[Scribus] Newbie: Preferences dialog greyed out

[Haines Brown]

I've been anxiously awaiting for months to start with Scribus, and
new fall flat on my face right at the beginning.

I'm running Debian Sarge, and installed Scribus 1.2.1 from the .deb
testing package.

Following the tutorial, I open a new document, and a New Document
dialog appears. When it is dismissed, a new blank page is displayed,
showing the margins I had set for the page. To create a frame, I go to
Tools-->Properties to bring up the Properties dialog. It pops up, but
it is greyed out.

I must have missed something obvious.

I tried searching on
http://search.gmane.org/search.php?query=&group=gmane.comp.graphics.scribus
without luck. I find my news server does not recognize the
gmane.comp.graphics.scribus newsgroup.

Haines Brown