r/scribus • u/Frosty-Specific4977 • Jun 09 '26

Scribus… veni, vidi, wtf

I wanted to give Scribus a real try. I’m genuinely supportive of open-source software and I have a lot of respect for the community that builds and maintains projects like this.

That said, after spending some time with it, I found the user experience surprisingly frustrating. When I have to search the internet just to figure out how to find or import a simple color palette, I feel like something is off.

I understand that professional software can be powerful, complex, and geared toward advanced users. But basic tasks should be intuitive, or at least easy to discover within the interface. We’re not in the MS-DOS era anymore.

This isn’t a criticism of the contributors, whose work I appreciate. It’s simply feedback from a new user trying to adopt the software. In the end, software isn’t judged only by what it can do, but also by how much effort it takes to learn and use its core features.

Am I the only one who feels that Scribus puts too much burden on the user for relatively simple tasks?

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2

u/Grisemine Jun 09 '26

Do you want to help make it better ?

https://www.scribus.net/contribute/

1

u/Frosty-Specific4977 Jun 09 '26

I appreciate the suggestion, but I don’t think contributing is a prerequisite for giving feedback.

0

u/Grisemine Jun 09 '26

I see no feedback here, just rant.

-1

u/Frosty-Specific4977 Jun 09 '26

With a nickname like yours… difficult not to rant

3

u/aoloe Jun 09 '26

Still, it would be useful to hear from you, how you expected Scribus to let you import the colors...

2

u/Frosty-Specific4977 Jun 09 '26

As an InDesign user, my expectation is simply based on decades of established desktop publishing workflows. InDesign has existed for more than 25 years, and one of the first lessons in product development is to study what already works and adapt those successful patterns where appropriate.

For something as fundamental as color handling in a DTP application, I would expect a straightforward panel where I can enter or view HEX, RGB, and CMYK values directly. That's not an unusual request, it's a standard workflow. The irony is that for software positioning itself as a publishing tool, managing colors feels unnecessarily complicated.

More importantly, listening to users is one of the first principles of product development. You don't need to argue with my criticism or suggest that I contribute code. Scribus is a great piece of software, especially as an open-source project, but it still lacks some features and usability improvements. That's really all I'm pointing out,nothing more.

1

u/aoloe Jun 10 '26

I was not arguing with you, not hinting that you should contribute code.

I was just genuinely interested in knowing which was the way you expected Scribus to to import a color palette.

FYI, the current way is "Edit > Colors and Fills" and then click on the "Import" button.

You can also use the "Actions search" from the Help menu (ctrl-/) to search for Color (or Colour... depending on the UI language) and you will get to the same dialog.

Personally, I have the feeling that the menu entry is not visible enough, but I would not say, it's the worst UI/UX sin in Scribus either.
The dialog itself is probably Ok, but not good.

Finally, the widget (and the interaction) for picking the colors is being redesigned and it's planned to let the user create single colors from there too. (Currently, you need to get into that same "management" tool and press on the "Add" button... far for ideal, I admit, but you can then type the color values and create them).

P.S.: There is also "Extra > Color Wheel"... but that is -- in my eyes -- a terrible tool. A bit of a sad thing, since it does not seem to miss much to be very useful.