Linux for Designers

After i wished a month ago some one would built some newer Scribus 1.3.5 packages, now a month later it comes true :
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Getting_Scribus_on_Ubuntu/Kubuntu_up_and_running
http://debian.scribus.net/debian/dists/gutsy/main/binary-i386/

The stable branch of Scribus is updated to 1.3.3.12.
This version shipped with:
* Several fixes and improvements to text frames and the Story Editor.
* Some additional scripts have been added to enhance functionality.
* More translation and documentation updates.
* Several fixes to protect against possible crashes.
* Improvements to the Scripter to enable more features.

Another inspiring part of Smashing Magazine: Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design. The first part of it can be found here.
For those that stayed more on layouts and print check out the article Beautiful Brochures and Booklets.

Today i was the first day at the IICO 2008 presented by Infopark. Bernd Völker gives an interesting opening about the future of the web and the need of ideas and fantasy to create something amazing. This was followed by a more unintresting keynote of the CeBit Messe AG.
A quite interesting talk about podcast and how corporate podcasts can be successful at the web was given by BASF. This was followed by a good one about analyzing the web (yes, that's the next step after analyzing the own website) and what the web is talking about you and your company. There were a lot of talks and i can't listen to all of them.
By the way at area42 we developed the print design of the IICO 2008, the header graphic is made using Blender.

Scribus is a fine open source application for print and dtp. I'm using 1.3.4 often but it has its bug and so i'm waiting for an update. I was a little bit confused about the newer 1.3.3.x releases because 1.3.4 sounds like a successor of 1.3.3. Now i found a little preview of Scribus 1.3.5 which will hopefully hit the streets soon.
If you using Ubuntu, you can get this SVN build easy:
Getting Scribus on Ubuntu/Kubuntu up and running

Envince and all the others PDF viewesr are great for the daily use working with office documents. But the best for print layout previewings is always the Adobe PDF Reader. Adobe updated it to version 8.1.2 now, read about the changes at GnomeFiles.
The Adobe Reader is available as a Deb and RPM archive too, so its easy for you to install it.

A new version of PDFedit is available. This WYSIWYG editor for PDF documents looks promising!
This release is a bugfix release of 0.3.1. You can grab a Deb archive at getdeb.net!