Both installations are painless and Scribus runs up to a rather atypical blank page display. On Windows you’re advised to install GhostScript, the open source PostScript and PDF rendering engine, first. It has just moved to version 1.3.4 but since this developers’ release is only currently available as source code, our review is based on version 1.3.3.9. The program is a free download and is cross-platform, with versions available for Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mac OS X, OS/2 and Linux. Scribus is an open-source DTP application, started in 2001 and written by people who are clearly opinionated on subjects like typography and page design. There is a third contender, though, from a rather unusual source.

This stems from a long-running reluctance to provide review copies and a long-running desire to produce an under-featured, over-priced heavyweight that still has trouble with tables. A few might add QuarkXpress to that, though Quark seems to have alienated virtually all journos over the years. To read most of the digital press, you’d think InDesign was the only big-league desktop publishing (DTP) application anyone took seriously.

Scribus mac os catalina