The Scribus Team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.7.3. This release brings a new live spell checker, a revamped Search & Replace system, improved text frame chaining visuals, new typographic features including Change Case and broader international numbering support, barcode plugin improvements with scripting support, and numerous bug fixes and code quality improvements.
Changes
Highlights
- New Live Spell Checker — Real-time spell checking now runs in a separate thread while you edit, with misspelled word indicators, dedicated preferences, and undo support. The spell checker also correctly handles soft hyphens and other non-printable characters.
- Overhauled Search & Replace — The Search & Replace dialog has been rebuilt with a new interface, collapsible advanced criteria, the ability to search across all text frames, and the option to use selected text as the initial search term.
- Change Case — A new Change Case feature for quickly converting text between lowercase, uppercase, capitalise, sentence case, and toggle case.
- International Numbering — Page numbers and lists now support numbering in Bengali, Burmese, Devanagari, Greek, Gujarati, Kannada, Khmer, Lao, Malayalam, Odia, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Tibetan scripts, as well as traditional alphabet-based page numbering.
- Barcode Generator Major Update — The Barcode Generator plug-in has been updated by its author, Terry Burton. It now uses the barcode engine’s C++ API with a data-driven UI, a redesigned dialog with full access to BWIPP options, text formatting, border controls, re-editable barcode objects, and a new Scripter function for programmatic barcode creation.
Live Spell Checker
Real-time threaded spell checking has been added. Misspelled words are indicated visually in the currently edited frame, and the feature comes with its own preferences and undo support. The spell checker correctly ignores soft hyphens and other non-printable characters, and a previously reported spell check issue has been resolved. Spell checking is also automatically suspended during search and replace operations to avoid interference.
Search & Replace
The Search & Replace dialog has received a major overhaul. Advanced search criteria are now collapsible, making the dialog cleaner when performing simple searches. Search & Replace can operate across all text frames in a document. Selected text is now used to pre-fill the search field. A bug where “Replace All” with formatting-only criteria did not work has been fixed.
Text & Typography
- A new Change Case feature allows quick conversion of text between lowercase, uppercase, capitalise, sentence case, and toggle case, with full undo/redo support.
- Page numbers and lists now support numbering in Bengali, Burmese, Devanagari, Greek, Gujarati, Kannada, Khmer, Lao, Malayalam, Odia, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Tibetan scripts, as well as traditional alphabet-based numbering.
Canvas & Display
- Text frame chaining arrows have been redesigned to be more visually pleasing, with corrected placement when linked frames are very close to each other. A redraw issue causing arrow artifacts after using direction keys has been fixed, and frame link arrows now render correctly when scrolling.
- A long-standing redraw issue when working with multiple linked text frames has been fixed.
Styles
- Unused styles can now be removed directly.
Graphics & Import/Export
- Improved JPEG XL import significantly, passing the reference image tests, including better library detection via pkg-config and Document Log integration.
- Fixed an issue where portrait-oriented photos from Microsoft Publisher files were not rotated or centered correctly in image frames, along with mirror attribute fixes.
- MS Publisher import now reads the stretch flag and sets images to fill the frame.
- Fixed lost image links after Collect for Output.
- Fixed a crash caused by umlaut composition in file names of embedded PDF documents.
- Fixed text underline and text stroke dependency on text frame dash array when exporting to PDF.
Barcode Generator
The Barcode Generator plug-in has been rewritten by its author, Terry Burton. It now uses the barcode engine’s C++ API to process the Barcode Writer in Pure PostScript resources. Per-symbology UI configuration is data-driven via a JSON file, making it straightforward to customise for new barcode types.
- Redesigned dialog with direct access to all common BWIPP options, including checksums, data parsing, dotty rendering, quiet zone cropping, version and error correction level selection, bar height and ink spread reduction.
- Full text formatting controls for each text segment: font, size, direction, alignment, gaps, offset and alternative text replacement, with configurable space and line-break substitution characters.
- Border and bearer bar controls with width and margin settings.
- The preview now renders barcodes scaled and centred to fit the available canvas space.
- Barcodes placed into documents retain their parameters and can be re-edited by double-clicking or by directly editing the object’s attributes.
- Barcode objects have a locked aspect ratio, preserving proportions during resize.
- New Scripter function
createBarcode()for programmatic barcode creation. - Comprehensive symbology, GS1 AI standard format and options reference documentation is accessible directly from the dialog via the help browser.
Other Plug-ins
- The color wheel now correctly moves to the selected color.
User Interface
- Margins and bleed labels have been rearranged throughout Scribus for consistency.
- Action Search and Style Search are now listed in the keyboard shortcut menu.
- Language names in Preferences are now displayed in their own language.
- Multiple Duplicate by Page now supports an option to limit the number of copies.
- Fixed spelling preferences appearing incorrectly in Document Settings.
Build System & Compatibility
- Fixed build failures with Poppler 26.02.0-26.04.0.
- Fixed bad escape sequences in Python docstrings.
- Resolved a deprecation warning for newer versions of CUPS.
- MSVC project updates for Qt 6.10.3.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a crash when laying out text containing inline elements.
- Fixed a crash when copy-pasting a group with Attributes.
- Fixed incorrect Table of Contents setup when reading or opening a document with style-based TOC.
- Fixed a search crash when no items are present in the document.
Internal Code Quality
We performed extensive code cleanup across many import plugins, including SVG, XPS, Xfig, Xara, WPG, WMF, MS Visio, Viva Designer, UniConvertor, SVM, Kivio, Dia Shapes, QuarkXPress, and MS Publisher. Additional improvements include conversion of data access to const versions, unnecessary QPixmap allocation removal, QHash::value() call optimisation, and range-for loop modernisation.
Future
Scribus 1.7.x is the new unstable series. While we will maintain Scribus 1.6.x as a stable version, most development will focus on 1.7.x and features and Qt6-based enhancements. 1.7.x.svn is developing relatively quickly with the integration of a new palette and docking system, new SVG based icons and many more features.
We will look to update documentation in future 1.6.x releases and hope to launch a community documentation project in the future.
We have no plans to fix issues in the 1.4.x branch of Scribus. No versions have been released for some time and the 1.6.x series is the stable series going forward. All branches are available in subversion (svn://scribus.net) as well as on our downloads links for all previously release versions. We encourage all Linux and *BSD distributions to switch their stable version to 1.6.x.
Trademarks: As referred to, please see Trademarks
