Scribus now follows the XDG standard for configuration files. An import filter for Krita's KRA format has been added. The performance of copying and pasting objects in/from/to files with huge color palettes has been vastly improved. The 'Text' tab has been removed from the Properties Palette and is now a separate UI palette. Previews for fonts are now available in font selectors. Typing on the canvas and text rendering in general has become a lot faster. Please note that as of version 1.5.3, Scribus is supposed to render these diverse writing systems, which still needs thorough testing by those who are familiar with them. Altogether, about 500 languages and/or scripts are supported. The most important change isn't immediately visible, namely a completely rewritten text layout engine, which supports complex scripts like Arabic, Hindi or Thai, as well as providing access to advanced OpenType features, such as ligatures and alternate glyphs. On top of that, it includes additional and already overwhelmingly reliant features galore. Generally, everything that works reliably in 1.4.x also works in 1.5.3, but it's faster and more versatile. Scribus 1.5.3 is very fast and has been thoroughly tested. However, care must be taken, because this is still a development release. In addition to being a milestone in terms of typographic features, the Scribus Team is convinced that 1.5.3 has become stable enough to be used in new workflows and documents in a similar way to the transition from 1.3.3.x to 1.4.0 after the release of version 1.3.6.

The Scribus Team is proud to announce the release of development release 1.5.3, another major step on the way to Scribus 1.6.0. Content-Type: text/plain charset='us-ascii'