Commercial desktop publishing tools such as QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign make desktop publishing easy, but they’re also prohibitively expensive. It’s unlikely that many small organisations and individuals can afford these software packages which is where Scribus steps in to save the day…

While I've known about the free, open-source desktop publishing application Scribus, until I happened across this article today I didn't know that Scribus is a cross-platform program that runs not just in Linux/Unix but also on computers using the Macintosh OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. That raises my opinion of Scribus immediately.

Scribus is a popular open source desktop publishing software that allows you to create publication like e-books, brochures, type setting and other print publications easily. Being a close competitor to Adobe Indesign and QuarkXpress, the advantage that Scribus has is that it is free and supports many features like CYMK color support and PDF creation.

Scribus is the leading open source solution for desktop publishing (DTP); it supports professional features like press-ready color separations and PDF output, as well as every media file type under the sun

Technical IT publishing company Packt, has published Learning Joomla! Extension Development, a book that helps create Joomla! 1.5 extensions with PHP. Written by professional Joomla! Extension Developer Joseph L. LeBlanc, this book gives programmers their first step in customizing and extending the features of Joomla! through custom PHP development.

When it comes to desktop publishing, a lot of people might think of big organizations producing newsletters, or your local boy scouts producing a fund raising flier. But the average person out there might not see where any kind of desktop publishing is really needed. Honestly, if you really look deeply, you might be surprised. There are a lot of great uses for desktop publishing.

Geshan Manandhar has reviewed Drupal 6 Themes by Packt Publishing. He says, "The new Drupal theme system is great and to reap maximum benefits from this new and improved themeing system I recommend you Drupal 6 themes."
Visit his blog to read the

Packt Publishing has announced the overall winner of their 2007 Open Source CMS Award and it's Drupal! This first place award comes with a cash prize of $5,000, the highest of the cash prizes offered, which will be used by the Drupal Association to help the Drupal project flourish.

We'll be using Scribus for much of the DTP internal to Canonical. Our templates etc will be published in Scribus, so folks who need to knock up a flyer or brochure have the pieces they need ready to hand. However, there's a problem, in that the stable Scribus package is really quite old.