Evolution of a 100% Free Software-Based Publisher

NewsForge (also owned by VA) has a quick and interesting look at the evolution of a 100% free software-based Italian publisher. From the article: "Today, Sovilla acknowledges that choosing a 100% free software workflow complicated his working life. He also notes, however, that a great part of his troubles came from an early start, at a time when programs such as Scribus weren't mature enough yet. Today, he says, the situation has improved considerably, and publishers who are willing to experiment with an alternative software platform can, and should, try it without fear."

Comments

Not surprising

[Free Bird]

Many of publisher's important tools, like TeX, are free software, so I'm not surprised you can build a complete workflow around them, although there will of course always be hurdles to take.

Re:Not surprising

[connorbd]

Uh, how many mainstream publishers openly use TeX (or *roff for that matter) for anything but technical books and papers? Most of them don't even talk about what they use for typesetting to begin with, and if they do they might mention the fonts they use.

Re:Not surprising

[Moridineas]

Not a lot...

I imagine if the true numbers were known, it would be pretty amazing how much is still being done with Quark 4.5 on OS9.

This is of course changing thanks to Indesign, but old versions of quark are still being used..

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

O'Reilly uses FrameMaker.

Re:Not surprising

[shreevatsa]

Publishers using (La)TeX include Elsevier, Addison-Wesley, Bartlett Press, Springer Verlag, Prentice Hall, and the American Mathematical Society. And this was in 1992.
Many of them even provide their own style packages (noticed that all Springer's books look alike?); see http://www.tug.org/interest.html#publishers.

Re:Not surprising

[crucini]

That's 14 years ago. Chances are those publishers have moved to commercial DTP software (AMS excepted). O'Reilly used to use troff with in-house macros; they switched to Word and FrameMaker.

Re:Not surprising

[ralph.corderoy]

Authors do produce PDFs ready for the publisher using tools like TeX. troff has been used for decades to do just this and with the GNU groff implementation it's still being done today, using Free Software all the way, e.g. http://troff.org/pubs.html#vpnsi. There's many more listed on that page. They're not all technical, e.g. a Collins dictionary IIRC.

Not 100% good

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear they don't provide source code for their books. The use some proprietary language called "Italian."

That is possible now days..

[badran]

Well today this is not a big deal... as you have almost all the tools that you may need OSed, but 10 years back it wasnt so dandy...

nothing to fear...

[advocate_one]

but fear itself... apparently that's what's really holding people back from trying out FOSS solutions instead of sticking with the cosy world of proprietary pre-packaged "solutions"... that and the fact that the mainstream PC press tends to ignore FOSS cos there's no marketing kickbacks from it in the form of advertising revenue...

Re:nothing to fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when you're building a business around these workflows, is it better to go with a proprietary solution that's known to work, or is it better to go with something that will eventually work, providing you put a lot of effort into it to make it work? In the end, yes, both work. But when money and time are on the line (as is the case with a business), you generally tend to go with the one that's been proven to work time and time again. I'm not dissing OSS here, I'm just explaining the rationale as it currently stands. As more companies build themselves around FOSS solutions, they'll make more inroads into various corporate worlds. This has already shown itself to be the case regarding server software. Publishing, as in the example, still has a ways to go, however.

Re:nothing to fear...

[heinousjay]

Simply dismissing it as fear is the zealot's cop-out, since (almost by definition) a zealot considers his opinions to be objective fact, and he needs to rationalize why other people don't see it that way.

Personally, I've noticed simple preference to be why people would ignore a given FOSS package. It's not hard to see how that works - FOSS packages tend to be designed using baroque interface methods that are preferred only by hardcore 'elite' types who like to lord their 'mastery' over others. The general population likes the consistency and ease that tends to be available in propietary software. The mish-mash of different implementation metaphors and the domination of command line interfaces in the FOSS world just turns a lot of people off.

Sorry this turned into a rant. I just can't let something so simple-minded stand. Personally, I like FOSS and I use it in my work and personal life. I just know I'm an exception.

Re:nothing to fear...

[zCyl]

FOSS packages tend to be designed using baroque interface methods that are preferred only by hardcore 'elite' types who like to lord their 'mastery' over others.

It has nothing to do with "lording mastery". The difference is in the power vs time curve. Many so-called "ordinary" users think that they prefer a power vs time curve that grows logarithmically so that they can learn it quickly. The developers of FOSS, on the other hand, prefer a power vs time curve that looks more exponential, so that as soon as they invest a little time learning how to do something, they can accomplish tasks more quickly, and save more time overall.

The problem is that in only a few cases have people figured out how to have software that has a logarithmic type curve, and an exponential type for users seeking more advanced usage. The "unix model" of having text-based backends with graphical frontends is one solution to this, but sometimes tends to favor the text-based portion if not everything is included in the frontend. The model of having a gui-based program with a scripting language is another solution to this, but in many cases the dependence on the gui makes it difficult to automate integration with other software.

Re:nothing to fear...

[evought]

The problem comes in when a business goes with a proprietary solution when it is *known not to work* and they do not have the ability (are not allowed to) adapt it. As an example, I worked on a team at one point producing a 300 plus page analysis/rationale document for a large system where the document was being actively edited by 9 people and needed to be well indexed (as well as TOC, LOF, Code Listings, etc.) This was a good few years ago, but has stuck in my mind as a lesson to learn.

They decided to use Word for this because it was "standard" even though the tech writer said it could not be done. I recommended LaTeX: teach everyone on the team the bare minimum to mark up their sections and the tech writer and I (team lead) would write the glue to version control, assemble, and generate all the necessary indices. I had a proof of concept working. They still used Word. Managing the document was a nightmare which took more effort than all the writingcombined and the indices, while complete, were always wrong. Other errors in style or versioning were all over the document.

The lesson here is that proprietary apps are great within their domain. Certain Open Source Apps shine when you are doing something which has not been attempted, is seldom attempted, or is unique to your circumstances. Drawing that line is hard and is seldom done well.

Re:nothing to fear...

[shish]

The general population likes the consistency and ease that tends to be available in propietary software

Like how MS has the standard windows forms UI for most apps, a toolkit for office, one for visual studio, windows media player being totally different, windows explorer having a load of non-standard parts, and the XP-style control panel being different again. And this is within a single company, ignoring other popular propietary apps like winamp, itunes, maya/lightwave, etc. And even using standard toolkits companies often like to arrange things their own way...

A standard ubuntu install has openoffice (with GTK2-clone theme), Firefox (with GTK2-clone theme), and GTK2 -- and aside from OO and Firefox, I can't remember anything making me think "gah, why isn't this consistant?" (I now use abiword and epiphany anyway~)

On a related note, does MS have a HIG like Apple's or GNOME's?

Re:nothing to fear...

[connorbd]

They did create a user interface guide when Windows 95 came out. I presume it's still available in some form or another for XP and possibly Vista, but I wouldn't know where to get it. Probably a download from somewhere in the MSDN website.

Re:nothing to fear...

[guisar]

You only alluded, I think, to the end result. Did you get the product out? What was the cost? Oh snap, only the first question matters! Whomever was in charge was probably one of the word advocates and clearly they don't give a flying F what you or anyone else is subjected to as long as they get whatever it is out. I suspect business people would look at your case and say, "See, Microsoft Turd works!". They might even make it case study for how FOSS advocates gum up the works. That's the situation as I see in many places.

Re:nothing to fear...

[evought]

True enough. I don't know if the product was ever finished per se. The cost overrun was absorbed by the client (time and materials), but the contract ran out. I left the company before the new contract over an even larger debacle: I worked a hundred-plus hour week and drove my team like a slaver to finish a deliverable that had been canceled the week before. Nobody told us--- even when I gave them a status report. I got an offer and left. They did lose something in the end.

Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[johnthorensen]

He also notes, however, that a great part of his troubles came from an early start, at a time when programs such as Scribus weren't mature enough yet.

This comment shows a little wishful thinking, IMO. I recently tried Scribus, and it's nowhere near mature. This is typical of a lot of open-source software I think; might work good enough for light 'hobbyist' use but nowhere close for real professional work. Probably because it's hobbyists writing the stuff for the most part.

Another good example is Sodipodi/Inkscape. Lots of potential there, but I only used it for about an hour before I 'hit the wall' so to speak and became frustrated with its lack of capability.

Not a dig on open-source, just an observation...

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[badran]

this is not strange... as most software as mentioned earlier... is written by someone who only wants a certain feature... and that is it... s/he wont sell is or anything and money from it.. so that person will keep on working till they feel that it is becoming boring

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[unavailable]

Next time you try out an opensource app and find its features below your standards, go compose a detailed wishlist, with proper argumentation and detailed description for every missing feature.

Nobody is asking for patches, but some feedback from professionals is always appreciated. Implementation hints are also welcomed, even if you are not a programmer.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are looking to do a 300 page scientific manual, then no Scribus is not up to it yet. You might however be surprised by the professional posters, leaflets, pamphlets, magazines, brochures, and, yes, books etc that have been done with Scribus. It might of course depend on the version you tried...

Maybe refer to http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories for some real examples.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you mention Inkscape, it could do for me what Freehand and Illustrator couldn't: do what I want without reading a 800 page book. I could really start right away, and in the commercial options I didn't have a clue.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[scribusdocs]

Some questions:

Did you use the latest version ?

Define "immature" ?

What is your professional qualifications to make such a judgement ?

I will just point some relevant links:

The "hobbyists" - NOT: The Scribus Team bios. There are a handful of people who are involved with Scribus who have extensive experience in publishing, pre-press and image engineering among others.

Capabilities: Scribus Specs

(In the users words) Success Stories: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories

Made with Scribus

Press Reviews

Despite the naysayers, there is a growing interest from publishers both large and small in open source software - not just the back-end server stuff, but yes even the desktop tools... Things like the overwhelming success of events like www.libregraphicsmeeting.org and the open sourcing of Xara are concrete signals the arrival of open source what was once strictly proprietary domain.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[johnthorensen]

Some questions:

Did you use the latest version ?
Yes. Note that I used the word "recently" to describe when I tried it out. I tried Scribus 1.3.3.1 on both Windows and Linux.


Define "immature" ?
Not having many features that most professionals take for granted. Palette windows that don't resize correctly and other goofy UI bugs. Lack of solid, professionally written documentation. No text box margins. Broken PDF exporter. Broken PostScript importer. Opening even moderately-sized documents takes forever. Would you like me to continue?

Scribus is admittedly usable for some projects but it's not yet qualified to be a mission-critical application. I certainly wouldn't stake MY job on it.


What is your professional qualifications to make such a judgement ?
Besides knowing how to conjugate the verb "to be" you mean? How about 10 years as a graphic designer? That enough for you??? That sort of accusatory question really grates on me, and doesn't exactly invite me to come over to Scribus.

Incidentally, the Scribus bios make my point nicely. I see a lot of things like "DTP/IT Consultant", "pre-press and software engineer", et cetera but I don't see much in the way of experienced designers. Scribus is what you get when engineers try to design software; typical of most open-source applications.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[flimflammer]

Well said.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[njh]

Another good example is Sodipodi/Inkscape. Lots of potential there, but I only used it for about an hour before I 'hit the wall' so to speak and became frustrated with its lack of capability.

The fact that you put inkscape and sodipodi in the same class indicates you haven't looked for a very long time. I know a quite a few people who use Inkscape professionally (my work, for example), and some base their business on it and do well. What is this wall you speak of?

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Ubi_NL]

How about this:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060430

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[drolli]

> Next time you try out an opensource app and find its features below your standards, go compose a detailed
> wishlist, with proper argumentation and detailed description for every missing feature.

Um. I do not believ that the programmers of an open source program have nerver worked with a closed source variant of it. I think that most of the open source programmers know quite well which features are missing, but they have one problem: most of them are not paid for doin this work. If you look at Illustrator from Adobe and compare how far beyond the capabilities of even the best open source drawing program (IMHO Inkscape, a really great program. I like it very much), Illustrator is, you'll find that it'll take you less than half an our to isolate important features which keep you busy for man-years. E.g. a working postscript import and other actually working import filters. As I said, I like Inkscape for my daily work (sometimes I use xfig), but If my daily work would be to design nice flyers, or make fancy colorful illustations I'd switch to windows or OS X in less than a day and use Illustrator. I believe that the inkscape programmers know that.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[bcrowell]

Inkscape works pretty well for my books. I've had a few problems here and there, but nothing I couldn't work around. The main remaining problems in my experience seem to be with rendering certain things to PostScript (gradients and dashed lines), but I can get around that problem by rendering the figures that use those features as bitmaps.

Haven't used Scribus, but pdftex is very solid, and has worked great for me, although there is admittedly a very steep learning curve if you need to write your own class file for a complicated book -- mine is 1400 lines.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

But the problem is that even after taking time out of your schedule to provide a "wishlist", developers of the project can simply reject the ideas because they don't need them (open source is like scratching an itch). A commercial company on the other hand would take missing features seriously, since they are afraid of losing customers - and in turn money. Of course the argument always seems to end with "if you want it, write it yourself". I suspect quite a few people went back to commercial software after hearing that. I think I agree with Linus Torvalds here, open source is fine for low level stuff like operating systems, however, productivity apps are best left to commercial ventures.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sodipodi/Inkscape

If you're listing them like that, next to each other, it's a dead giveaway you've never really looked at either of them. Last time they were comparable was in 2003. Since then, Inkscape leaped miles ahead, while Sodipodi remained stagnant and is now widely considered dead. As for Inkscape, it has long been usable for the majority of vector editing tasks.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Illustrator has many features Inkscape does not have. And the reverse is true as well: Inkscape has lots of stuff that Illustrator either is missing or makes ridiculously hard to use. Inkscape is not interested in matching Illustrator feature-for-feature, thank you very much. It's interested in creating a sleek and convenient application with innovative features. That's why it is not interested in you listing all the Illustrator stuff from the manual. Instead, it wants to hear what stuff you REALLY miss in your daily work, why you need it, how it's done in other apps, and how can it be done differently and better.

Yes, I also have to use AI when clients require AI files. But I only use it to convert from Inkscape SVG files, not for any real work. Its usability really pisses me off, I can't seriously work in it. All kinds of fancy stuff, but many fundamentals are missing or are so inconvenient to use that they could just as well be missing.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your professional qualifications to make such a judgement ?

Besides knowing how to conjugate the verb "to be" you mean? How about 10 years as a graphic designer? That enough for you??? That sort of accusatory question really grates on me, and doesn't exactly invite me to come over to Scribus.

Wow! A little defensive on that question, eh? Someone asks about your qualifications and you lay into their relatively minor grammatical oversights. Since your taking us down that road, what is the grammatical rule that covers your use of multiple question marks?

And why would the GP inquiries turn you away from Scribus? What makes you think he has anything to do with Scribus development? If the general topic was the shortcomings of Adobe products, would the same questions sour you on using Framemaker?

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Scribus is what you get when engineers try to design software; typical of most open-source applications.

I understand why you are frustrated with a couple of his questions, but there are some pretty interesting samples of real work being done with the tool on their site. Stuff that would be fairly hard to do on a Windows machine or a Mac without spending a lot of $$$.

Running a business means overhead. Shelling out a huge amount of money to make a few simple brochures or pamphlets is not really reasonable for a lot of people.

Some of the users found the application stable and quite usable for their needs.

End users like you, that are so thin skinned you go into attack mode at the smallest suggestion that your criticisms might be borderline unfair, are what make meetings between users and engineers a nightmare. If you've driven nothing but BMWs your whole life, a toyota is going to seem like a real POS. But lots of people like their toyotas...and a lot of people are trying to save money with open source right now.

Maybe you should consider looking through the examples and providing them some constructive criticism rather than going into attack mode against people who are trying to help other people in their spare time.

Where is the link to YOUR open source project, wiki, etc? What have you done for free, for anyone, lately?

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Blakey Rat]

Then get flamed by the developers. No thanks, I've tried this route before.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really making me laugh. How many of _your_ _personal_ feature suggestions to commercial software publishers were ever properly responded to, not to mention implemented? I've had such experience and my answer is, none at all. I've written several well-researched and innovative proposals to the makers of certain vector editor, with lots of rationale, use cases, and illustrations. All I got was a "yeah, thanks for the input" kind of response.

With open source, on the other hand, not only can you "scratch your itch" yourself, but you are really awarded for your innovative thinking even if you are not a developer. Believe it or not, "scratching an itch" is far from the only motivation of open source coders. Quite often, they would take your suggestion simply because it's cool and elegant, or because it's well researched and persuasive, or because they want their application to be complete, or simply because they are in a good mood for coding and have no ideas of their own. Surprisingly, this works, and the open source product makes a much faster progress overall than comparable commercial ones. Of course lame whines, stupid ideas and "make it exactly like commercial app X" requests are turned down routinely, and if you're in this category, too bad for ya. But as for me, some of my ideas are already implemented in Inkscape, and more are on the way.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

[OS] developers of the project can simply reject the ideas because they don't need them (open source is like scratching an itch). A commercial company on the other hand would take missing features seriously

Strange, my experience has been the opposite. Several of my suggestions have been implemented in free software. So far I have yet to receive any communication from the several proprietary developers I've sent feature requests to -- not counting the canned responses.

Several of my ideas have also been rejected by developers of free software. Mostly because "that's not what I want this program to do" (as one developer put it). I have to say I respect that. In some cases it might also result in better applications than blindly implementing everything clients ask...

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Gryle]

Scribus is what you get when engineers try to design software; typical of most open-source applications. By all means, my friend, write your own and shows us all how it should be done!

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[symbolic]

What exactly do you think commercial efforts do? The exact same thing, except the criteria are different. Rather than "do what they want" they "do they think everyone else wants (or should want)." If your particular need doesn't happen to fall into that category, you're SOL. At least with open source, you can hire someone to implement a feature if it's important enough to your workflow. I know, it costs extra money, but at least the choice is there!

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Grismar]

It's exactly this attitude that's wrong with the engineers parent's parent is referring to. I happen to be a software engineer, for 15 years running now, and find myself surrounded by engineers who feel they know better than the people using their products.

Instead of listening to user feedback, they go ahead and write stuff that 'works better than what the customer is suggesting'. Or spending insane amounts of effort and time on features that no user actually needs, while disregarding features that users crave.

*Someone does not need to know how to build something to be able to tell how they want something to work*

Engineers don't seem to want to get this and it's exactly this attitude that makes users like grandparent unwilling to submit feedback, since we (the engineers) have created an environment where users don't expect we'll do anything with the feedback anyway.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think he has anything to do with Scribus development?

Hmmm. Maybe the username scribusdocs and pointing his website to www.scribus.net? Quite honestly, I'm with johnthorensen here. The scribusdocs guy is pretty much telling him that he's not qualified to be using their product, then goes on to list a small handful of very lightweight pamphlets and posters as "proof" that it's ready to play with the big boys. Certainly not the way to win new users if you ask me.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Gryle]

I'm not a sofware engineer either. GP was snippy in his replies, I thought I'd return the favor.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having many features that most professionals take for granted.
More exactly? Why not send your wishlist to the developers?

Palette windows that don't resize correctly and other goofy UI bugs.
Go ahead and report them to developers.

No text box margins.
What do you mean?

Broken PDF exporter. Broken PostScript importer.
Report the bugs you found.

Would you like me to continue?
Yes, in a letter to the developers.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[drolli]

> That's why it is not interested in you listing all the Illustrator stuff from the manual. Instead, it
> wants to hear what stuff you REALLY miss in your daily work, why you need it, how it's done in other
> apps, and how can it be done differently and better.

I am aware of that; It's just that there are a lot of features which Illustrator has, which make it convenient to use; Anyway i use inkscape....

It would have been nice

[Arker]

It would have been nice if the article had given some information on the advantages a 100% free software solution gave him. Obviously the article is on NewsForge and aimed mostly at folks that already know, but I'm picturing someone from the 'mainstream' reading this and coming away baffled - why did he put himself through all this trouble for no gain?

Of course there are tremendous gains there, the article just focuses on the problems, assuming the readers already know the advantages. They may not be so obvious to some readers, however.

Re:It would have been nice

[gEvil (beta)]

Looking at the book that's available for download, the entire "layout/desktop publishing" aspect of it is incredibly pedestrian. He essentially set it to full justification and that's about it. No adjustments were made with regard to hyphenation. Page numbering is centered and there is no gutter. What he's done is some word processing on a 4.5x8 inch page.

Re:It would have been nice

[Otter]

It would have been nice if the article had given some information on the advantages a 100% free software solution gave him...why did he put himself through all this trouble for no gain?

I think it's hinted at in "Sovilla couldn't find any other publisher who was already working in the same way. Even the most militant and progressive ones were firmly fixed on proprietary software."

The goal here is being "militant and progressive". I don't think he's even claiming there's any pragmatic advantage to it.

Re:It would have been nice

[pnot]

Yes, it's hideous. He's used OpenOffice.org as a typesetting tool. The quotes aren't even sexed . A great shame that he decided to use a word processing package for typesetting, when there are excellent open source typesetting packages out there (TeX, Groff, and Basser Lout, for example). This kind of approach really isn't going to make many inroads into the publishing industry: the results look godawful.

By way of comparison, I have before me a copy of sed & awk (Dougherty & Robbins, O'Reilly Press, 2nd ed., 1997). It tells me that "Text was prepared in SGML using the DocBook 2.1 DTD. The print version of this book was created by translating the SGML source into a set of gtroff macros using a filter developed at ORA by Norman Walsh. Steve Talbott designed and wrote the underlying macro set on the basis of the GNU troff -gs macros; Lenny Muellner adapted them to SGML and implemented the book design. The GNU groff text formatter version 1.09 was used to generate PostScript output."

And that was NINE YEARS ago (though the first edition was in 1990, and I'm guessing it was typeset similarly). If nine years' progress in publishing with free software consists of replacing that stack (and its beautiful output) with OOo, something is very wrong.

Re:It would have been nice

[WillAdams]

If you mean:

http://www.nonluoghi.net/Bicicrazia/bici.pdf

It seems to've been done in OpenOffice.

That said, it's unfortunate that Scribus hasn't followed InDesign and made use of TeX's H&J algorithm.

For those who're curious, I've a similar .pdf up in the TeX Showcase, Okakura Kajuzo's _The Book of Tea_ which shows how nicely TeX can a compose page.

http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio/typogra phy/thebookoftea.pdf

Serif used to be done in TeX and _The Free Software Magazine_ is, as is of course TUGboat.

William

Re:It would have been nice

[njh]

Something that you could do in TeX in about 20 minutes for the first book, and 5 seconds each from then on.

Re:It would have been nice

[ben there...]

Or the Pragmatic Programmer

From the intro:
This book was produced using LaTeX, pic, Perl, dvips, ghostview, ispell, GNU make, CVS, Emacs, XEmacs, EGCS, GCC, Java, iContract, and SmallEiffel, using the Bash and zsh shells under Linux.

That book, while simple, is the best looking, most organized book about programming that I own.

Re:It would have been nice

[1u3hr]

Yes, it's hideous. He's used OpenOffice.org as a typesetting tool.

Agreed, this is not an advertisement for doing typography in FOSS. OOo: import text, export to PDF; simple, effective; ugly. TFA says he tried using Scribus, but gave it up for OOo as it was too hard. I was hoping for an article about someone using Scribus in the real world.

One thing the proprietary DTP publishers are doing is opening up their APIs to allow users to add new functions -- Adobe's InDesign notably. Not free, but you get the "right to timker". I personally have been using Ventura for many years, it has a macro language too, but Corel has abandoned it and I'll eventually have to move, probably to InDesign.

There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Even the OSS advocate/comic writer Illiad admitted to not using GIMP and he had an amusing little comic last week or so explaining some of his reasons. Commercial software isn't necessarily evil, it is a different development method. If the tools fit, use them. If you can use OSS, then good for you! Not everyone can do that, and I think it is good that OSS advocates admit what the stumbling blocks are. The hurdles show where the developers can improve the software.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Bert64]

Image editing is one area where proprietary software doesn't suck...
There are standardised image formats, regardless of what software you use. Proprietary image editing software doesn't keep you locked in to it's own formats, so publishers of such software have to compete on product quality rather than relying on you being forced to keep buying their latest versions.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well post a non-karma whoring link to the actual comic.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[online-shopper]

UF is a great comic, but I'm not sure if illiad knows that Gimp has a CMYK plugin. the site claims its only rudimentary support, but it is a start.
http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Adobe for giving a million "graphics professionals" the idea that it is possible to benefit from working in CMYK when your monitor is only capable of subtractive colorspace. If proofing is really so important, use the savings from not buying PS licenses to purchase a press!

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[suv4x4]

Even the OSS advocate/comic writer Illiad admitted to not using GIMP and he had an amusing little comic last week or so explaining some of his reasons. Commercial software isn't necessarily evil

You don't get it, many (of course not all) *nix geeks can't differentiate the meaning of commercial and evil, even if they try real hard for real long.

It's part of a culture, the sign of something becoming a part of a culture is that you just follow it, you don't question it. Noone wants to argue for example if Microsoft is "evil" or not. They'll bring a bunch of cliche examples where they acted bad as a 'monopoly', call you ignorant or suspect you in flamebaiting, and cheat themself into ignoring that this huge company is under the hood just a bunch of mostly honest coders trying to make a living and deliver a good working product to the market.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[honkycat]

If you really want to encourage free software development, one of the best things you can do is to use it. It's not always easy to find the stumbling blocks until you actually try to use the software end-to-end. There aren't many hacker types who actually work in the publishing industry, so having a publisher who is interested in feeding back his needs to the hacking community is invaluable.

It's even better that he was willing to play trial-and-error because that helps the software to improve to meet his needs, but also allows him to adjust his workflow to meet the needs of the software. This allows the possibility of actually improving the workflow compared to proprietary solutions. At the least, it means that perhaps the free software solution doesn't have to implement absolutely every feature of the proprietary software, since a change in the workflow can obviate the need for some of them.

So now, thanks to this guy, we have an example of a real-world publisher who has actually shown that you can do everything you need using these tools. If he's willing to share his methods, then that makes it easier for others to do the same. That's awesome.

So no, it's not absolutely necessary to commit yourself fully to free software just because you think it's better. However, I think you can make a pretty strong argument that you do much more for the community by doing so. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, though, so each can give according to his ability/willingness.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Kjella]

Commercial software isn't necessarily evil, it is a different development method.

And most of all, it's the #1 method to get stuff developed where there's more money than "scratch an itch" developers. Granted, there's some commercial OSS developers too, but for the most part closed source is dominating in areas like:

• Create software for newbies, where if you can develop it yourself you're pretty much disqualified from needing/wanting/liking that tool.
  
• Create software for specialized user groups where there's just too few OSS developers to get a usable tool off the ground.
  
• Create software that only corporations need, which are typically really dull. And as companies go, they don't like OSS because they're in a competition. If you and I both have a great office suit, great. If my company and the competing company both have an excellent logistics system, not so good.
  
• Once-off applications such as games, where you pull something together, release it, people use it, then shelf it. There's some classics that "live forever" though. Another good example would be tax software.
  
• Applications with serious server-side resources, such as MMORPGs.

I don't think OSS will be able to adapt to every possible form of software development. In fact, I would be happy if it could corner the market for "basic" desktop use, so that commercial software would get written for the Linux platform. For me personally Oblivion is right now (and other games to come) a huge hook to Windows, and I don't see OSS developing anything like it any time soon.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, the monitor is an additive colorspace, as opposed to subtractive. However, if you start your document as CMYK, then everytime you apply a filter or do something that will change any of the color values, all of those calculations are done in the CMYK space. By the way, may I ask what your professional prepress experience is?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[CastrTroy]

That's because MS missed the boat on image editing software. I still don't think they have a good graphics program. At this point, it would be hard for them to break into this area, especially if they used proprietary formats. However, if they would have focused on this 15 years ago, like they did with word processors and operating systems, then we'd probably see their version have proprietary formats with vendor lock in.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[howlingmadhowie]

one reason why newbie software (whatever that may be) is proprietary is because newbies in general want to 'spend money to get something good'

specialised user groups sometimes use proprietary software, sometimes almost only open-source. you have to be more specific here.

software for corporations tends to be constructed in house, if the corporation is large enough. this software is not commercially available.

games are not one off applications. a long time ago this used to be the case, but now games tend to have add-ons and bug-fixes just like other software types. open source tax software is difficult because of the attitude 'if we didn't pay for it, it can't be any good'

the trouble with mmorpgs is partly the large amount of proprietary technology needed before it works, starting with graphic drivers and moving through proprietary graphic engines and patented algorithms.

having said that, i do not expect the next version of doom to have been developed by a few hackers on a couple of rainy weekends. game development requires an enormous expenditure of time and a lot of tedious work. i can't see a major linux-distribution supporting game development either. this is because games are 'wegwerfartikel'- you play them once (or maybe twice) and then they get relegated to a shelf (or ebay). this is not the case with an apache webserver, for example.

all in all i see an immense confusion in your post. things like '...i don't see OSS developing things like this anytime soon..'

OSS isn't a company, it's not even a group of people.

what does this sentence mean?

• people who write programms to help them do their work/learn about programming, or
• people who get together with their friends and work on a small project, or
• a university producing scientific software and opening it under the GPL, or
• a multinational company specialising in server software or workstation operating systems, or
• none of the above?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[njh]

WTF does CMYK have to do with a low resolution web comic of dubious artistic talent? It sounds more like Illiad is just looking for an excuse. I've seen some damn fine comics drawn in inkscape by real artists.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Chris_Jefferson]

If it was an important part of your job, would you want "rudimentary support"?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Tim C]

Proprietary image editing software doesn't keep you locked in to it's own formats, so publishers of such software have to compete on product quality rather than relying on you being forced to keep buying their latest versions.

True story: my company (a large telecoms) still uses Office 2000. We appear to manage to have avoided being forced to upgrade.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[petermgreen]

I'm sure the Open Source community could throw together something
writing the software is easy.

whats hard is writing the rulesets. screw up with your interpretations of the tax law and your customers (and possiblly you depending on just how enforceable that no-liability clause really turns out to be in your country) could get in serious trouble.

I'd imagine with commercial tax software you are mainly paying for two things
1: lawyer time to write/check the rulesets
2: insurance in case they screw up writing the rulesets

the correct thing would of course be for the government to provide the tax rules in an unambiguous machine parseable format. but there are sufficiant vested interests that its unlikely that will happen in most countries.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[CastrTroy]

Yes, and in many countries, the government is not allowed to offer software to do your taxes because they would be competing with businesses, which is disallowed for some reason. What I would want is something in the middle. Something that provides minimal functionality. Basically electronic tax forms where you fill in the numbers and the fields which are calculated based on the numbers you fill in are done for you. Even something simpler where you fill in all the numbers yourself, no calculations, would be sufficient. I don't know if there could be any liability in this model. You see exactly what is in the paper forms, you fill it in, and it is filed electronically. As long as it allowed me to e-file it without paying some company a bunch of money for software that I don't even need, I would be happy.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[larry bagina]

Evidently, he needs CMYK for gif pictures that go on a web page. Maybe someday he'll explain why he isn't funny.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could tell me what "professional prepress experience" has to do do with preparing content for the screen? You want to work in CMYK-space if your project will target a CMYK device. If your target is an additive RGB device, you want to work in RGB-space.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Iron Condor]

I'm probably missing something here somewhere -- but why would someone who draws a picture give a rat's ass about the color representation used by the printer? Illiad delivers an image in some format -- psd? maybe even just jpg? and from there it is the printer's job to do whatever color separation is necessary for their print process, no? You think folks who do their comics in ink and colored pen submit pre-separated?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Blakey Rat]

What the hell would Illiad know about professional graphics software features? His comic looks like it's drawn in freakin' Paint using a malfunctioning 10-year-old tablet.

I'm sorry, if it was (say) VGCats, or Penny-Arcade, or some comic that actually had some quality artwork attached to it, I might be convinced.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[jrockway]

> You don't get it, many (of course not all) *nix geeks can't differentiate the meaning of commercial and evil, even if they try real hard.

That's because there isn't a difference. Code that you can't change, modify, or improve is evil. Commercial software can't be changed, modified, or improved. Hence commercial and evil are one in the same.

Here's an interesting take: http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[patio11]

You're 99% right, with the exception of the part about server-side resources. A "masively massive" server side program which met the other implied constraints (useful for a long time, used by a lot of people, aimed at a very experienced user population) would fit the OSS model like a glove. I'm thinking, say, Apache or MySQL, which can certainly operate in massively massive configurations as well as driving a blog kept on a 3-PC intranet.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[suv4x4]

That's because there isn't a difference. Code that you can't change, modify, or improve is evil.

Haha, thanks for confirming it. I guess you only buy also open source houses, cars, food and so on (so that you can for example buy a tomato and "change it" into chicken meat if you believe that's better for the humanity);

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Bert64]

But you've also not migrated to anything else, and if you find yourself needing licenses for more workstations in the near future you might have a problem.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[innocent_white_lamb]

I just ordered ten thousand plastic bags, printed with a custom logo and information. I initially sent the bag manufacturer a PDF of what I want on the bags; the price was $50 more when I didn't submit it as a SVG.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[tigersha]

Illiad doea not need an excuse. He owes you or some fuzzy community of fanatics nothing. He can do his work in whatever program he goddamn pleases.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[WilliamSChips]

You mean proprietary, not commercial. There are quite a few open-source products run by corporations. OpenOffice.org, for example.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[njh]

I never said he owes me anything. As far as I'm concerned, whining users are a cost not a benefit (even moreso silly fanbois who don't even understand the debate). I was merely questioning the rather dubious logic.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF does CMYK have to do with a low resolution web comic of dubious artistic talent?

...that is also done mostly in black and white?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Requiem18th]

Commercial software isn't necessarily evil it is a different development method. If the tools fit, use them.

Slavery isn't necessarily evil it is a different agriculture method. If the tools fit, use them.

Opium isn't necessarily evil it is a different exporting product. If the tools fit, use them.

Not because something is pragmatical it means it is moral. This is a critique at your argument of morality through pragmatism.

It's possible to do, in some industries

[slusich]

Certain industries, certainly lend themselves better to free software use then others.
Apart from software availability, regulatory issues prevent many companies from going to 100% free software, even if a product was available.

Did you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Italian is an OO version of Latin and you can overload most methods in Italian by waving your hands about wildly.

Hate To Break It To You, But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to break it to you, but 99.9 percent of the software development world doesn't give a damn about the various kooky open source ideologies out there. There is no trend towards these ideologies in the software development world.

It is like the kid who has a swimming pool and everyone in the neighborhood is over at their house being nice to them everyday during summer and the kid starts to think they are everyone's best friend and wants everyone to start getting 'friends for life' tattoos.

Sorry kid, but we don't really like you, we just wanted to use your pool...

Actually...

[WilliamSChips]

Latin is open source as well, it has many forks such as Spanish, French, and Italian, and even has parts of its code present in English. Latin included many innovative features, such as the ablative case. You could do almost *anything* with that. A pity all the modern languages find ablative "too hard for newbies" and no longer include it.

Re:Actually...

[MooUK]

Real people learn Latin.

(Actually, no. Crazy people learn latin. Trust me, I was one of them.)

Re:Actually...

[kfg]

Real people learn Latin.

Well, yeah, they learn it because the PHTWs (Pointy Haired Toga Wearers) require it, but real men code in Phoenician, or maybe Classical Attic Greek if they want to feel "cutting edge."

There are still a few long haired, bearded, sandal wearing Cuneiform coders, but Jesus, they should get with the times. Modern hardware makes that short of dirty business pointless.

KFG

Re:Actually...

[TenLow]

In Soviet Russia, Latin learns YOU!

Re:Actually...

[pjt33]

Actually I think Jesus' language of choice was Aramaic, although he could probably handle some Latin as well when the PHTW needed him to.

Re:Actually...

[Eli Gottlieb]

I'm sorry, but Real Men code in Ancient Hebrew (an elegant 2 verb tenses) without vowels.

Re:Actually...

[connorbd]

Latin is actually pretty closed-source, though some of its derivatives are more open. Italian and Spanish particularly. French, not so much.

Re:Actually...

[kfg]

Aramaic

Frickin' proprietary fork of Proto-Semitic.

KFG

Re:Actually...

[kfg]

Not until Mithras open sources the code. I'll bet you're a damned He user.

KFG

Re:Actually...

[Metaplasmus]

Some of us actually prefer Homeric Greek. It can be tricky--compilers won't accept anything that's not in well-formed dactylic hexameter--but it's beautiful when it's done right!

Re:Actually...

[njh]

I always found the ablative case a bit wearing.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men may not use vowels, but when the project manager wants you to go back and put in the nikkud so that (he and) the n00bs can figure out what you're doing, you're in for a real PITA . . . that's why real men don't code at temple like they code at home . . .

Re:Actually...

[TheGhostOfDerrida]

I believe you meant "in soviet russia, Old Church Slavonic learns you!

Re:Actually...

[gardyloo]

Real men may not use vowels, but when the project manager wants you to go back and put in the nikkud so that (he and) the n00bs can figure out what you're doing, you're in for a real PITA . . . that's why real men don't code at temple like they code at home . . .

      I see at least some things haven't changed. Only now we spell it "nekkid".

Re:Actually...

[menace3society]

Feh, I have more cases than you've had years of schooling.

-- Finnish

Re:Actually...

[zsau]

Bah. It's just this sort of nonsense you expect from Latin fanboys. The ablative case was hardly a Latin innovation ... even Sanskrit had an ablative case! And as for modern languages using it, there's always Finnish. Includes a case for whatever you might remotely think you need. Hungarian too.

Not to mention that in every other language you can simulate its effects by the use of prepositions, postpositions, other cases etc. So really you loose nothing at all by not having it.

Re:Actually...

[CaptainPinko]

Not only is French open but it is a standard too!

Re:Actually...

[menace3society]

Latin isn't really open-source; there's an open specification, but the widely-used reference implementation (The Holy See's Vatican 2.0) is property of the Catholic Church.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you lost the distinction between lose and loose.

Re:Actually...

[Frogbert]

Latin included many innovative features, such as the ablative case.

Well lets not get carried away here...

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Classical Attic!? Feh! Use Koine Greek! Power to the hoi polloi!

Re:Actually...

[kfg]

Feh! For New Covenant emacs users!

KFG

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I don't see that much connection between the Latin ablative and the Finnish ablative. They do have the same basic meaning of "from somewhere" but besides that, the Finnish ablative is not such a multi-purpose tool as the Latin ablative. When translating a Latin ablative construct into Finnish, it's seldom that you actually need the Finnish ablative, you're more likely to use the basic Finnish genitive, accusative or partitive cases, in combination with an appropriate verb form.

Re:Actually...

[zsau]

Yeah, I was going for anti-fanboy-fanboyism. Finnish and Hungarian don't even have cases, per se; they're agglutinations, rather than inflexions.

Re:Actually...

[Fizzl]

Sanoisin suoralta kädeltä että tämä ei pidä paikkaansa. ;)

Re:Actually...

[Haeleth]

Bah, everyone knows Jesus spoke 17th-century English.

Re:Actually...

[WWWWolf]

Wow. First >2 modded comment in Finnish that I've seen in Slashdot, and it demonstrates that, for some reason I cannot possibly comprehend, Slashdot's mysterious comment filter thingy, known for various interesting character-set mutilations, does let character ä through.

Lähtekäämme lennättämään leijuvia lehmiä!

Re:Actually...

[tehcyder]

You forced me to go and look up "ablative case" on Wikipedia. I hate you.

Re:Actually...

[Eli Gottlieb]

"nikkud" (in some dialects, "nikdot") (noun, plural, female) - The vowel marks used to make written Hebrew readable by non-native speakers. Everyday Israelis, however, use them so rarely most couldn't tell you the vowels to attach to a given word (since there are some nikkud with identical meanings).

GIMP!

[christurkel]

The only exceptions were the manual checks and corrections needed to work around the absence of direct four-color management in the GIMP
Welcome to the world of a fustrated GIMP user. How long has this been a "must have" feature that hasn't happened?

Re:GIMP!

[munehiro]

Anyone can explain me why the four color management is so important?

go technical, I'm not scared.

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer: Because printers don't use red, green, and blue ink and ink on paper is not an additive color model. The colors used for printing are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, in a subtractive color model. The visible spectra the the two models produce is different, which means that sending RGB values to a CMYK printer usually results in the colors being off.

Re:GIMP!

[charlievarrick]

Process color offset lithography (used for the vast majority of commercial printing) is a 4 color, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) process.
The RIPs (Raster Image Processors) that produce, proofs, film, or plates expect (in many instances require) images to be in the CMYK colorspace (four 8-bit channels). So, lack of robust CMYK support makes the GIMP largely useless in a print production environment.

Re:GIMP!

[munehiro]

Ok, but at the end you can convert an rgb color to a cmyk color. If you perform the transformation "badly", you'll obtain a let's say orange which is not the same on screen and on printer. However, even working in cmyk you have the same problem. The screen will not be able to express that color with a given cmyk, and they will look different...

this is what i don't get, simply because i don't know the problem in detail.

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should really read this not-so-technical article: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060430

Re:GIMP!

[nagora]

Anyone can explain me why the four color management is so important?

Bottom line is: RGB is additive, ie you start with black and add light to get the mix you want. Paper is reflective and so you start with white sunlight and subtract colours to get the mix you want. Thus cyan absorbs Red, magenta absorbs Green and yellow absorbs Blue - the opposite of RGB. Theoretically you could get black by mixing CMY but in reality making the primary colours accurate enough to do that is impossible and black is added to the system to make things easier.

This all means that there are colours you can see on an RGB monitor which are impossible to show with CMYK (not difficult - impossible) and vice-versa. CMYK is not the ultimate either, due to the same imperfections of the primary colours that make black impossible, and something like 60% of Pantone colours can not be shown using CMYK.

So, converting from RGB to CMYK can be tricky and causes some surprises to the unwary when they get a colour proof back and discover that their nice shade of deep green has come out bluish. Since printing is mostly in CMYK, this means that you need some form of colour management system to warn you if your colours are going "out of gamut" and to automatically adjust others to look right on paper.

TWW

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, CMYK in gimp is kind of a boogeyman, something to shake in front of little developers eyes to scare them into line. By itself it doesn't do much... but the next level down is called "pantone", a printing process using carefully selected colors and dyes that appear the same on screen and on paper, and are patented to the hilt.

Incidentally, there's already a gimp plugin to do the cmyk separation, but since all it does is generate layers in those four planes, people discount it as useless, which without the pantone color system, it pretty much is.

But hey, I think the patents are only about $100 or so per-user to license.

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the GP is saying, why doesn't the GIMP do this directly? I mean, I don't need to run cjpeg after I save a file if I want I jpeg at the end, so why should I have to run an external program to convert to CMYK?

Re:GIMP!

[arivanov]

You will have to wait for a few more years I am afraid. Adobe holds a very good selection of patents in this area and GIMP is not going to improve anytime before they expire.

Re:GIMP!

[archen]

Actually you sort of got the gist of the problem without realizing it. Computers do all RGB. Printers do CMYK. Why have an image editing program nativly do CMYK if your screen and most computers fundamentally use RGB? So either you can try to do a program native in CMYK and attempt to transform it for screen/computer uses. Or you shift the problem down the chain to a "converter" for printing. RGB to/from CMYK transformation is an extremely complicated problem, and there is no simple angorithm to get it perfect - that's why many lower end graphics programs do not even bother supporting it, because it's a pain in the ass to implement. With all of the problems from incorrect screen gama, to how the printer prints, to how the final type of coloring media all alter the look of the final product, the LAST thing you want is the program in between fucking it up even farther.

Re:GIMP!

[HermanAB]

Will it be easier to do CMYK work on an LCD screen than a CRT?

Re:GIMP!

[charlievarrick]

The screen will not be able to express that color with a given cmyk, and they will look different...

Actually RGB is a wider gamma than CMYK, any CMYK color can be accurately represented in RGB but not vice-versa.

In the old days, image editing/retouching for print often involved performing operations on specific channels to achieve specific effects (ie adjusting the levels of the magenta channel to remove a color cast in the shadow tones or whatever).
Also, in the old days, your source digital image came from a drum scanner which generally produced a CMYK image.
With increasing acceptance of CCD flat-bed scanners and even digital photography, high end print production is gradually moving to a RGB workflow, at least for image editing/retouching.
Still, every time an image is proofed or printed, it needs to be converted to CMYK. Depending on the environment, this can done by applying a "profile" in Photoshop or many RIPs now support "color management" which is sort of broad term which aims to convert images to the appropriate color space on the fly using device profiles.

As other posters have noted, lack of CMYK support, while a glaring problem, is really just the tip of the iceberg when considering the GIMP for professional use.

Re:GIMP!

[nagora]

Will it be easier to do CMYK work on an LCD screen than a CRT?

I see where you're coming from but no. A CMYK LCD could be done, I suppose, but since that would require a total redefinition of the colour model for your graphics (a quick re-write of DirectX from the ground up, for example) it's easier to just install colour-management into the workflow instead since there are already hooks for that anyway.

Actually, the more I think about it the harder it is to see how a CMYK LCD display could work in a dark room where a blacklight is needed. I think you'd end up having to use a torch instead!

Have a look at this PCW article.

TWW

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because LCD monitors still work on the principle of emitting light rather than absorbing it.

Re:GIMP!

[CastrTroy]

But how do you get those CMYK colors to display on your RGB monitor? There must be some process for accurately going from one system to another. Otherwise, if you used CMYK software, then it would print out the way it was supposed to, according to the color mix, but it wouldn't display properly on your monitor. In a perfect system, you would see exactly on your screen what you see on paper, and it wouldn't matter that it was CMYK, RGB, or some other process. Wikipedia gives a formula for going from CMYK to RGB, and from RGB to CMYK.

Re:GIMP!

[Tim Browse]

Actually RGB is a wider gamma than CMYK

Gamut.

Re:GIMP!

[larry bagina]

Did you read your linked Wikipedia entry?

Note that the conversions here are best described as "nominal". They will produce an invertible conversion between RGB and a subset of CMYK; that is, one can take an RGB color and convert to certain CMYK colors, and from these CMYK colors obtain the corresponding, original RGB equivalents. However, conversion of CMYK colors in general to RGB colors is not invertible; that is, given a CMYK color which is converted to RGB, performing the former conversion may not give the original CMYK color. In addition, CMYK colors may print wildly differently from how the RGB colors display on a monitor. There is no single "good" conversion rule between RGB and CMYK, because neither RGB nor CMYK is an absolute color space.

Re:GIMP!

[daverabbitz]

OK, most everyone has missed the point here. CMYK is important because two different printers will produce different output from the same image regardless of the colour-space used. The reason to use CMYK is to have control over the individual channels so that you can correct for the difference's between printers. The same goes for monitors unless they are calibrated monitors which are uber pricey, the color will be different (different phosphors, different channel brightnesss,etc).

Anyhow the reason CMYK is important is to correct the individual channel's rather than "tweak and praying" with RGB and hoping it comes out right. Now ideally a colour-profile would correct everything, but often, especially with illustrations it is important that you don't have just a little of one colour coming through. For example a newspaper has the colour dots offset slightly and it's better to have an illustration a slightly different colour, than have little speckles visible because it's not quite the yellow that the printer uses. For photos it is not quite so important, and for web design it is entirely irrelevant.

And that example from User Friendly is stupid since UF is an online cartoon and doesn't need colour correction.

Re:GIMP!

[CastrTroy]

This is the problem. Your monitor still works in RGB, and probably will be for some time to come. So even if the program your using, supports CMYK, and your printer does CMYK (some are only CMY), then the colours that show up on your screen are going to be different than what is printed out. I don't think that having a program that works in CMYK is going to solve any colour problems, because there will always be a conversion done when showing something on the screen, and printing something. So it seems like you'd be better off trying to perfect the color conversion process, since a conversion is going to have to be done anyway. Which is what is being done. Most programs, printers, monitors, and scanners (which again are RGB, more conversion) have color profiles to make this conversion as perfect as possible.

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you link to a .jpg with colors impossible to display on an RGB monitor?

Re:GIMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure? LCD monitors work by absorbing the backlight in tiny electronically controlled red, green and blue filters, which is why they can't make a very good black. Is there any physical reason why the LCD color filters couldn't be cyan, magenta and yellow instead, in order to achieve a better match with print colors? I'm sure there would be lots of publishing houses that would buy such LCD monitors, even if they were expensive.

Re:GIMP!

[howlingmadhowie]

let me see if i've understood this correctly.

1/ the colour information on a computer screen, the colour stream from a scanner etc. etc. are in rgb, while as the colour stream going to a printer is in cmyk.

2/ in order to generate the cmyk stream, a transversion matrix has to be used.

3/ colour information in cmyk is narrower than colour information in rgb. one can show more colours in rgb than in cmyk.

4/ the transformation matrix is best found in the software you use to produce pictures. this matrix has to be weighted according to the demands of the particular printer. this is called 'robust support for cmyk'. when the programmers for the software don't know how to weight the transformation matrix for a particular printer, then the software is said to not support cmyk.

5/ the transformation of rgb to cmyk is actually unimportant because there's another level beneath this (called pantone) where something much more important takes place (although nobody seems to know what). this level is however patented (which would explain why nobody knows what it dows) and therefore not free to be supported in open source software.

so basically a working method has been constructed and heavily patented and people complain that an open source software can't do the same thing as this working method.

(best dr. evil voice) riiiiight.

Re:GIMP!

[nagora]

Pantone does not lie under CMYK; it is a completely different system which essentially involves special colour recipies for specifically defined colours in the Pantone range. These colour mixtures are trademarked and probably patented. The trademark is often waved about to scare programmers who want to produce software which is compatable but it's largely a paper tiger as all you have to do is tell the printer (the person) which Pantone colour you want a particular plate to represent. I have produced TeX documents which reference Pantone colours. The real enforcement is at the professional printer's end where the process of making the ink is patented.

Pantone tends to only be an issue if you are doing logos which require a very tight definition of the exact colour used; or special colours such as silvers or fluorescents.

Other than that you've got it. However the colour matrix is in fact a whole group of matrixes to allow for colour changes from the scanner to your image editor to your personal printer for proofing and another one for sending on to the print shop, and probably one for your monitor (which ideally is dynamic to adjust for the aging process in the monitor). It can be a pain.

TWW

Gramer and speling nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is about a publisher who is 100% free and he is also software-based. If you don't know where to put hyphens, then it's better not to use them.

Re:Gramer and speling nazi

[daverabbitz]

Maybe it was intentional, but you spelt grammar and spelling wrong.

Italian is a small price to pay...

[CarpetShark]

evolution of a 100% free software-based Italian publisher.

The use some proprietary language called "Italian."

I think italian is a small price to pay, considering that this must be the first example of a fully functional publisher based in software, and Free Software at that! AI of this magnitude is revolutionary, not evolutionary.

mod parent down

[mumblestheclown]

what exactly did he contribute to the discussion? at best, the laughable idea that that boogeyman of the "mainstream press" (which presumably includes places like time, newsweek, the new york times, the economist, and so forth, all of which have featured linux/foss on their front covers and/or prominently in their publications regularly) "ignores" FOSS. How exactly is the parent poster "insightful" other than providing context-free, but conspiracy-innuendo-full rah-rah cheerleading? come on people.

Re:mod parent down

[advocate_one]

oy... I said the mainstream PC press... that which relies on advertising revenue from windows software.. read my original comment again

One Man Publishing House Uses OSS Only!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the presses!!!!

Come on, give me a break. This is a one man show publishing pamphlets that he calls books.

When O'Reilly goes 100% OSS, I'll be impressed and interested. When Doubleday goes 100% OSS I'll be flabbergasted. This one man show? Yawn!!!!

Stupid Moderators - He's 100% Right!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you don't like the facts doesn't make the facts untrue. This guy is 100% right. The mods are smoking crack again.

P.S. ROFLMFAO! The Captcha word for this post was "repress". Talk about irony!!!!

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[Javaman59]

and does not really cost all that much when compared to all the business you lost when wasting time fighting with Linux.

You won't have lost that much business if you do your fighting with Linux out of hours. That's what free time is for!

You Work For Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL of my time spent on or for my business is billable or an expense. There is NO such thing as free/gratis time in my business. However, I would like to hire you. I would dearly like to have employees that work for free or work for me in their "free time".

P.S. Are you worth a shit? I have high expectations, even from free employees.

Re:You Work For Free?

[Javaman59]

No, I don't. I'm talking about what *other* people should do.

Should read...

[PixelScuba]

Intelligent Design of a 100% free Software-Based Publisher.

What?

Re:Should read...

[RobertLTux]

Evolution inside a kind is fine ( dog wolf) although it could be said that the code for the changes were in the original ID.

Publishers Using Tech

[evought]

Addison Wesley for one. The American Mathematical Society for another. It is still used for technical content, though DocBook is making inroads, too. Its clean separation of content and layout makes it ideal in many places where frequent layout changes are made and conventional DTP applications are nightmares. Since LaTeX directly generates typesetting formats (e.g. Postscript, DVI), it is not much harder for them.

I know that Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas have used LaTeX for every one of their books. They have some home-grown macros to make compiling and checking the example code automatic. This just cannot be done with Word or FrameMaker and is critical for eliminating copy errors.

For papers or books where the content is quite complex

Re:Publishers Using Tech

[Saanvik]

I hope, when you are talking about separation of content and layout, you are talking about DocBook, not TeX. TeX is clearly focused on layout.

Even DocBook doesn't have completely clean model, but it's much further along the path than TeX.

Re:Publishers Using Tech

[colinrichardday]

He said LaTeX, not TeX. LaTeX is somewhat better than TeX in that regard.

Re:Publishers Using Tech

[evought]

I am specifically talking about LaTeX, which is built on top of TeX. Styles can be written in TeX while content is written in LaTeX. It is fairly easy to develop custom styles in LaTeX which express whatever your domain concepts are (e.g.: \method, \formula) while leaving the formatting and layout issues to the layout specialist.

It is also very easy to separate LaTeX documents into chunks which can be written/editted and version controled separatly. When combined into the master document, it is simple to update your TOC, LOF, index, etc. For a multi-author project with occasional outline changes, this is a big thing.

Re:Publishers Using Tech

[connorbd]

You misread me. For technical purposes, yes -- *roff, TeX, DocBook, etc. are great, and widely used. I'm talking about something like a cookbook, an art book, or even just a novel. If I were to go get a job at, say, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich or Workman Publishing, they would probably want to know what I know about Quark or InDesign. I don't see them asking me how proficient I am in LaTeX or troff.

Re:Publishers Using Tech

[evought]

True, those technologies are widely used at the margins of publishing. They take on specialized tasks, but there are many specialized tasks (Music, math, chemistry, computers & tech, reproduction of old manuscripts, multi-lingual texts, etc.)

HBJ does a good deal of textbook publishing where I would be suprised if they did not make use of markup-based formatters at some level, but I take your point.

The other thing of course which inevitably happens is that as soon as fast as Open Source tools stabilize they are incorporated. Many DPT packages can manipulate XML these days; word processors now commonly export to HTML/XML and there is an ISO standard format for it. Over time, special tools become mainstream and then are no longer seen as specialized.

rename title please

[Anonymous Coward]

title should be "Intelligent Design of a 100% Free Software-Based Publisher"

it will make baby jesus smile, k thanks.

Translation

[dietrollemdefender]

Many so-called "ordinary" users think that they prefer a power vs time curve that grows logarithmically so that they can learn it quickly.

It's really easy to pick up by fucking around with it.

The developers of FOSS, on the other hand, prefer a power vs time curve that looks more exponential, so that as soon as they invest a little time learning how to do something, they can accomplish tasks more quickly, and save more time overall.

You have to RTFM, study it, and memorize a shit load of commands, but when you do, you're a fucking speed demon on that software and you get your shit done much faster than anyone on a GUI.

the key word is "pre-packaged"

[mangu]

In my dealings with proprietary software users, one argument that often gets thrown is the "one-stop-shopping". There is a mentality that seems to prefer having everything packed together.

I recently had an example of this when a couple of engineers asked me for a solution to something they were doing. They had a very complex Excel spreadsheet which showed some graphics, but they wanted polar plots, which Excel doesn't do. I gave them as an alternative a rather simple Perl script which read their input file (text format, they cut and pasted it into Excel) and created the desired graph using Gnuplot.

They rejected my solution, because it needed two different softwares: Perl and Gnuplot. It didn't matter to them that this was entirely transparent, since the Perl script ran Gnuplot automatically, the idea of having two different softwares running sequentially seems to be alien to commercial software users.

In the end, my solution was much better: it ran faster, with far less manual input (one only needed to give the input file name, instead of having to cut and paste its content), and the program produced the kind of graph they wanted. They just weren't able to step out of the Excel box.

Re:the key word is "pre-packaged"

[connorbd]

That's actually a very good point -- end users like integration because it implies there's less bookkeeping to do. The typical computer user would probably consider dealing with Unix filters somewhat akin to DLL hell and want to avoid it -- the model makes perfect sense to a techie but looks jury-rigged to a nontechnical end user. I mean, someone could have written a decent facsimile of nroff on the Commodore 64 in 1983, but who would actually have used it? (My word processor of choice back in the day was Speedscript -- not WYSIWIG, but faster than geoWrite, which I loved otherwise. But not everyone would have the same opinion.)

Re:the key word is "pre-packaged"

[jrockway]

You should have used Chart::Graph or Term::Gnuplot. Although they both exec gnuplot, I doubt that PHB-types would be aware of that :)

Re:the key word is "pre-packaged"

[Anonymous Coward]

They rejected my solution, because it needed two different softwares: Perl and Gnuplot. ... it ran faster, with far less manual input... and the program produced the kind of graph they wanted. They just weren't able to step out of the Excel box.

Obviously, you need to work with a better class of engineer! As an electronics engineer, one of the things I appreciate about OSS in general and your example specifically is the modular, "building-block" approach to problem solving. It very closely matches the way I design hardware and software.

Re:Many so-called "ordinary" users

[hackwrench]

Many so-called "ordinary" users don't think in terms of power vs. time, don't know the difference between logarithmic and exponential, and feel that if they needed to know the difference they should be able to just look it up.

What's involved on the software side of Publishing

[weremook]

Question Mark

I've seen that a number of my textbooks were TeXed up, and having used Latex somewhat extensively myself, I wonder what else is needed for publishing.
 
Does anyone out there know have an intimate knowledge of publishing?

Live, Cinelerra, MainActor

[layer3switch]

"After some experiments with Lives, Cinelerra, and MainActor on SUSE, he is now using Kino and Audacity for audio and video editing."

So far, I have not seen any comprehensive Desktop publishing tools on GNU/Linux so far. Majority of them are web server plugins/cgi/perl/php/java/python/etc. And by using a browser to do publishing, many useful functions are limited in many way.

Same as for non-linear video editing tools for GNU/Linux, a limiting hurdle is the Desktop itself. Native Gnome apps runs unstable under KDE and KDE apps do not even run well in Gnome. It's painful for me to say it, but Cinelerra for Fedora Core with KDE just sucks and unstable, same goes for MainActor and Lives. Even Hydrogen can't sustain stably after few minutes of usage. This forces me to choose one Desktop over other just because of just one useful tool.

I am not sure if anyone is having such painful experience, but few good advice on Cinelerra and Hydrogen on Fedora Core is welcome.

Re:Live, Cinelerra, MainActor

[LetterRip]

"I am not sure if anyone is having such painful experience, but few good advice on Cinelerra and Hydrogen on Fedora Core is welcome."

An alternative to consider would be Blender to 2.42 when it comes out. With the addition of ffmpeg for greater input and output flexibility, and its improved memory handling for video it is now a fairly capable video editor (see documentation on the sequencer).

LetterRip

Re:Live, Cinelerra, MainActor

[Anonymous Coward]

Be a man, use xfce or fluxbox! Why would anybody would want to run AV editing apps on a bloated DE? I think I'll have to stop replying to you there, just in case I get infected with the stupid.

Re:Live, Cinelerra, MainActor

[rmm4pi8]

Is there something wrong with those apps? I have GTK apps like GAIM open for weeks on my KDE desktop. I mean sure it's somewhat disadvantageous because you have the memory requirements of both libraries, but I think that would pale next to the app-internal memory for the 3D rendering or whatever. So if these apps are unstable, then there's something wrong with that partiular app or your hardware or something, this is not just a general GNOME/KDE desktop inter-op issue like theming or something.

Incorrect Title

[eingram]

Shouldn't it read, "Intelligent Design of a 100% Free Software-Based Publisher"? (joke)

Re:Incorrect Title

[eingram]

Aww, beat by PixelScuba. ;)

Re:Incorrect Title

[not-admin]

No, it's the Free-Software-Based Flying Book Monster... Duh!

Re:Incorrect Title

[Anonymous Coward]

actually i beat u both ;P

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185154&c id=15282420

What is wrong:

[Aranth Brainfire]

"Many so-called "ordinary" users think that they prefer a power vs time curve that grows logarithmically"

In other words, those lusers don't know what they really want. They just THINK they know what they want.

Reminds me of what my father (once a programmer for IBM) used to say once in a while... "Look at those people. They think they're having fun... they're not."

Honestly, user interface in F/OS software tends to suck. There are exceptions- Firefox isn't too bad. OpenOffice, however... well, let's compare one thing to MS Word. Headers. In both Word and Writer, you go to the page formatting dialog box, then go to the part where you fiddle with header settings. In Word, everything is right there. Want a different header on the first page? Check the box. Want a different header on even vs. odd pages? Check the box. In Writer, the even vs. odd check box is there, and you can format the header with your various visual styles and so on... but how do you make a different header on the first page? Well, let's see, everything else for headers is here, let's try to find it... no, it's not on this page. Maybe under "more"? Nope, not there. Read the help file- hm, it doesn't say. There is a hint, for the "same content left/right" check box. "Adds the header to both even and odd pages. This option is only available for the Default page style." Hmm, I wonder what the "Default page style" is.

Eventually you end up having to open up the "styles and formatting" box. There is an unmarked button that displays the tooltip "Page styles". And one of those styles is "First Page". You have to apply that style to the first page, then add a header to both the default style pages and the first page style pages.

Seriously, what the hell. If I wanted to go on a hunting expedition I'd be out in the woods, not writing a paper.

And while I can't be bothered to write down more examples (/rant), this sort of thing, in my experience (and that of friends), plagues F/OS software to a much greater extent than it does commercial, proprietary software.

Re:What is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why compare crap to crap.

Both openoffice and MSword are WYSIWYG editors and both require the user to go to dialogue boxes.

Now, if you really wanted to compare logarithmic learning curves vs. exponential learning curves, you would have to compare LaTeX to MSword/ooffice.

In latex for example, a simple \setlength along with the fancyhdr package would solve the problem in no time (and let you do some really interesting things such as size restrictions, multiple boxes not available in ooffice or MSword at the same time). The \setlength command does really give the user much more power but one has to go and find a manual for LaTeX, understand what the setlength command does to begin with to ctually be able to use it. Steeper learning curve but LaTeX leads to much more professionally typeset documents and gets the work done much faster when used by an experienced user.

Re:What is wrong:

[zCyl]

"Many so-called "ordinary" users think that they prefer a power vs time curve that grows logarithmically"

In other words, those lusers don't know what they really want. They just THINK they know what they want.

Their goal is to "save time", but often they are not aware of the best way to save time in the long run, because they are trying to save time in the short term. This is not a revolutionary concept.

Honestly, user interface in F/OS software tends to suck. There are exceptions- Firefox isn't too bad. OpenOffice, however... well, let's compare one thing to MS Word. Headers. In both Word and Writer, you go to the page formatting dialog box, then go to the part where you fiddle with header settings. In Word, everything is right there. Want a different header on the first page? Check the box. Want a different header on even vs. odd pages? Check the box. In Writer, the even vs. odd check box is there, and you can format the header with your various visual styles and so on... but how do you make a different header on the first page? Well, let's see, everything else for headers is here, let's try to find it... no, it's not on this page. Maybe under "more"? Nope, not there. Read the help file- hm, it doesn't say. There is a hint, for the "same content left/right" check box. "Adds the header to both even and odd pages. This option is only available for the Default page style." Hmm, I wonder what the "Default page style" is.

It's quite simple, it's just a different approach. Headers are part of the page style in open office, not part of the "header popup". You add headers by going from "Insert" to "Header" and then selecting the page style to put a header on, which is usually "Default". If you want to turn off the header on the first page, you just go to the first page, click the Styles and Formatting button on the left side, or choose it from the menu, or press F11, then click on the "page" button, and click "First Page". Then your page is a different style, and has no header. Now if you go back into "Insert" and "Header", you'll see "First Page" under there as well, with no header selected. You can enable that as well, and even have a header for the first page that is a different size.

Note that the procedure is the same for left/right pages, and that new page styles can be created and added to this list as well. I don't believe that was an example of open source software having inferior interfaces. That was just an example of you having more experience with one product over another, since the procedure doesn't seem to be any more complicated (and the first google hit I find has instructions for this).

Re:What is wrong:

[Blakey Rat]

Unfortunately, Firefox seems to be going downhill. Look at the preferences dialog in Firefox 1.0 compared to the one in Firefox 1.5. Does *any* OS (except Mac Classic v. 6.0, which Firefox isn't even ported to) use that icon->tab thing? It basically translates into a tabbed interface with tabs within tabs... they just make the outer set of tabs look like icons. Ugh... ugly.

Note to developers, Firefox or otherwise: Tabs-within-tabs is almost always a terrible idea. Whenever you consider doing something like this, look at Tools:Settings in Microsoft Word 2003 and talk yourself out of it.

Of course, in addition to that, Firefox is still quite bad on OS X, although it's pretty good on Windows and ... well, Linux doesn't seem to have GUI guidelines, so I guess it's fine there. It doesn't support the OS X spellchecker yet, which is a 'must-have' feature if they want to pull users from Safari, and the web controls still look Unix-y instead of OS X-y.

Re:What is wrong:

[Blakey Rat]

That's fine and all, but there's NO excuse for it not being in OpenOffice's help file with a nice little explanation like the one you just typed. I'm sure in Planet Weebo, or wherever Sun designed OpenOffice to fit, nobody has ever heard of or used Word or WordPerfect, but here in Planet Earth, you can assume that if people are familiar with a word processor at all, they'll be familiar with Word or WordPerfect. Or even ClarisWorks/AppleWorks. Your documentation should reflect that.

Re:What is wrong:

[IntlHarvester]

This is an interesting example, because MS Word has a feature like Page Styles called Sections. I've always been in the habit of creating a new section for cover pages and the like, and was unaware of this 'first page' feature. MS must have figured out through user testing that a new section was too much of a conceptual leap for a cover page and added the feature somewhere in there.

Re:What is wrong:

[zCyl]

That's fine and all, but there's NO excuse for it not being in OpenOffice's help file with a nice little explanation like the one you just typed.

Do you mean like how when you click on "Help", and type in "headers", right there on the first page it says:

To use different headers or footers in your document, you must add them to different Page Styles, and then apply the styles to the pages where you want the headers or footer to appear.

And how when you click on "Page Styles" in that sentence it gives you explicit instructions about how to do what I described? I don't know what version of OpenOffice you tried this on, but I see it in clear English in the help files.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[mangu]

does not really cost all that much when compared to all the business you lost when wasting time fighting with Linux.

Yeah, but how much does it cost when you compare to the time you waste when fighting with Microsoft Windows? I mean, get a daily dose of blue screens, reformat, reinstall, blame it on the hardware, download new drivers, install anti-virus software, blame it on Windows For Workgroups, upgrade to Windows 95. Then you get a daily dose of blue screens, reformat, reinstall, blame it on the hardware, download new drivers, install anti-virus software, blame it on Windows 95, upgrade to Windows 98. Then you get a daily dose of blue screens, reformat, reinstall, blame it on the hardware, download new drivers, install anti-virus software, blame it on Windows 98, upgrade to XP and stop noticing the blue screens because it reboots automatically. Then you still get a daily dose of crashes that reboot automatically, reformat, reinstall, blame it on the hardware, download new drivers, install anti-virus software, install SP2...

Compared to all this, there's only one situation when you need to reinstall Linux: when you upgrade to a bigger disk.

Open French

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, French and Spanish are far more open than Italian. Even English is more open than Italian, why you have proper British English, Australian and even that American dialect. As for the other languages - just look at all the countries that have their own versions of Spanish and French. Think of all the American and African countries that have French as their primary language - and of course the countries where it's literally their 'lingua franca'.

Calling this guy a 'Publisher' is stretching it

[Qbertino]

Calling this guy a publisher is stretching it a little, imho. The website looks somewhat shoddy and homegrown.

There are other publishers using OSS exclusively that deserve the term. For instance T3N, a regular german magazin on Typo3 uses the CMS Typo3 as publishing tool. They generate the digital prints by Typo3 driven PDF generation. And the bi-monthly 80 Page magazin - available at every larger Newspaper dealer - , albeight having a slightly 'technical' 2-column layout, is a full-blown professional publication, and not just some fanzine. That's what I call OSS driven publishing.

Oh, and, btw, if your wondering why in heavens name someone would have the wacky idea to publish a magazin on Typo3 like others publish magazines on, let's say, PHP or Java, you might be interested to hear that T3N is just in it's 3rd issue and is growing *fast* and steep in print run volume. That is because in Germany _*EVERYBODY*_ uses Typo3. Everybody. Which is unfortunate for me because I'm trying to make a living in Germany doing web developement and don't like T3 that much. ... Ah, well, it's open source, so it's not that bad. Allthough I'm beginning to suspect that Typo3 is some brigdehead for a Danish Invasion of Germany of some sort. I recall we had some kind of war something like 110 years ago or so. Must be that there's still some stuff not settled yet. And Kaspar Skarhoj probably is some secrect agent of the danish crown. :-)

Re:Calling this guy a 'Publisher' is stretching it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might have had a war 65 years ago as well.

Re:Calling this guy a 'Publisher' is stretching it

[nczempin]

Although I'm beginning to suspect that Typo3 is some brigdehead for a Danish Invasion of Germany of some sort. I recall we had some kind of war something like 110 years ago or so. Must be that there's still some stuff not settled yet. And Kaspar Skarhoj probably is some secrect agent of the danish crown. :-) I know it was meant to be a joke, but we actually had a war something like 66 years ago or so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Weser%C3%BC bung#Invasion_of_Denmark

Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL'ed software is unfree.

Scribus & Other Open-Source Software-Users.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scribus is what you get when engineers try to design software; typical of most open-source applications."

Hehe. Well said. Funny even thought there are plenty of books on how to design user-centered programs.

Designing from both sides of the screen: How designers and engineers can collaborate to build cooperative technology.

for starters. F/OSS still keeps running into this brick wall.

---
Hehe. My "are you a script" word for today is arguable.

Scribus & Other Open-Source Software-Homework.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Next time you try out an opensource app and find its features below your standards, go compose a detailed wishlist, with proper argumentation and detailed description for every missing feature."

Or just go back to what you were using before. There's statements about "doing your own homework", and yet F/OSS wants potential users to do their homework for them. Nuts to that.

Best. Thread. Ever

[jdbartlett]

Funniest. Thread. Ever.

Ufie and CMYK

[mughi]

How about this:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060430

That's a bit vague. However, it was actually being followed up on before that strip even hit the web. And among other pertinent things, Little CMS integration into Inkscape started shortly after Libre Graphics Meeting not too many weeks ago. Illiad hasn't covered any of the features he'd actually like for his workflow, but he has been asked.

As soon as the next release of Inkscape is done (starting any day now), then more CMS support will go in and also hit the UI. (So anyone who might want to use this, be sure to drop a note or some such).

Re:Ufie and CMYK

[Fallus Shempus]

CMYK has been my biggest bugbear with Scribus,

This should work though
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Installing_Littl e_CMS_and_configuring_Scribus_to_use_it_on_Fedora_ Core_3/
I'll have to have another look myself.

The Book of Tea

[Kadin2048]

That example (The Book of Tea) is among the nicest LaTeX-made publications I've ever seen. I don't suppose the TeX source is available to it anywhere, is it?

I don't think making it available would increase the risk of plagiarism any, since it's already in PDF form; I'm just curious how it was done.

Re:The Book of Tea

[WillAdams]

Thank you. It's a public domain text though, and I only disabled printing 'cause I figured people should just buy a printed copy if they wanted a dead tree version (or they could've asked me for one of the spare copies I had until recently).

I converted my nasty Plain TeX hackery into LaTeX and made it available to Kaveh Bazargan for use in his presentation at TUG2005. Drop me an e-mail at willadams@aol.com and I can send that .zip archive to you.

The most significant bit of aesthetics in it though is the font, David Kindersley's Octavian which was done for Monotype and isn't freely available. I wanted to use Ares, but Dave Farey's digital revival wasn't available at that time. I've been wondering how it'd look in SIL Gentium though, and will probably investigate that as I get my practical TeX 2006 presentation ready.

William

Patents

[tepples]

OK, so what if I write up a spec for a new feature for a Free application, but then I find that the feature is a patent minefield in one or more major developed countries? As I understand it, prepress color management will be that way until key patents owned by Adobe, Pantone, and other imaging companies run out.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[vijayiyer]

Or you use a mac - a no brainer if you're doing publishing.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[chromeronin]

I find the biggest advantage to using OSS publishing tools is with the non profit orgs I volunteer for. Using Scribus, OO.o, Gimp I can run all of these tools on any platform under any os using any GUI. They all work fine, the output is suitable for 99% of all the clubs I work with, the file formats are portable across systems, and the software is free (which is a big bonus for small non profits who want to do it all legally wihout using either corporate resources where they work or pirated software). Using them I can create professional looking output, and all the source material, graphics, text, fonts etc can be easily given to someone else to continue working on without having to reinvent all the templates again for the propriety apps they happen to have on their home PC's. Web tools are more advanced but show the same principals. Check out my site - http://www.mr2.org.nz/ - Static HTML coded using NVu, forum running bhbBB2, databases are MySQL etc. Webserver is Linux and Apache. All free and open source. Would have been unbelieveably expensive to do the same things legally using .Net and Windows/IIS.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[Blakey Rat]

WTH? Did you think this comment out? Are you saying that somebody starting a publishing company right now would start with WIndows 2.0, then upgrade to Windows-For-Workgroups, then Win 95, then Win 98, skip 2000, then go to XP, then XP SP2. That's quite a task, considering any computer off-the-shelf right now comes with XP2 pre-installed.

So I guess if I were starting a publishing company from scratch with Linux, I should start with Redhat 1.0, right? Then not have drivers for my software, so upgrade to Redhat 2.0, then 3.0, then 4.0, etc until I reach whatever the current Fedora is, right?

BTW, bluescreen of death can be one of two things:
1) Faulty hardware. No amount of OS reinstalling will fix this.
2) Crappy third-party drivers. Ditto, if you continue using the hardware with the bad drivers.

If you're using XP on reliable hardware using Microsoft-approved drivers, it doesn't bluescreen.

Come on, people, if you're going to bash Windows, try using a little sense about it, huh?

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[the_womble]

Yeah, but how much does it cost when you compare to the time you waste when fighting with Microsoft Windows?

Yes but that not your fault, its MS's.

On the other hand if you use Linux and something goes wrong, your PHB will blame you.

The bottom line is the the MS solution may be higher risk for the organisation, but it is lower risk for the person making the purchase decision.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Man you're full of nonsense.
How much time and money do you think you'll loose when you send a publisher a document, made in linux, that he can't open?
That can't even compare.
If you trust that an application in linux will maintain the same format and page layout in Word you're crazy, or simply insanely arrogant.

Why is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to purchase a jemmy instead of a full-size crowbar to demolish a wall, I would be blamed for buying the wrong tool.

Re:Why is that?

[the_womble]

Not if its a branded MS jemmy....

Re:GIMP! / About "Good CMYK support"

[Anonymous Coward]

1/ Yes.

2/ Not that simple. Good conversions have much non-linear transformations involved and such RGB->CMYK transformations are not amenable exclusively to linear algebra operations (which what your "transvection matrix" term implicitely means). Gamma correction is one of the best-known of those non-linear things. There are others...

3/ Yes and no. Monitors and printed paper have *different* gamuts and overlapping and the impossibiity works both ways.
Commercially availables inks will allow you to print a patch of pure cyan that generates a certain stimulus in your eyes that in turn your brain "sees" in a given way. However, no existing RGB triplet (CRT phosfors, LCD filters, wall-projector, calibrated or otherwise) will be able to trigger the same stimulus. Even more importantly, maybe, nor will any monitor be able to trigger *another* stimulus with the *same* brain interpretation as the initial one (a physiological phenomenon called 'metamerism', which is what makes RGB & CMYK color reproduction works with the human eye + brain). In other words, if you put side by side your printed cyan patch and your monitor patch, no matter the amount of monitor & software tweaking you do, your brain will always "see" differences between the glass surface and the paper surface.
Another example are the 'fluorescent' (high-visibility) yellow / oranges.

Color management has to deal with those hardware technological limitations and a host of other issues, which at heart are difficult because they are trying to quantify / model a physiological process called "human vision" (subject to individual variation, optical illusion, very sophisticated physiological non-linear adptive mecanisms etc...)

4/ No or not only (See point 3 above). Consider also other aspects of "CMYK support".
- For instance, in offset technology, the paper is soaked with water & ink. The paper can safely absorb only a certain amount of inks, after which mechanical integrity is compromized. "good cmyk support" knows that and avoid such combination (or at least give a warning if it happens).
- Also consider the paper porosity, which causes inks to diffuse outside the area it was applied. "Good cmyk support" knows that and trims the areas where ink is applied to take that into account (dot gain compensation).
- Consider the fact that printed color reproduction in CMYK is done by a technique called "screening" that produces small inked dots on the paper (halftone dots). In classical screening, the dots are regularly spaced and there are relationships between those printed dot spacing (in LPI Line Per Inch) and raster image resolutions (in DPI, dot per inch). "Good CMYK support" knows this and may give you a warning when the DPI is too low respective to the LPI. It will also give you control over the screening angles (directions in which the halftone dots are aligned), the screening frequency (ie. the LPI), the shape of those dots etc...
- Another example are mechanical misaligment (misregistration) of offset plates on the press. This can be mitigated by expanding / shrinking sligthy the area where ink is deposited, so that the white paper will not "show through". (this is called "trapping"). "Good CMYK support" know that and give you control on it. (And appropriate trapping can get really tricky, especially with inverted text...)
- Consider that fact that the web press is an industrial, quasi-continuous process which needs real-time monitoring. "Good CMYK support" knows that and will generate off-page graybars (for monitoring the uniformity of ink distribution across the paper width) and other special patterns (for registration, screening orientation verification, perforation marks, etc...) that are production-oriented.
- Consider the fact that from a purely math stand point, RGB->CMYK conversion adds a degree of liberty and this can be used to optimize one aspect or another of the output. (undercolor removal, gray component replacements, overprinting). "Good CMYK support" knows that and give you control

Re:What's involved on the software side of Publish

[great om]

my wife works in educational publishing. She's an editor. The primary tools used for textbook creation (from the design/creation side) are now usually Adobe Indesign for the layout, Photoshop and Illustrator for the pictures and Adobe Incopy for the actual content of the books, all combined with a managment tool known as K4 which enables collaberation and versioning

LaTeX for publishing

[songbo]

I used LaTeX for my thesis, and with the page count approaching 150, it's probably about as thick as quite a number of books, and I didn't have much problems with it. That said, I wasn't too particular about where my graphics ended up, in the true spirit of separation of content and layout. But if you're a publisher, doing layout on TeX will probably be a major pain in the ass, if not impossible to do (at least as far as I know). If you're doing mostly text, LaTeX should do the job wonderfully.

Re:Such Is The Story With Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to all this, there's only one situation when you need to reinstall Linux: when you upgrade to a bigger disk.

I haven't had to do that in YEARS.

What I do is, partition and format the new disk, reboot into a live cd, log in as root, mount the old disk partitions under /misc1, the new disk partitions under /misc2, then:

cd misc1 ; tar cf - . | (cd /misc2 ; tar xf -)

go for pizza, done.

Re:RTFM

[hackwrench]

A lot of times I try to RT(Freaky) Manual but I get bogged down in the first few paragraphs, the stupid thing expects me to already understand certain concepts that I don't, is written in a mental model that does things completely different from how I do them, uses regional figures of speech, is written in alpabetical or some other order other than in order of what one needs to know first, or something of the like.

For example the manual for FreeBASIC is most useful if you programmed in QB before and had a QB programming implementation style similar to the writers of FreeBASIC.

Mafia

[rkulla]

Everything is free 'till the Mafia wants in on it.

wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time you try out an opensource app and find its features below your standards, go compose a detailed wishlist, with proper argumentation and detailed description for every missing feature. Nobody is asking for patches, but some feedback from professionals is always appreciated. Implementation hints are also welcomed, even if you are not a programmer.

Nope.

Most of the time I get told to submit a patch or learn to be a programmer. I believe that there is a large segment in "the opensource community" composed of arrogant jerks who don't want feedback no matter well you try to present it.