- VIVA Designer XML
- Xara Page & Layout Designer (XAR).
- Thanks to the work of the Document Liberation Project and particularly David Tardon, experimental import filters for ZonerDraw vector drawings (versions 4 and 5) and QuarkXPress documents (versions 3 and 4) were added.

Regarding DTP formats not yet supported, a workaround is sometimes to use an output format as an option. Accordingly, Scribus 1.6.0's PDF importer was rewritten from scratch, and Scribus can now reliably open many PDF files directly with the original layout intact. For Windows users, Scribus also comes with reliable import filters for Microsoft's PDF alternatives XPS (Windows Vista and 7) and OXPS (Windows 8 and later).

Vector Drawings

The import filter for Adobe Illustrator files was rewritten from scratch and Scribus's graphics capabilities have been expanded accordingly, so most AI files can be imported or opened. Scribus can now detect hybrid AI files and enables users to choose between the AI and the PDF version.
The import filter for OpenDocument graphics files has been rewritten from scratch and expanded, so Scribus can now open and import ODG drawings and ODP slide shows without issue.
"Layers" in SVG files are now supported if an SVG document is being opened (as opposed to being imported into an existing document).
Thanks to the libraries provided by the Document Liberation Project, Scribus can now import native MS Visio and CorelDraw files.
Other new import filters:
- Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM)
- Photoshop Custom Shapes (CSH)
- Micrografx Draw (DRW)
- Enhanced Metafile (EMF)
- StarView Metafile (SVM)
- WordPerfect Graphics (WPG)
- Xara Designer (XAR).

Bitmap Files

Scribus supports the open standard Open Raster (ORA) for complex bitmap files, including advanced features like layer effects or paths.
With GraphicsMagick installed, Scribus can import all bitmap files supported by this program, including GIMP's native XCF format.
Scribus can import PGF bitmaps, an open alternative to JPEG 2000.

3D

With OpenSceneGraph installed, Scribus can import 3D objects in all formats supported by OSG into a new frame type called "3D Annotation". Scribus also offers limited editing functions, such as setting the lighting source or the default display mode for a PDF-3D-capable PDF viewer.

Colors and Fills

Support has been added or enhanced for:
- CIE L*a*b* and CIE HLC color models and new color palettes, which are also available in the color editor
- SwatchBooker's SBZ file format, which means, among others, that all color palettes from the Open Colour Systems Collection (http://dtpstudio.de/downloads/OCSC_1_0.zip) can be used inside Scribus with their original color model (CIE L*a*b*) intact.
- Color palettes in the Adobe Color Swatch (ACO) and AutoCAD ColorBook (ACB) formats, as well as Adobe Swatch Exchange files (ASE), and GIMP Gradients (GGR) and GIMP Patterns (PAT). The former color manager has been extended to a Colors and Fills manager to reflect the new capabilities.
- The Resource Manager, as well as the official Scribus Resources pool have been expanded significantly, because Scribus provides direct access to the more than 300 (mostly commercial) color palettes of the Open Colour Systems Collection in the LAB color space. We would like to thank dtp studio oldenburg and the initiative freieFarbe for making these color palettes available under a CC license. The Resource Manager user interface has received some enhancements.
- The "Wikipedia RAL Classic" color palette. It was updated using Wikipedia's LAB color values.
- Color palettes in the new ISO standard CxF3 (See: https://www.xrite.com/de/page/cxf-color-exchange-format). CxF3 files can not only store palettes in different color models (e.g., RGB, CMYK, LAB) and output intents, but also allow for storing spectral colors, which enables even greater color precision. Scribus was the first DTP software that supports this demanding standard.

Color precision for fill colors has been expanded to 64 bit floating point.
Existing import filters have been upgraded to support the LAB color model (where applicable).

Output / Printing

Support of PDF/X-4 has been included in the PDF exporter.
Another important addition, at least in some environments, is an exporter for Microsoft's XPS format.
With the exception of the Windows platform, Scribus can now use a PDF-based and newly written printing engine. PostScript is still available, but will be removed over time.

Technical/OS-related updates

Scribus 1.6.0 uses Qt 5.15.x as its UI toolkit. The minimum version to compile Scribus from source is Qt 5.14.
Scribus now follows the XDG standard for configuration files. Therefore, the Scribus preferences directory on Linux distributions has moved from ~/.scribus/ to a new default location ~/.config/scribus/
Build system improvements supporting new dependencies, updated host operating system changes and new CMake functions

macOS:
- Scribus 1.6.0 now includes Python 3 and is built for mac OS Catalina or higher.

Additional Notes

More details are available from the Scribus Commit Mailing List archive (http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus-commit/).

We have no plans to fix issues in the 1.4.x branch of Scribus. No versions have been released for some time and the 1.6.x series is the stable series going forward. All branches are available in subversion as well as on our downloads links for all previously release versions. We encourage all Linux and *BSD distributions to switch their stable version to 1.6.0.

Primary Download Locations

Installation packages for Windows, macOS, a Linux AppImage, and the source code are available here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/scribus/1.6.0/
Packaging for the various Linux distributions, as well as other platforms is beyond our influence. We recommend updating the respective repository data on a regular basis.
Windows Portable App: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/scribus_portable#test
OS/2 / eComStation / ArcaOS:

Download Verification

Description	File Name	Sha256sum	Sha1sum
Source	scribus-1.6.0.tar.xz
Source	scribus-1.6.0.7z
mac OS 13, Intel x64	scribus-1.6.0.dmg
Windows 32/64 Bit	scribus-1.6.0-windows.exe
Windows 64 Bit	scribus-1.6.0-windows-x64.exe
Windows PortableApps.com Format	ScribusPortable_1.6.0.paf.exe
Linux 64 bit AppImage [1]	scribus-1.6.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage
OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS	.exe

Future

Scribus 1.7.x is the new unstable series. While we will maintain Scribus 1.6.0 as a stable version, most development will focus on 1.7.x and features and Qt6 based enhancements.

Credits

The Scribus Team would like to thank Anduin.net and Modirum for their continued hosting of all of the Scribus websites.

The Scribus Team is also honored to have Resene Colours (New Zealand), dtp studio Oldenburg (Germany), Scientific Illustration Services Corp. (USA), the Newspaper Association of America (USA), Software Consulting Services (USA), freieFarbe e.V. (Germany), bauwerk Kommunikationsdesign (Germany) 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.

Finally, the Scribus Team would like to thank the many end users, translators, testers and contributors who helped us with this release.

@@ Line 57: / Line 57: @@
 ===File Import / Export===
 * Scribus can now store bitmap images within its native file format. Previously it was only possible to link to external images.
-* 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.
+* Scribus includes a large number of new or rewritten import filters, although not all of them are of equal quality, and some are still experimental.
 * RTF and DOCX importers
 * Major PDF import improvements