X-Scribus

Even though it’s the most common form of computer interaction, writing text has greatly evolved since the beginning. Text format files now come in various encoding settings to better preserve info, and only some applications can view and edit them, which is the case with X-Scribus that’s dedicated to PDF.

What makes this edition of Scribus so neat is that you don’t have to go through the hustle and bustle of an installer, because you can use it even from an USB Flash drive. Although it’s not the official portable edition, it has all the features. As a consequence, you might have to manually check for the latest updates.

If you’ve ever used the Office suite or any other kind of text editor, then you know what to expect on a general level, but going through the set of features and various menus, you quickly realize that X-Scribus has it all. From basic document and page layout options, search and replace functions, to different styles, customization and drawing, you’re free to create just about any kind of PDF document.

The writing part of the PDF document is pretty easy. All font and style settings you’re used to are at your disposal, and writing is done in special boxes, which makes paragraph handling incredibly practical. What’s more, each can be easier fitted with its own style.

For drawing, there are all sorts of brushes and special shapes to add, customize, resize, but also add external objects, as well as pictures. For more precision, you can enable a grid to snap to it, or set markers on the horizontal and vertical rulers.

Another advantage is the amount and variety of file types you can load, besides common image formats. The text alone can be grabbed from files like SVG, EPS, EPI, EPT, PS, WMF, AI, PDF, but common DOC or TXT are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, you can load OpenOffice, and OpenDocument files.

To save you can either do it as a local project or directly printed out on a sheet of paper. Needless to say that you can generate PDF documents as well, given the nature of the application. Besides this, it’s also possible to save as image, text, or SVG.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that X-Scribus is just the right thing for creating and managing different text and design formats, especially PDF. It’s portable, packed with an incredible amount of editing options, while accommodation is the last thing you need to worry about.