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A Printshop Equivalent for Unix?
mcorliss asks: "I'm trying to convince my wife to switch from Windows to Linux. However, one program she loves is Broderbund's
PrintShop, which I haven't found a Linux equivalent of yet. Does anyone know of such a product, preferably one that's free and fairly easy to use?" For banner creation, there's Gozer and AAType, but they aren't the easiest of things to use. Unless you consider The GIMP, software for designing greeting cards (another PrintShop specialty) seems to not have appeared for Unix. So is there an all-around equivalent for PrintShop for Unix users? If not, can you get close to that same functionality using a specific set of Open Source software? If it turns out neither of the first two questions produce encouraging answers, would anyone be interested in starting an Open Source project to fill this niche?
My Aunt is a bigtime print shop poweruser. She gets updates in the mail. They send her reams and reams of disks. I swear she can do things with it that can't be done in Photoshop...
The sad part is, she has actually shown a strong intrest in Linux.
I tried to get Print shop running under wine but was stopped dead by what else, Linux's dismal printer support.
You want to get mad, try loosing all your formatting in a program that essentially does nothing more than formatting.
I think that is the key though. Print shop does little but formatting, with some stock pictures, formatting templates and a heavy dose of ease of use thrown in.
Keep that in mind if you think of something that might work. Whatever replaces print shop, must replace print shop, not quark.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I'm trying to convince my wife to switch from Windows to Linux.
Care to elaborate why ?
She could always use a color FIGlet and output to a printer. ;-)
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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Taco-bashing was a bit harsh but loved the 'Trident driver' bit.
heh. i remember playing around with printshop 1 and 2 back on old apple II's back in 2nd and 3rd grade. fun stuff.
moox. for a new generation.
PrintShop isn't free, but you use it. Why must a Linux program be free?
This attitude explains why there are so few Linux versions of software.
You could always try it in Wine [1] [2] [3]
David
stuff
True story.
...so I don't know what it can do, but you could take a look at xwgui.
This is an arrange the photos and print them out type of software, but it lets you do other things besides, and it has some assistents for specific tasks, that I presume you can add to.
Unfortunately, it uses the XForms widget set, so it looks pretty ugly. Also I had to mess about with my fontpath to put my 75dpi before everything else in order to see some of the dialog boxes properly.
I would love to see this app ported to qt or gtk, and a few other features added.
Actually its Linus that Sucks as a developer, he handed him a big mess...its no surprise that Linus wanted out of 2.4 and on to 2.5 since beta was the only place he was gonna stableize the mess...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Unix is for serious computing. If you want to make your own greeting cards - Windows is the obvious choice.
Sound like a good project. The great thing about Linux is that if you want something you can write it yourself. You can do the same for windows but it is just not as much fun. If someone does this they could be a huge hit with the schools. Who knows maybe you could even sell it. Or at least sell the mannual.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Eh you, what a shame to ask her to change her favorite tool because Linux doesn't run it, eh. Why not trying to run it on Wine, if it runs, eh, cool! eh.
THis is my signature bah: That's ridiculous, someone registered 'fullstar' so I had to choose 'fullstarplus'!!!
...the most appropriate choice was Windows...
There's a certain argument that there's a long term benefit to using free software in terms of dollars and customizability.
May we never see th
Why not trying to run it on Wine, if it runs, eh, cool! eh.
Because it's a program to print things and Linux sucks for printer support.
Read some of the other comments above. They discuss this.
Actually, I think there are minuses and pluses to Marcelo's work.
It's not a lot of fun to be maintainer of a stable branch -- no glory, lots of bitching if anything breaks...and Marcelo is *young*, and could be doing other stuff.
That said, he does release releases more slowly than Linus (which might be reasonable, given that people were complaining about Linus' lack of QA in the stable branch). I do wish that he would enforce fewer things going into -rc releases, though. There should be one or two -rc releases per version, and only bugfixes in an -rc.
Also, he's had that one high-profile fuckup.
May we never see th
Have you looked at Scribus? I've never used it myself (having only recently decided to look at TeX/LaTeX for my own publishing needs), but it sure looks like it's aiming at the same target you want to hit.
I do not have a signature
I'm trying to convince my wife to switch from Windows to Linux. However, one program she loves is Broderbund's PrintShop, which I haven't found a Linux equivalent of yet
One thing you need to ask yourself is why, if her Windows software does what she needs, do you want her to switch? Remember that what is the right solution for one person, such as yourself, may well not be right for someone else. Are you trying to convince her for an ideological reason of your own, to "convert" her? Because that just sounds like a recipe for strife, particularly since dual-booting is so easy these days.
The question is, is that worth $300 to you?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Nice sig!
Even if it's libre (or even gratis!) people buy print shop for the clip art. The functionality is pretty simple, I'm sure any QT or GTK app developer could hack something together in a month. However, it'd be useless without spending the 30 dollars on clip art.
Mind you, were I to do it, I'd probably print to ps and launch a program to print. Not to mention the burden of supporting perhaps one of the true "newbie-type" applications for Linux. "It won't print!"
augh...
I use CUPS for overall printing control.
I generate PDF or PostScript (or raw prn) files from a variety of applications. For a recent birth announcement card, I used Gimp and got very, very good results.
No doubt you could use [La]TeX, too.
The word you're looking for is "losing", not "loosing". Get it right next time.
That's another part of the dogma that keeps Linux off desktops. Software can be developed for any bloody platform, not just Linux. When someone says 'Oh boy! Linux gives me the freedom to develop any app I want!", they're just mouthing disingenuous propaganda.
What potential Linux users hear is this: "If I want that program, I'll have to learn to program myself, or wait for some anonymous Linux developers to do it for me."
So the choice becomes:
1. Quit my day job and take a couple of years learning to be a competent developer;
2. Wait for someone else to write what I want for Linux;
3. Keep on using a commercial platform and shop around.
Guess which option wins.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Just because Linux works well for you doesn't mean it'll work well for your wife. This is the main point in an "open letter" piece I just wrote about Linux on the consumer desktop.
See Croc O' Lyle - Open Letter to a Power User / Developer
Here's an excerpt:
"Okay, even if Linux with KDE or whatever were super easy to learn and use. Where would a soccer mom buy a preschooler edutainment for Linux? Could she install it and read the docs (don't get me started on man pages)? How about a tax package for my small business? Can I get it at Best Buy? Power users have different needs and understand how to locate Open Source needles in the haystack of the Internet - average folks want quick, easy and mainstream. It's not just the OS that has to be usable and suitable - OS's are just the start. It's the whole offering from the platform and all the related software vendors."
When you factor in retraining/relearning costs as well as cost of locating, buying, and installing new software - switching OS's is a costly endevour no matter what you're switching to or from.
Print Shop - a very user-friendly package - is just the tip of the iceberg. Linux needs thousands more Print Shop types of things before it'll be ready for mainstream adoption by non-power users.
Croc