Scribus supports many major graphic formats including most all of the standard ones used in DTP in addition to SVG import and export.
Printing is done via its own internal level 3 PS driver, including support for font embedding and sub-setting with True Type, Type 1 and Open Type fonts. The internal driver fully supports Level 2 Postscript constructs and very large set of Level 3.
PDF support includes transparency, encryption and a large set of the PDF 1.4 spec including interactive PDF's form fields, annotations and bookmarks.
The file format is based on XML and fully documented. Unlike proprietary binary file formats, even damaged documents, may be partially recovered with a simple text editor - sometimes a challenging problem with other page layout programs.