Who else?

Scribus developers wrote in the mailing list about a bunch of new importers available in 1.5.0/SVN and asked most brave hearts running the bleeding edge to test them. Unfortunately they didn’t mention a whole lot of other interesting things and they do not tend to blog a lot about changes, so let’s fix that

As of revision 14500 changes include, but are not limited to:

• Importing XTG (QuarkXPress Tags documents)
• Importing IDML (Adobe InDesign documents, XML-based)
• Importing CGM (bitmap/vector ISO file format)
• Importing XAR (Xara Xtreme documents)
• Importing Macintosh PICT (which Adobe recently reported to have ditched from upcoming Photoshop CS5, IIRC)
• Importing CVG (Calamus)
• Rendering of 3D models with user defined lighting, point of view and so on via OSG (PDF 1.7 supports 3D models);
• A new dialog in Edit menu to manage gradients;
• Properties palette is partly rewritten to feature a) much saner UI to gradient and pattern fills and b) new Transparency tab where new gradient masks functionality is located (mostly motivated by XAR importing);
• Merged a GSoC project from 2008 that adds a simplified pictures browser in the lines of Adobe Bridge;
• Beginnings of Inkscape-like status bar (only displays how many objects are selected now and doesn’t respect multiple forms yet).

Apart from that Preferences dialog is being rewritten (again) and there seems to be some activity re. color management.

Now the question you might be asking is when this is going to be released as a final version. I’m afraid it’s “right after it’s ready” as usual. Besides, if you read the 1.3.5 review, you know that v1.5.0 will be officially unstable (which of course won’t stop you from using it, as we’ve grown to know )

Nevertheless it’s great to see progress in development, even though changes like 3D objects rendering wouldn’t stand a round against a much desired feature like easier footnotes insertion