[Scribus] Scribus Nominated As A Finalist For Linux Format Awards2004

[Louis Desjardins]

Plinnell a ?crit :

> On Friday 03 September 2004 15:51, Steve Jacobs wrote:
Does a comprehensive, bullet-style list of Scribus' capabilities exist
>>anywhere?
>>
>>Steve


http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=introduction&page=specs
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter

A close look at that list tells it all ? thank you Peter! Again, I would 
strongly ? with both hands!!! ? recommend the use of Scribus in any DTP 
school program... and more!

Here again, the list. I?ve added a few comments about Quark here and 
there. This is to be completed. Please don?t get me wrong either : my 
entire office have been working and still works with Quark since version 
1 ... up to 6.1. The only purpose of these comments is not to put down 
Quark but rather to tell how achieved and mature Scribus is.

Read on! ;-)

Louis

? Supports Unicode text and fonts including right to left text for 
Arabic and Hebrew script via freetype2.
[If Quark does that, you need a special version : even the costly 
Passport version doesn?t do that. I think you need a special version of 
the program plus a special version of the OS... Tech support, anyone ;-) ]
? Frames, visible and hidden with support for rounded edges and corners 
for text and objects, rotatable and scalable
[Quark 3-4-5-6.1 can?t ?scale? objects with percentage values : need for 
QX-Tools extension]
? Page Templates - Page Palettes allow for easy page management
? Document-wide layers - editable and items can be moved
? Paragraph styles with numerous paragraph and text style options 
(alignment, fonts)
? Manual kerning of type and embedding fonts allowed in all documents 
including PDFs.
? Object linking, grouping, moving, locking, resizing and converting to 
different object types.
? Margins, guides and snap to grid which can be user defined, as well as 
hidden or visible.

Professional Publishing Features:
? CMYK color including ICC color managed previews of images and 
embedding ICC profiles in PDF documents for accurate screen to print color.
? Creation of CMYK and RGB color Postscript separations.
? Sophisticated PDF creation, including interactive PDF forms, support 
for nearly all PDF field types, and JavaScript actions.
[Quark 6.1 doesn?t do that at all.]
? The ability to output to professional quality image-setting equipment 
including advanced Level 3/PDF 1.4 postscript devices.
? Encapsulated PostScript import with previews on the page canvas / EPS 
export.
? Full support for Level 2 PostScript output, a very large subset of 
Level 3 and support for PDF 1.4 features including transparency, 
gradients and 128 bit security.
[Quark cannot deal with transparency.]
? Full Compliance with PDF/X-3, an ISO standard for creating "press 
ready" PDFs - a first for any DTP application.
? Supports font embedding and sub-setting in both postscript and PDF export.
? Scribus can convert all supported fonts into Postscript outlines, 
which can be further edited in Scribus.
[Quark needs Illustrator ;-) to do that...]

Ease of use features:
Drag'n'drop with KDE 3, including a Drag'n'drop scrapbook for frequently 
used items such as text blocks, logo images, backgrounds etc.
? Online help browser with extensive and continually updated 
documentation in English with sample files included.
[Quark Passport has online help in various languages... Scribus team is 
working on that!]
? Easy to use tools and palettes for measurement, rotation and other 
object properties
? Full support for both True Type, Type 1 Postscript and Open Type fonts.
[Quark does not support Open Type fonts. Repeat, Quark does not support 
Open Type fonts. Repeat... ;-( ]
? User configurable keyboard shortcuts.
[Quark has no way to configure keyboard shortcuts : needs Mac OS X to do 
that. Not 100% working...]
? Ability to run in 27 different languages without recompilation.
[Quark regular supports one language. Quark Passport cost almost twice 
the price and does not support as many languages.]
? Sophisticated automatic hyphenation engine with several languages 
available.
[Quark Passport offers better overall control in terms of hyphenation 
capabilities... for now.]
? Easy to use drawing tools for custom shapes including: freehand lines, 
lines, curves, ellipses, bezier curves, polygons, etc.
? Detailed and flexible user preferences for document and application 
defaults

File Formats:
? EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) 
PNG (Portable Network Graphics), TIFF (Tag Image File Format), and XPM 
(XpixMap).
? Scribus native file format is fully documented and XML based - a PDF 
of the file format is available on line.
[Is Quark native file format documented for the rest of us?]
? Scribus can also import and export well-formed SVG 1.0 (Scalable 
Vector Graphics) including text on a path, images and text. Scribus can 
export all features of a Scribus document as SVG. Images are converted 
to PNG when exporting SVG.
[I didn?t try this, but my guess is Quark doesn?t do that]

Architecture:

? Developed with GPL QT 3 for Linux and "Unix like" operating systems. 
Scribus has been ported to Fink and is actively maintained for X11 
applications on Mac OS X.
[Quark doesn?t work on Linux.]
? Plug-in support and API including a color management plug-in and 
special character inserter.
[Quark doesn?t have a special character inserter feature.]
? Powerful Python Scripting Plug-in for extending Scribus functions and 
automating tasks, as well as calling external applications within Scribus.

Target Usage:

? Layouts for newsletters, corporate stationery, posters, training 
manuals, technical documentation, business cards and other documents 
which need flexible layout and/or sophisticated image handling, as well 
as precise typography controls and image sizing not available in current 
word processors.
? Users needing the ability to output to professional quality image 
setting equipment, as well as re-purposing for internal printing, web 
distributed PDFs or presentations.
? Users needing to create interactive PDF forms for presentations and 
cgi-form submission via PDF.