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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.
Italian 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/
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!!!!
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
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