DTP comparison is done based on operating system compatibility and shows that LyX and Scribus both suits the requirements as both supports almost all major operating systems.
Based on the lists of DTP applications reviewed, a few have been chosen as best DTP based on the criteria on supports and features where the chosen DTP are mostly either Opensource on GPL or Freeware. To name a few are:-
1. Fatpaint (Cloud-based) : is a free, online (web-based Cloud application) graphic design and desktop publishing software and image editor, with integrated tools for creating page layout, painting, coloring and editing pictures and photos, drawing vector images, using dingbat vector clipart, writing rich text and displaying graphics on products from Zazzle that can be purchased or sold. Fatpaint integrates desktop publishing features with brush painting, vector drawing and custom printed products in a single Flash application. It supports the use of a pressure sensitive pen tablet and allows the user to add images to the project by searching on Wikimedia, Picasa, Flickr, Google, Yahoo, Bing and Fatpaint's own collection of public domain images. The completed project can be saved on Fatpaint's server or your own computer.
Fatpaint has vector shape creation tools for drawing circles, rectangles, stars, triangles, crosses, spirals, splines, straight lines and lines that you can manipulate with bezier nodes. It also comes with thousands of vector images that you can put into your designs. Fatpaint runs on all major browsers on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
- Image objects: Paint on multiple layers, import or create your own brushes, clone painting and painting with effects.
- Vector drawing objects: Create vector images using multiple paths.
- Text objects: Write rich text. Choose among 981 fonts.
- Effect objects: Blur, Drop Shadow, Glow, Gradient Glow, Bevel, Gradient Bevel, Color manipulations.
- Page layout: Create multipe pages, each up to 64 megapixels in size. Arrange graphical objects on them, each up to 7.8 megapixels in size.
- It is possible to place graphical objects inside one another and transform them in 2d and 3d. You can also skew, bend and distort images and text.
- Design, purchase and sell custom printed products. Fatpaint takes care of sending your graphics to the printing company.
- Supports pressure sensitive Pen Tablets.
- Contains thousands of fonts, public domain images, cliparts and brushes.
2. Inkscape is a free software vector graphics editor, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Its goal is to implement full support for the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 standard. It is cross-platform and runs on Mac OS X (typically under X11, although the underlying GTK+ toolkit can be compiled to run natively under Quartz),Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft Windows. Inkscape's implementation of SVG and CSS standards is incomplete. Most notably, it does not yet support animation. Inkscape has multi-lingual support, particularly for complex scripts, something currently lacking in most commercial vector graphics applications.
3. LyX is a document processor following the self-coined "what you see is what you mean" paradigm (WYSIWYM), as opposed to the WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") ideas used by word processors. This means that the user only has to care about the structure of and information within the text, while the formatting is done by LaTeX, an advanced typesetting system. LyX is designed for authors who want professional output with a minimum of effort and without becoming specialists in typesetting. The job of typesetting is done mostly by the computer, following a predefined set of rules called a style, not by the author. Specific knowledge of the LaTeX document processing system is not necessary but may improve editing with LyX significantly for specialist purposes.
Since LyX largely functions as a front-end to the LaTeX typesetting system, it can handle documents ranging from books, notes, and theses, to articles in refereed journals, letters, and anything else LaTeX can handle. LyX also supports right-to-left languages like Arabic,Persian and Hebrew, and it has substantial support for bidirectional writing. LyX also supports Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages. As of LyX 2.0 there is also basic support of XeTeX and LuaTeX that aims at supporting a broad range of scripts via direct Unicode support.. Although LyX is popular among technical authors and scientists for its advanced mathematical modes, it is increasingly used by social scientists and humanists for its bibliographic database integration and ability to manage multiple files. LyX has also become popular among self-publishers. The LyX document processor is available for various operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, UNIX, OS/2 and Haiku. LyX can be redistributed and modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License and is thus Free Software.
4. OpenOffice.org is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases.OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software and is written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of June 2011, OpenOffice.org supports over 120 languages.As free software, users are free to download, modify, use and distribute OpenOffice.org. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.org which was formed by many of the original developers of OpenOffice.
OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free and open alternative. OpenOffice.org was an open-source version of the StarOffice suite, with development sponsored primarily by Sun Microsystems. After acquiring Sun in 2010, Oracle Corporation stopped supporting commercial development and contributed the suite to the Apache Incubator to become a project of the Apache Software Foundation
5. Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like operating systems, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2. It is known for its broad set of page layout features, comparable to leading non-free applications such as Adobe PageMaker, PagePlus, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.
Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.
Based on the lists of selected DTPs, OpenOffice is widely used and commonly distributed as it has a very close similarity in terms of usage with Microsoft Office applications.
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