[scribus-dev] Announcement: Scribus 1.3.8 and Scribus Presentation Template Package Released

[Christoph Schäfer]

The Scribus Team is pleased to announce the release of Scribus 1.3.8. This new 
release brings us closer to version the next stable release 1.4.

During this development period the team focused again on stabilty and 
correctness.

More than 60 bugs have been resolved since the release of 1.3.7. In 
particular, import filters and PDF export have been improved. This version 
also adds a number of usabilty improvements, as well as documentation and 
translation updates. http://bugs.scribus.net/changelog_page.php?version_id=76 
lists all changes made to 1.3.8.

The Scribus Team considers this version to be quite stable and ready for most 
real-world use cases. However, since there are still some issues that we wish 
to fix before releasing version 1.4, more cautious users may want to prefer to 
stick with the officially stable version 1.3.3.14.

The Scribus Team will continue to implement new features and improvements in 
our 1.5.0 development branch. Features that can be backported may become part 
of the 1.4 milestone.
   
==Important Information==

Please note that we have branched our code repository:

* 1.3.9svn code (the next iteration of the development version and possibly 
the last before the release of 1.4) is available from the "Version135" branch: 
(svn://scribus.info/Scribus/branches/Version135/)

* trunk (=experimental) is now versioned 1.5.0svn 
(svn://scribus.info/Scribus/trunk) and continues to undergo heavy changes. 
Please use this branch for testing only!

The Scribus Team recommends that all distributions package Scribus 1.3.3.14 as 
"Scribus" or "scribus". We recommend the additional packaging of 1.3.8 only if 
it is marked as a development version and can be installed alongside an 
existing Scribus 1.3.3.14 (for example as "scribus-ng").

An important reminder: If you are working with 1.3.3.x and decide to implement 
some design features available in 1.3.8, you should only work with a copy of 
your file, since once it is saved in 1.3.8 format, you will not be able to 
open it again with 1.3.3.x.

Similarly, if you are working with a team, try to make sure that all team 
members use the same Scribus version -- this will avoid many headaches and 
extra work.

Please also note that as of 1.3.8 the minimum Qt version required to compile 
and use Scribus is 4.6. If your distribution doesn't offer updated Qt 
packages, you may have to compile Qt yourself.

 ==Primary Download Location==

Windows and Mac OS X installers, as well as the source code are available  
here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/scribus-devel/1.3.8/

OS/2 installers will be added soon.


==Further Download Options==

- Upstream Debian/Ubuntu repo: http://debian.scribus.net

- Fedora 13 RPMS:
 http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/mrdocs

- OpenSUSE 11.1+ and SLED 11 RPMs:
 http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/mrdocs

==Source Verification==

MD5 Sum scribus-1.3.8-tar.bz2: 660b946ea3ba19e894fb5701832a6b54
MD5 Sum scribus-1.3.8.7z: 6faf763a9ca8195245d33585f94474d7
MD5 Sum scribus-1.3.8-win32-install.exe: 51762c70cccb4a479a5d0020a3732bf0
MD5 Sum Scribus_1.3.8.dmg: 7df05a7dc0645be51438518857af4c86


==New Presentation Template Package Available==

The Scribus Team is also pleased to announce the availability of a set of 
presentation templates for the creation of PDF presentations, which is 
released under a BSD license. They are based on the templates published by SUN 
Microsystems for OpenOffice.org. Installation instructions are included in the 
archive.

Download: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/extras/templates/presentation_templates-0.1.zip/download
MD5 Sum: e2bc54c7304d318645dfb8a60ca7b1e6

==New Team Member==

With great pleasure the Scribus Teams welcomes a new member to our 
development, Jain Basil, a computer science student from India. We are looking 
forward to some great contributions from this talented programmer!

==Credits==

The Scribus Team would like to thank Anduin.net/Øverby Consulting (Norway) for 
their continued hosting of all of the Scribus websites.

We are also grateful to Linux New Media (Germany) for sponsoring.

Moreover, the Scribus Team is pleased to name Resene Colours (New Zealand), 
dtp studio (Germany), Serenity Systems (USA), Vectorportal (Russia) and 
Marabu-Druckfarben (Germany), De Telefoongids (The Netherlands) as Special 
Supporters.

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


==About Scribus==

Scribus is an award-winning, cross-platform Open-Source page layout 
application with a focus on high-quality and commercial-grade PDF and 
PostScript output. Originally developed on Linux, Scribus runs natively on Mac 
OS X, OS/2, many forms of UNIX and Windows 2000/XP/Vista by now.

Underneath a user-friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing  
features, such as CMYK colour, spot colours, separations, ICC colour  
management, printing marks and versatile PDF creation, including PDF/X.

Encouraged by professionals and beginners alike, the Scribus Team, supported 
by a large and constantly growing number of enthusiastic contributors from 
all over the world, is dedicated to improve "one of the most powerful and 
useful open-source projects out there" (TechRepublic).

==Links==

- Scribus Website: http://www.scribus.net
- Scribus Wiki: http://wiki.scribus.net
- Scribus Developer Blog: http://rants.scribus.net/
- Bugtracker: http://bugs.scribus.net

- Scribus General Mailing List: 
http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
- Scribus Development Mailing List: 
http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus-dev