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