I know a lot of people complain about the Scribus interface. I don’t, because I fully understand how it works. However, there’s something that’s directly affecting my production workflow. Laying out a 24-page newspaper is becoming an uphill battle. I’ve only laid out six spreads so far, and every action is getting slower and slower. I want to draw attention to the program’s performance with documents this large. I know this might not be the best example—it has a lot of text boxes and a typeface with twenty random variants—but I really miss being able to edit smoothly.

I’m very tempted to ask an AI model to find a solution—even if it doesn’t work—but at least to pinpoint some symptoms so I can bring them to the developers’ attention, since my lack of programming knowledge prevents me from providing a more in-depth analysis.

It would also be nice if we could send separate text boxes to be edited on separate terminals on other computers and have those edits sync directly to the file being laid out.

I flatly refuse to use Designcraft. I’ve been relying on Scribus for my small layout projects for ten years now, and I want the program to keep improving.

It wasn't the greatest program in the world, but Microsoft Publisher was my go to for my faux-newspaper newsletter that I put out once a year. Not rocket science. Now it has been taken from me. The thing I liked best was the overflow text from one column to the next and the abiliity to enlarge or shrink photos to make it fit. They keep telling me to go to Canva or Powerpoint, but that will not cut it from what I am told. I am pretty mad that another steep learning curve has been thrust upon me yet again... it seems to happen once a day now. I mean, I pay for this $#1+ and yes, it was Flintstones in appearance and intent [like newspapers... who reads those?] but when you are running on a hamster wheel twelve hours a day due to the hunger games economy we live in and are forced to cram everything other activity into a few hours on the weekend, learning new stuff like this is not a welcome diversion. Not when I have a twenty-thousand item-long-to-do -list of things that must get done. And now I can add this to the pile. Plus it probably contains a bunch of spyware and nagware considering it is "free."

nytril now runs on the linux desktop (both amd64 and arm64). Nytril is a programming language and markup language together in an integrated graphical environment. It is the perfect compliment to scribus for creating technical publications.

Hi
until yesterday me and a bunch of my classmates was working with indesign under the pretense that my school was going to extend my license until the next year

this has not been so, i currently cannot access any of my files, which contain about 3-4 years of efforts, and most importantly, current assignments
i am currently fighting with the school to regain the license, but the situation is dark.
It was written in their bylaws, but the opposite has been communicated to the students unofficially, so we might not get access to our works anytime soon

most of us went over to either scribus or affinity, but now, those of us that went with scribus, can't seem to open the indd files, importing PDFs doesn't seem to work well and loses many of us a lot of progress.

does anyone know a good way to convert indd files to sla files?

Hello! Just trying to see if anyone has had the same problem. I tried finding help online to no avail.

I have Ventura 13 something, and on the site it says Scribus 1.6 works on 12 or more, or 13 or more, so it should be compatible, but after installing it, the app appears with the "forbidden" symbol and says it's not compatible.

Has this happened to anyone?

I am trying to avoid Adobe at all costs and find things that work both on my laptop (linux) and my desktop (mac) so I can work on projects in both computers with my cloud... but it is HARD, some things I find for linux don't work very well on mac.

EDIT: I thought I had to install GhostScript after, so I am going to try to install that and see

I've forked Scribus and making changes that are user friendly as much as possible. I request Designers and other publishing users please use this fork and let me know your feedback here. I'll update once the release version is ready.. Meanwhile Sourcecode and changelist are available at https://github.com/appajid/scribus

I spent most of yesterday trying to upload a cover for a book with no success. I'm hoping someone here has an idea of what's going on. (Btw, the 32-page interior file uploaded with no problem.)

The error message was basically that my pdf wasn't in pdf/x--1a format (but the export window says it is) and that my page height was incorrect. (A5 page needs to be 8.27, or 8.268 in.) Even after I fiddled with bleeds and got everything to 8.27, it told me I was wrong, adding that the page height was...8.27.

Does anyone have ANY idea if DTRPG will ever accept my cover page? Thanks!

I'm trying to both download scribus and understand how it works. I downloaded what says to be the 1.6 version, but it was just files, I'm not very good with computers so I was confused and deleted it. Please help.

Ok -yes I’m late to the EXPIRING MS PUBLISHER FROM
O365 game. Did some digging and thought Scribus was my option at opening & converting over all my 1 page flyers. Simple image of a dog & a couple text boxes.
I can open the .pub file but all I get is an image of dog - text boxes & layouts missing. It’s not a font issue as I was using a non-standard font & sourced it from Google & see it’s available in Scribus now.

Thoughts ?

Thank you as this is just for a volunteer position where I make flyers 8x10 - 11x17 so not interesting in purchasing software

I'm trying to type text into a text frame. I am getting a hand instead of a blinking cursor. How do I get rid of it and get the blinking cursor so I can type into the frame?

Hi! My current resume is made in Figma. Not the best tool, but that's what I am familiar with. However, because Figma PDFs in a somewhat wonky manner which trips up the automatic tools that recruiters often use to parse resumes. Usually I have to enter all of my information by hand because of that.

I want to remake my resume in some software that is actually meant for laying out documents. Scribus is one of the options I am considering, but did anyone have any experience making a resume in it and uploading it to be automatically parsed?

Thank you in advance for any input!

Hi! I have been using Scribus V 1.7.3. on a MacBook (macOS Montery) for a few weeks without any problems. Yesterday, my properties window disappeard. When I press F2 or try to open it via window -> properties nothing happens. All other windows open and function without any problem.

I alredy tried deleting preferences (as explained here), but there is no preferences folder in my library. I also deleted and redownloaded Scribus two times but the problem remains.

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?

Hi!

I've just downloaded Scribus after working with InDesign for many years.
Please tell me that I can do crosswords like this in Scribus?
My current (InDesign) setup:
I have pre-made grid template (locked) files that I've made in different sizes for different customers. They have a thicker outer border.
I open the relevant one. Then I go to the layer for pictures and add them in. Then I go to the clues layer and merge the squares so they're not visible over the picture and make the lines (frame) around the picture thicker. Then I add clues into the squares, the text is centered automatically.
As you can see, I sometimes merge two clue squares and sometimes (but not too often, just picked a crossword that shows this) in, ehm, creative ways to fit the clues in.
Once that is done, I add in my lines between the clues and arrows where needed.
Lastly I have a separate layer where I type in the solution and send two PDFs to my customers, one with the solution and one without.
If possible, could anyone mentor me in how to do this workflow, please?

I documented it in Linux Mint Cinnamon but I believe it should be substantially the same across platforms. I hope it will help someone else, since I was wanting to make it easier for myself to follow the tutorials and the documentation was so out of date.

This document is an independently created reference for Scribus 1.6.1. It is intended to complement, not replace, the official Scribus Documentation. Any errors or omissions are my own and corrections are welcome.

It looks like my spacing is more than single. How do I change it to single?

Thanks.

I have version 1.6.6-5 installed on cachyos with wayland (using the niri display manager if that matters).

trying to start the software fails with:

scribus --version 

Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display :0 
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found. 
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. 

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, xcb.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, is there a fix? The flatpak version also fails to start but I would prefer not to use that anyway, due to reliance on external programs

So basically I have tried Scribus for an afternoon trying to make a cv. Whilst making shapes en filling them is quite easy, control over fonts or making text frame or image frame lines invisible or adding colors in stead of the EGA monitor options... seem impossible for this publishing software. Even tho I greatly respect the effort of this open source project. But you might as well pack up if such simple functions are not present. I have tried several work arounds. Edit colors gave me the option to add one color. But for design purposes this workaround is incredibly laborious. Also for line styles I added a style "no line" with black line of 0,00 mm and opacity to 0% . This sometimes works sometimes doesn't . And different fonts... don't get me started.... it often lags or hangs .... Otherwise this program looks simple powerful and great, but having these basic functions respond so irratically, I am more inclined to go to other software for my publishing need mmm

I've assembled a booklet of mostly images, mostly black backgrounds. I've searched online and tried the Scribus manual but I can't seem to work out how to set the Rich Blacks, ie how to mix a recipe of eg C60 M40 Y 40 K 100 to then save to PDF. Any one got a handy A>B>C> tip for me to find where I need to be? Many thanks!

I'm laying out my first booklet in Scribus. I've chosen the book template, which has a nice clear layout of a single page cover and sequential open double pages. But I'm designing a booklet that will fold through the middle, and I would have expected to see for example the first layout showing both front and back of the booklet, rather than just the front cover. Also, that the page number would not be sequential, to reflect the stacked sheet before being folded. I google some tips but it was unclear - one comment was that the PDF would accommodate the page arrangement of a booklet. Can anyone help me with what template I need for a stapled booklet in Scribus?

I'm making a board game rulebook and I need to include graphical icons inline with the rule text. I can copy-paste images into the text frames but I cannot, for the life of me, work out how to set the vertical alignment of these images with respect to the surrounding text.

I would like the pasted images to be centred with respect to the text, not extending above the baseline. Does anyone know how to do this?

I wanted to give Scribus a real try. I’m genuinely supportive of open-source software and I have a lot of respect for the community that builds and maintains projects like this.

That said, after spending some time with it, I found the user experience surprisingly frustrating. When I have to search the internet just to figure out how to find or import a simple color palette, I feel like something is off.

I understand that professional software can be powerful, complex, and geared toward advanced users. But basic tasks should be intuitive, or at least easy to discover within the interface. We’re not in the MS-DOS era anymore.

This isn’t a criticism of the contributors, whose work I appreciate. It’s simply feedback from a new user trying to adopt the software. In the end, software isn’t judged only by what it can do, but also by how much effort it takes to learn and use its core features.

Am I the only one who feels that Scribus puts too much burden on the user for relatively simple tasks?