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However, there's zero alternative to Acrobat.

I take it, then, that you've never looked at Scribus a cross-platform, FOSS page layout program that's being used by professionals to create newsletters, periodicals and books. And, if you're having trouble with it, there's an active and helpful mailing list full of people ready to advise you. Check it out; you might just be surprised by how good it is.

BTW, you can do this with Scribus if you don't want to pay both arms and both legs for something proprietary.

Get LibreOffice for free, and add Scribus as a Publisher replacement.

Sounds like you need a proper DTP package in that case: http://www.scribus.net/

God, I hope so.

Maybe if we're REALLY REALLY lucky they could talk to the guys from Scribus and Inkscape and do something really cool together. LibreOffice has the mass, Scribus & Inkscape have the game. It could be a win-win for all.

TFA is light on details. As someone who has done semi-professional newsprint production with FOSS, I'd be interested in how they found its color support (CMYK separation, color profiling, etc.). Newsprint presses are very picky about these things, and most FOSS software has very limited support. My version of the GIMP, for instance, doesn't even seem to know what a color profile is, though I seem to recall hearing that this has been added in a more recent version. Myself, I use Krita to CMYK-ify RGB photos and apply color profiles to them.

Also, I assume they used Scribus for page layout. One problem we had with that, and the single most important reason we ended up ditching it in favor of Indesign, was that it mounts PDFs (ads, for instance) as bitmaps (thereby rasterizing and color-separating them, which lowers the print quality of, for example, black text).

I still use Krita, OpenOffice, and a whole bunch of other FOSS software, mostly under Linux. But the page layout stuff I now do in Indesign, in a virtual machine running Windows. All this works well, but I'd prefer not to have to mess with the virtual machine part. Not to mention all the stupid issues that always seem to arise with Indesign license keys.

The development of Scribus has been spotty, but 1.4 finally seems to be reachable. You might want to try it, I can't really judge it, as I'm not familiar with DTP.

The version of The GIMP I have on my Ubuntu laptop (2.6.8) is remarkably like older versions of Photoshop in its interface, so it's hard to call out The GIMP on its interface anymore. It's vastly improved over even a couple of years ago. Anyone with a modicum of Photoshop experience can make that transition very easily.

Scribus, on the other hand ... oy vey. Compared to the proprietary desktop publishing software used in the newspaper industry (Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, CCI Layout Champ, the dead-but-not-soon-enough Harris/Baseview system), Scribus' GUI still needs a lot of work ... or, even better, a massive overhaul (at least, so long as it doesn't look like CCI, which has its own Facebook unfan club called "fuck cci" for well-deserved reasons).

Of course, CCI and Harris/MediaSpan's JazBox and NewsEditPro products (front end for InDesign and Quark) have database-based advertising- and copy-management systems built in to make things easier on the staff. They frequently suck hard, but at least they're there. A straight-ahead free-software solution isn't going to have that, especially since there's no way in hell JRC would hire anybody to design that software.

And let's not pretend this is some high-and-mighty moral and/or ethical effort by a newspaper corporation. JRC is considered the worst newspaper to work for. Its corporate philosophy is to squeeze a penny until it bleeds, then waterboard the penny to see if there's anything left in it.

So, staff at The Saratogian have used Windows software for years and years and years. They moved to Linux for a day and found that things were different, and "different" was hard to learn. Why am I not surprised?

Here's what they said in TFA:

News Editor Paul Tackett has been working days and nights, on top of his usual job, to set up most of the day's pages in a layout program called Scribus. ... For today's print edition, Tackett has duplicated the familiar components of The Saratogian from scratch, with the goal being that you won't know the difference between the look of today's paper and tomorrow's. ...

That sure sounds hard. Tackett had to spend days to reproduce templates and layouts that have been built up over years. Yes, doing that kind of work would be hard for anyone. I give this guy huge credit for accomplishing it. But I also give kudos out to Scribus for being able to support it.

You know, moving from one environment that you know really well to one that you don't - it's always hard. We Linux users have trouble, too, moving from Linux to Windows. Don't believe me? I did it for my work, and I'm constantly finding things in Windows that "just don't work right" or "work stupidly".

Linux is just easier for me. But I've been using Linux at home since 1993, and running Linux at work since 2002. Until 2009, that is, when I was "asked" to move to Windows for work.

This whole "move to Linux in a day" thing is a neat "publicity stunt within the journalism industry" (their words) but migrating in that short a time is very very hard to do. If you're going to move an organization to Linux, there are ways to do it so you won't stress your users too much.

I believe we're in another "free" vs. "Free" situation here. The summary implies that it was an experiment to transition to F/OSS software. But the word "open source" never appears in the article.

In the associated video, they call it a "Ben Franklin" experiment and make reference to the "A penny saved..." quote. In the article the only software projects they list are Scribus, which is indeed open source, and Google Docs, which is gratis but not open source. (I have no doubt Google uses plenty of open source to run Google Docs, but it is not an open-source product from the user perspective.)

The article doesn't go into enough detail to really say much else. No doubt they ended up using lots of open source to satisfy their "free" (gratis) requirement, but I suspect they used plenty of freeware, and ad-supported stuff as well. Without much more information I don't think we can say much (positive or negative) about how well open source tools can replace proprietary tools in publishing.

InDesign is page layout and publishing, isn't it? Scribus does that. So yes, there is a FLOSS alternative.

Only problem with the FLOSS option is that like GIMP it isn't quite good enough. (Ok, to be fair - Scribus is more comparable to InkScape than GIMP.) In InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop actually work close to seamlessly with it, as where in Scribus that does not happen with InkScape nor GIMP. In a way it's more like working with Quark. That and Scribus needs some librarys or other overhead and doesn't work as smoothly in Windows as it should.

But to say there is no alternative to InDesign means you haven't really looked hard enough or done the research.

Or scribus

I'll add my voice to this. Give me applications that are focused and good at what they do, don't create some hideous hybrid that merely does everything badly. Besides, GIMP is really the wrong tool for creating books. You should be exporting graphics from whatever program you use and then importing them in a proper desktop publishing program. If you want Libre software, you can look at Scribus for these purposes. (That has some notable omissions such as decent table layout, but it might be sufficient for your needs). You don't want to be making a book in GIMP! (Or Inkscape). Use the right tools for the right job.

Can Scribus-1.3.3.6 : 1) import an existing pdf form and add fillable fields to it ? and/or 2) import the .ps file from which an existing pdf was created (with Ghostscript) ?
1) No, Scribus can import PDF, but they are imported as images currently. The only way to edit a PDF form is with Adobe Acrobat full version. Scribus can create PDF forms without a problem and it is very versatile. 2) Scribus can import a wide variety of EPS and PS files with most content imported as native Scribus objects.

I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.

Well yes, you should learn LaTex, but not for the spreadsheet work. ;) Seriously though, whilst Open Office is nearly as good as MS Office for most people's purposes (there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc), neither feel anything other than clumsy once you're used to proper document-generation tools. If you don't want to take the time to learn LaTex, or find it a little limited by modern standards, try a DTP tool such as Scribus.. There is still a learning curve, but after producing immaculate looking PDFs or printout with tools like this, you may find Word (or Writer) quite frustrating. At least that's what happened to me.

I agree fully with the need to unplug the outside world, though in my case it's more an issue of not wanting Google or MS interns to be able to read through all my work.

Hi,
Firstly if you're looking for opensource app replacements you can always try www.osalt.com.

Personally I'd try:
Photoshop: GIMP or GIMPShop or Krita
Illustrator: Inkscape or XaraXtreme
InDesign: scribus
Dreamweaver: KompoZer or Aptana or seamonkey or Amaya or href="http://net2.com/nvu/">NVU

I also found this website which might help: www.thefreesuite.com

Here are the relevant OSalt links:
photoshop
illustrator
indesign
dreamweaver

I agree with you 100% - and I'm no expert like you :-). There is so much more to creating a good looking document with positioning, spacing, kerning etc etc - on the few occasions I need to do it I tend to use Scribus or (if it really has to be to) I pay someone to do it for me.

Ironically, however, its PRECISELY the (ab)use of Word for layout purposes that has kept it installed against cheaper alternatives such as OpenOffice. People get upset if the layout is subtly different, indicating a worrying increasing importance of presentation over content.

I am not convinced about the positive effect of break in interface approach. People like to use what they're used to, and it's only the "you must use what we shove down your throat" power of executive decision that has allowed the new MS Word interface to survive.

For anyone who has been using Word over time and has developed a degree of sophistication in their uses (i.e. go past the normal 5% of functionality) the new interface was an unmitigated disaster - it was the time I switched permanently to OpenOffice instead. I could not afford to lose all that time to look for functions which used to be easy to find (I tried for a good 5 months before I finally had enough).

Open source, people

http://scribus.net/

? - Yet to see a _good_, visual, easy replacement for InDesign.

Scribus?

It's not just about sticker price, and "FOSS beyond Linux servers" is pretty broad.

I'm a tech writer/UI designer/sometimes web guy at a small (~75 employees) ISV. Our company uses, and even prefers, FOSS when it suits us. Our two head IT guys are Linux nerds like me, which helps.

Basically, the F/OSS software we use falls into one of several categories (this only includes the software I use in my roles, and that I encountered during a stint in QA).

1. FOSS software that sees regular use.
   • Linux: It powers our web and mail servers. Our QA guys use Linux + VMWare to test our (Windows-based) server software. I've been offered a Linux workstation for a web-based project I'm working on, but XP+IIS may be the only solution.*
   • Audacity: We use this to record voice tracks for Captivate demos.
   • 7-zip: Every workstation has this.
   • Firefox: Again, the company standard.
   • Notepad++: A few of us have this for editing raw HTML/CSS/XML/etc.
   • OpenOffice: Don't get excited, Office 2003 is still our bread and butter. This lives on my secondary workstation for simple one-off tasks.
2. OSS software that was tried but failed
   • GIMP: This was before I started at the company, and at the time it couldn't equal Paint Shop Pro (which is what we use now).
   • Scribus: We tried this before caving and purchasing FrameMaker 8. Scribus simply can't match the features or (more importantly) training resources of FrameMaker.

We also use Lotus Notes, which is based on Eclipse.

* I have 2 XP workstations so that I can run every product I might need to document, some of which must be run simultaneously on separate machines. Neither machine is up to spec for Xen or VMWare.

where's the Photoshop or InDesign clones?

Here and here. I've not used Scribus much, but I actually prefer GIMP to Photoshop in most cases.

I agree that Open Office really just isn't up to par, though. Open Office is fine, or even better than MS Office for a casual user, but it fails pretty badly for a serious user.

There are extensions out there for converting (relatively painlessly) docx to odt and you could use scribus as a basic replacement for indesign (and it works with windows, too).

Seriously, between scribus, gimp, and inkscape (equivalents for indesign, photoshop, and illustrator respectively) I don't use any adobe products anymore except digital editions for library e-books.

I worked with an early version of Scribus a couple years ago and was very impressed by it. Since then Scribus evolved a lot. Maybe you should give the Windows version a try:
http://www.scribus.net/?q=taxonomy/term/36

Or just do apt-get install scribus

That can be fixed:

http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Web_optimised_PDF

I run this script on pdf files that I'm posting for download, emailing or archiving.

Check out Scribus -- it's a F/OSS desktop publishing program. From the Scribus web site:

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

However, a major essential feature it's missing is import filters to migrate away from other publishing programs - especially that crap Microsoft Publisher so many people have locked themselves into. However, there are free services to convert the files to free oneself from the grip of Microsoft Publisher.

No, I'm not - using google and specifically looking for Apple branded DDR2 ECC fully buffered 800MHz DIMMs, and checking only the very first link returned, it lists the memory at $190 for 4GB. That means Apple is marking them up at least a whopping $710 for installation (remember this is being resold, not the cost to Apple).

    The most likely reason for this is because businesses usually have budgets that can afford machines with huge markups like this and wouldn't bother buying and installing RAM separately. They also can write off the expense as a 2 year depreciating asset, I believe, so due to the way the tax system works, they are basically writing them off using a tax exemption (half in the first year, and half in the second).

Microsoft does the same thing with their products - look at Office Home vs Office Small Business - is Outlook + Business Contact Manager, Accounting Express 2008 and Publisher really worth an additional $300? I personally think all 3 are mediocre products (Outlook's mail is atrocious from a low level standpoint [auto-archiving is a personal peeve], but calendar planning is as good as alternative products). I've used publisher, but for everything I needed it for, Scribus could do just as well for free.

So my question is, is there a very simple word processor that I can use to do simple construction and layout that does *nothing* automatically and works *every single time* without fucking up my formatting?

Try Scribus. It's a nice little desktop publishing program that does quite a bit, (with more being added each release) although it's nowhere near as powerful as Indesign, Quark, or Framemaker. I personaly use the 1.3.4 development version but the stable version is still useful. Note: Files created in any given version of Scribus are not backwards-compatible with older versions. Aside from that, it's a great program.

You should do your writing/editing in a word processor (which is what a WP is really for, layout capability is just a bonus) and then import the document into Scribus to do your layout.

I'm assuming you're talking about x86-84. x86-64 isn't faster than plain old x86. It just has more addressable memory space.
 
That depends on what you're running. I work with long documents using Scribus on a regular basis and had my main desktop computer set up with Fedora 8/i386. I decided to switch to F8/x86_64 for the "adventure", and reformatted my machine and did just that. Now Scribus redraws the screen and scrolls through my documents at a slight but noticeably faster speed.
 
Pretty much everything else that I use runs about the same on x86_64 as it did on i386, though.

And chances of infection go from unlikely to zOMG what happened to your tool?? Running executables from shady sources? No wonder you guys have problems with viruses.

If were going to talk about free photoshop, I propose we link to it. And free illustrator, and free indesign.

Prospective gsoc student participants interested in improving Free Software Desktop Publishing are invited to look at Scribus Team's ideas list at http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/GsoC_2008_Ideas. We are starting our second GSoC year and are looking for good student coders to improve the *nix/MacOX/Win32 Desktop Layout Software. Come in to #scribus on Freenode if you'd like to talk to us or join our mailing list at http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus. We are open and quite friendly.

Alex
Scribus Team's GSoC Administrator

> Frankly, the Community could start charging for this software and my company would gladly pay whatever they asked. These three programs are absolutely invaluable to us.

Feel free to suggest that your company make a donation; I suggest the cost of the equivalent Adobe product.

These are the links I could find :

GIMP : http://www.gimp.org/donating/
Scribus : http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Scribus_Public_Wiki:Site_support
Inkscape : http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Inkscape_Wiki:Site_support

all I know is that Scribus can create PDF forms.

No, that's not the problem.

The Gimp developers do intend to bring CMYK to the app, but the underlying graphics engine is based around 8bpp RGB. Rather than hack the old engine to work with CMYK and higher bit depths, they decided to build the future Gimp on a generic graphical library called GEGL. That meant waiting until GEGL had a stable API and worked well enough to be better than the existing 8bpp engine in production use.

GEGL will most likely be in 2.6, along with the new MMIWorks-designed UI UI

I'm a textbook writer and I use TextEdit to make RTF files when collaborating with others. If I'm working on a solo project, it is LaTeX and TexShop all the way. If you liked Framemaker then you should check out Scribus. I prefer coding in LaTeX (I never use Lyx--usch), but for more graphical stuff, I've been turning more and more to Scribus.

Really good DTP.

It's very good indeed.

Here is your answer why: Scribus FAQ In addition, MS Pub files do not even transfer well between versions.

The gimp lacks adjustment layers and other stuff that makes the workflow in PS easier. There's also the fact that ever increasing numbers of graphic artists learn from photoshop tutorials, they know which buttons to click but rarely understand the underlying concepts.

Nearly everything can be done in the GIMP (or cinepaint) if the operator knows what they're doing. If you are doing prepress, then Scribus has excellent CMYK support.

The technical arguments are mostly bunk, the workflow issue isn't.

The image gets scaled in the Properties/Image panel: you can either choose "Scale To Frame Size" or "Free Scaling". The only thing missing is that with "Free Scaling" you can no longer scale with the mouse.

Scribus ... can't even scale an image to fit it on the page ... as well as crop
RTFM

1. Inkscakpe http://www.scribus.net/Inkscape
2. Xara http://www.xara.com/
3. Skencil 0.6.17 http://www.skencil.org/

No doubt that I would agree with the parent 100%. GIMP may be acceptable for casual doodler or cropping photos, but it ultimately a complete waste of time for any professional accustomed to a plethora of serious tools and a myriad of features used daily to make a living. We don't even have to discuss its' intolerable user interface because GIMP's graphic capabilities are not even in the same ballpark as Photoshop.

However, one may be able replace some of the other software depending on how you used it. The original poster framed the scenario as tools for the marketing department to use, which clearly lowers the bar in terms of expectations as to what level of competency will be applied. Marketers are not designers, so it would appear as though if Software X does a reasonable job approximating most tasks of Adobe Y, then one can adopt it.

Photoshop - You're unlikely to replace that one. Although, someone else mentioned Pixel which could possibly cut the mustard depending on your needs. Otherwise, there really is nothing to compare to Photoshop.

Illustrator - Definitely have a strong look at Inkscape. I've toyed with it for 2 or 3 years to keep tabs on its' development, after being fairly impressed during my first run through. These days it has continued to advance and I'd suggest it's ready for the professional world. You can create substantially complex pieces with Inkscape which will probably far out-pace the ability of your Marketing department to bother learning in the first place. While it might be missing a pet feature or two, the bottomline is that Inkscape is ready to be taken seriously as a replacement for Illustrator (and, previously, FreeHand).

InDesign - Professionals already use Scribus to handle multipage full color layouts sent directly to commercial print houses, so it's gotta be worth your time to look at. CMYK separation, PDF generation,and much of the toolsets you'd expect to see in Quark or InDesign; certainly more than enough power for your Marketing department.

Acrobat Pro - If you're heavily using features like annotation, collaboration, form creation, et cetera, then you probably won't be replacing Acrobat Professional. Nothing can touch it. However, if all you need is to be able to allow your Marketing droids to generate PDFs from documents they create in other software, then you can slap PDFCreator on their little Windows boxen. Remember that OpenOffice already has the ability to turn any of their normal documents and spreadsheets into a PDF at a click of a button. Surely, you've dumped MS Office by now.

Dreamweaver - This is a tough one because you should probably rethink your environment to realize you most likely don't really want Dreamweaver to be used. Unless you're just using Slashdot to conveniently survey the geek mindshare, the odds are that WYSIWYG is an old paradigm no longer needed by most scenarios. What you probably want is some kind of content management engine which your key tech person(s) can administer such that your Marketing department can monkey with the website(s). One engine could be adapted to various websites, if you proposed such a need. If I were to suppose someone was trolling Slashdot, then I would mention Quanta Plus before realizing Marketing droids would be helplessly confined to Windows and thus I'd point to Nvu as your capable hero.

But, really, if an evaluation of your technical needs leads you back to WYSIWYG, then you've made a logical error somewhere. The days for that hobbled solution are definitely over.

There you have it! Free and open source software is up to the challenge is most regards. Where there are shortcomings, there are adept proprietary solutions for far, far less than the onerous cost of Adobe

I'm saying if you write your text in OO.org, and format it, Scribus can import that formatted text. Scribus doesn't support things like footnotes etc, but for many books it will do the job perfectly. The proof is out there, there are already books in the wild that were produced in Scribus. For real world examples see: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Made_with_Scribu s , there are a few books listed there. http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories# Altes_Reich_und_neues_Recht_.E2.80.93_exhibition_c atalogue.2C_404_pages.2C_hardcover is perhaps a good example. There are many others - we held some up while presenting at last year's LGM and this years LGM (www.libregraphicsmeeting.org).

I'm saying if you write your text in OO.org, and format it, Scribus can import that formatted text. Scribus doesn't support things like footnotes etc, but for many books it will do the job perfectly. The proof is out there, there are already books in the wild that were produced in Scribus. For real world examples see: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Made_with_Scribu s , there are a few books listed there. http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories# Altes_Reich_und_neues_Recht_.E2.80.93_exhibition_c atalogue.2C_404_pages.2C_hardcover is perhaps a good example. There are many others - we held some up while presenting at last year's LGM and this years LGM (www.libregraphicsmeeting.org).

Photoshop --> GIMP http://gimp.org/
Illustrator --> Inkscape http://inkscape.org/
InDesign --> Scribus http://www.scribus.net/
GoLive --> Nvu http://www.nvu.com/

I'll let the others here argue/bash/whine/praise each app.

For vector graphics, check out Adobe Illustrator's nearest competitor, CorelDraw. For bitmap image editing, check Corel PhotoPaint (part of the CorelDraw suite) or Corel's PaintShop Pro software. For desktop publishing, consider QuarkXpress or the open source app, Scribus. For making PDF files, look into Foxit PDF Creator or PDF Creator. I don't believe there are many low priced or open-source alternatives that are comparable to Front Page or DreamWeaver. However, take a look at Kompozer (an improved version of the open-source NVU). For what it's worth, that's my advice for low cost alternatives to the Adobe Creative Suite.

Free Alternatives:

Photoshop -> Gimp
Illustrator -> Inkscape
InDesign -> Scribus
Web Design -> Kompozer, which is a bugfix release of Nvu (there's actually a lot of these, I've also heard Microsoft Visual Web Dev Express, which has a lot of praise from various people)

Not sure of a good PDF editor, but it looks like this claims to do the trick (though i'm sure is nowhere near the level of Acrobat Pro): PDFEdit. Be warned it looks like it's a cygwin port to windows...

I can't guarantee that those will all live up to your expectations, but I am fairly familiar with most of that software, and it certainly gets the job done.

In addition to the gimp (linux / mac / win ) ... check out scribus which does a pretty good job of reproducing most of what indesign does, and is quite stable.

I have not actually seen what is on their CD, but there are some examples of free programs, most of which, have already been mentioned, that are available for both Windows and Linux.

• Firefox Web browser
• Thunderbird full-featured email program
• GIMP Image Manipulation Program
• ImageMagick software suite for creating, editing, and composing bitmap images
• Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor
• ClamWin free antivirus scanner for Windows
• 7-Zip file archiver
• Celestia space simulater that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions
• OpenOffice office suite
• Scribus professional page layout program
• AbiWord word processing program
• Gnumeric spreadsheet
• LyX Document Processor
• Gaim multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client
• Audacity Sound Editor
• Blender the advanced 3D modeling program capable of producing high quality animations
• VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server
• Nvu complete Web Authoring System

Does anyone like Google Apps?

Certainly not! Although I have nothing to hide, the idea of having my private/business documents on a server under Google's control is not pleasant. Having my documents where Google will be able to rifle through them at will, or turn them over to the US goverment under the auspices of protecting the world from 'terror' fills me with dread.

And it would be nice if there was a non-proprietary Publisher

Have you tried Scribus? It's more professional than Publisher in my opinion, closer to Quark or Pagemaker. Give it a go (in this case it's probably best to get the source and compile it yourself, worth it for the bug fixes and impoved SVG import filters). Scribus and Inkscape are a great combo for graphics and pagesetting.

I do use OpenOffice, but find it feels bloated. It's not, but their weird practice of having all the applications in one massive executable instead of seperate applications and libraries makes no sense (so when loading oowriter, for example, it actually loads oocalc, ooimpress etc as well). Perhaps someone wiser than I could explain this weird design practice? OpenOffice draws a lot of criticism for it's slow startup and apparent bloat.

Anyone? http://www.scribus.net/