Scribus supports most major
bitmap formats, including
TIFF,
JPEG, and
PSD.
Vector drawings can be imported or directly opened for editing. The long list of supported formats includes
Encapsulated PostScript,
SVG,
Adobe Illustrator, and
Xfig. Professional type/image-setting features include
CMYK colors and
ICC color management. It has a built-in
scripting engine using
Python. It is available in 60 languages. High-level printing is achieved using its own internal level 3
PostScript driver, including support for
font embedding and sub-setting with
TrueType,
Type 1, and
OpenType fonts. The internal driver supports full Level 2 PostScript constructs and a large subset of Level 3 constructs.
PDF support includes transparency, encryption, and a large set of the PDF 1.5 specification including layers (OCG), as well as
PDF/X-3, including interactive PDFs form fields, annotations, and bookmarks. The current file format, called SLA, is
XML. Old versions of SLA were based on XML. Text can be imported from
OpenDocument (ODT) text documents (such as from
LibreOffice Writer),
OpenOffice.org XML (
OpenOffice.org Writer's SXW files),
Microsoft Word's
DOC,
PDB, and
HTML formats (although some limitations apply). ODT files can typically be imported along with their paragraph styles, which are then created in Scribus. HTML tags which modify text, such as
bold and
italic, are supported. Word and PDB documents are only imported as plain text. ScribusGenerator is a
mail merge-like extension to Scribus.
Scribus 1.6 (and the 1.5 development branch) Scribus 1.5.1 added PDF/X-4 support. Initially, Scribus did not properly support
complex script rendering and so could not be used with
Unicode text for languages written in Arabic, Hebrew, Indic, and Southeast Asian writing systems, even though it supported Unicode character encoding. In August 2012, it was announced that a third party had developed a system to support complex Indic scripts. In July 2016 it was announced that the text layout engine had been rewritten from scratch in preparation for support of complex scripts coming in Scribus 1.5.3 and later. In December 2016 Scribus announced they got support for OpenType advanced feature in 1.5.3svn, as well as complex script and RTL direction. Scribus 1.4.7 did not have OpenType alternative glyph support, so ligatures, for example, were not inserted automatically; this became available from v1.5.3. ==Support for other programs and formats==