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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."
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.
I hear they don't provide source code for their books. The use some proprietary language called "Italian."
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...
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...
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWItalian is an OO version of Latin and you can overload most methods in Italian by waving your hands about wildly.
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.
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.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
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.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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.
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.
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.
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!!!!
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
Intelligent Design of a 100% free Software-Based Publisher.
What?
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Aww, beat by PixelScuba. ;)
"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.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
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.
Calling this guy a publisher is stretching it a little, imho. The website looks somewhat shoddy and homegrown.
... 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. :-)
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
No, it's the Free-Software-Based Flying Book Monster... Duh!
Funniest. Thread. Ever.
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.
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).
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
Or you use a mac - a no brainer if you're doing publishing.
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.
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.
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?
Comment of the year
Maybe it was intentional, but you spelt grammar and spelling wrong.
What could be better than a jet powered motorcycle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l6GTHLSWE
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.
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.
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
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
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.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary, and those that don't.
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.
Everything is free 'till the Mafia wants in on it.
Not if its a branded MS jemmy....