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Local Newspapers Use F/OSS For a Day
An anonymous reader writes "The Journal Register Company owns 18 small newspapers, and in honor of the July 4th holiday and Ben Franklin, the company's newsrooms produced their daily papers using only free software. The reporters were quick to note that 'the proprietary software is designed to be efficient, reliable and relatively fast for the task of producing a daily newspaper. The free substitutes, not so much.' I applaud the company for undertaking such a feat, but I hope their readership's impression of free software won't be negatively affected by the newspaper's one-day foray into F/OSS."
FTFA:
...and the reporters have filed their stories in Googled Docs instead of Microsoft Word.
I guess they meant they used free-as-in-beer software for that edition -- or whatever Googled Docs are. (Perhaps you get them when you type TheGoogle into a Word document?)
While the summary states that they used free and open source software, the article only states that they used free software. Their writers used Google Docs, which is free but not open source, instead of Microsoft Word.
These guys have been using their proprietary software for decades, they're used to every single button.
Then they switch over to radicaly different software interface (hi Gimp!) for a single day... of course they're way less efficient.
Did you read the article? They produced one issue with free software, but they've been working on it for a while. For example, "News Editor Paul Tackett has been working days and nights, on top of his usual job, to set up most of the day's pages in a layout program called Scribus." Not all newspaper articles are written within 24 hours of going to print. Many are the product of several days or even weeks of work. The article implies that although only one issue was produced with the free software, it was the product of more than one day's work.
These guys have been using their proprietary software for decades, they're used to every single button.
You're exaggerating. What proprietary newsroom software has kept the same interface for 20 years? Even Photoshop 1.0 was only released exactly 20 years ago, and of course much of the interface has changed and furthermore I'd be surprised if anyone at this paper had been using it in production for 20 years.
Your point that we shouldn't read too much in to the difficulties the paper experienced with free software is valid, but you're overstating the case significantly.
But I find horrifying problems every time I try.
Make an image with two layers. Set one to 50% transparency and put it top. Now try to move one on top of the other and resize it to line up a few points in the images. I for example was trying to line up the wheels in two car silhouettes.
In the GIMP, the layer you made 50% transparent turns opaque while you try to resize it, so you can't see how to line up the layers. What a mess.
I went home later and did it in Photoshop CS3 (that own, but only at home) and it worked fine, remained transparent during resize.
I know it's free and all, but if you make your living doing image editing, the GIMP is absolutely no substitute for Photoshop. You'll easily waste more money in labor than you saved not by buying Photoshop.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
One day?
I believe the transition took longer than a day; but they only used the 'alternate free workflow' for a day.
My evidence is that in the article they say:
(Emphasis added.) Also in the video at about 0:18 the narrator says:
(Emphasis added.) It sounds like they've been working for nearly a month, behind the scenes, to make the transition possible. It's still impressive, of course, since replicating an existing layout and workflow is difficult even when all the software works perfectly. But this certainly wasn't just one day's worth of work.
For future reference, suggestions are better received when they come with funding to write them, even if the pay is very modest.
It's supported layers for as long as I can remember.
In fact, one objection might be that you can't use it effectively without first understanding layers.
Not sure what you mean by fine control of selections - adjusting a selection can be a bit hit and miss, but I blame that on my working on large images on an underpowered machine.
While I'm told by friends who are designers that Adobe Illustrator is a much more powerful product (and I believe them), I really struggled with it.
Illustrator is much more powerful; unfortunately, it's also a real bitch to learn. Once you do, though, it's amazing what can be done with it beyond plain vector drawing. Being able to apply Photoshop filters to a vector drawing is almost enough to justify the effort to learn it all by itself. Of course, whether or not it justifies Illustrator's ridiculous price is another matter altogether. I'm still using an ancient version (that I know is gonna break one of these days following an OS update) because I can't afford to upgrade to a newer one.
This ain't rocket surgery.
when removing the white to transparency in a picture, it made the whole thing translucent. I still don't know why or how it happened, since all I did was use the "colour to alpha" tool, which is supposed to turn that specific colour to transparent.
It is "supposed to"??? Why, because that's what it means in Photoshop?
My expectation would be that the amount of the chosen color is used to determine transparency. In your case (you chose white) only pure black would remain opaque.
I will admit that having both alpha and layer masks is complex, but I'd be surprised if Photoshop didn't have this complexity as well.
I think you'd be better off making a color-based selection, paying attention to the feathering and anti-aliasing options. Better yet, use the magic scissors tool, which is sort of a freehand-select that snaps to edges. Hit the quickmask button to fix any defects, especially if you selected by color and there might be areas of that color within the object you want to keep. Once you have the selection, make that transparent or just invert it and copy the object alone.
Remember that the selection, the alpha channel(s), and the layer mask(s) are all interchangable and invertable. You can move the object outline from one to another.
Gimp has all that.
Hint: to run filter tools on masks, you can enable quickmask mode (a toggle button in the corner) or you can convert the mask to/from a regular layer.
Maybe you should check it out again before making disparaging comments about it.
Just last night I was working on a multi-layered composite image for some cover art and it was working great. Not quite sure what you mean by "fine control of selections", with GIMP I can select and position image elements down to 1 pixel resolution without a problem.
Since I've never used Photoshop I'll refrain from making comparisons about it, other than for someone who can't afford it, doesn't want to pirate it or can't run it since they use Linux anyway it might be worth their time try using GIMP.
No, the REAL advantage is that you work natively in RAW, in a non-destructive manner, letting you do proper digital exposure going far beyond anything Levels in Photoshop or GIMP can. Ergo, darkroom work.
No, they bitch because some advocates told them that free alternatives are just as good or better.
You shouldn't be on the committee to choose a new name....
One thing I find highly amusing is their claim that the proprietary software is "efficient, reliable and relatively fast".
Having worked as support in a large media company, I can assure you that the proprietary software is the biggest problem with publishing. The makers are slow to fix any bugs, if they ever do, they don't adhere to any standards (software will output 2.5GB pdfs for a single page, wtf?), and the interfaces are usually throwbacks to the 1990s if you're lucky. There was many a day that the paper almost wasn't published due to this software failing just before deadline. A number of the journalists and reporters took to writing things up in notepad then copy & pasting it into the publishing system as they'd lose their stories continually otherwise.
If you add to this that most of the journalists barely knew how to use a computer, let alone how to use these specialised systems, well, maybe dumping something new on them wasn't ever going to work. Proprietary or otherwise.
A one day "test" isn't exactly a test, it's a toe in the water. The water may be cold, but it doesn't mean you should run screaming from it.
Yes, why are those people so easily offended. I mean, they don't even want to use the Batch inspection tool chain and history or the Natural illumination gyrating grid enhancer restorer extensions.
Sidenote: the complaint has also been put up on the mailing lists by people who contribute, it led to flame wars and edgy "why so PC" by other oblivious twits with the maturity of 12 year olds.
You can do that in Inkscape. At least in version 0.47 included in Ubuntu 10.04. Check the "Filter" menu.
In the US, it's comparatively rare to see a car (except the very very cheap or the very exotic) that isn't an automatic transmission.
A quick google search suggests that 16 percent of cars in the US are sold with manual transmissions. I'm not convinced this is "comparatively rare."
Internet scofflaw
Not unless the experienced manual driver had either a very stiff clutch or a very slack brake pedal, because they should feel completely different. Applying pressure to the brake pedal as if it were a clutch shouldn't be enough to put the car into a skid.
The problem is that the FOSS alternatives are often better - I would say usually better for commonly used apps.
The problem is that they are not better for every single app from the point of view of every single user. I do not view that as a problem.
For my usage open source is usually superior, with the exception of Excel for really big spreadsheets (even that is not really something I do any more either) and spreadsheet graphs. That is well worth putting up for, for the advantages of FOSS:
1) Linux had had repositories for years, MS might add an app store to Win 8.
2) Firefox is hugely better than IE, especially given the extensions available.
3) Lyx is the best way I know to write nice looking documents quickly, and Latex is good for more complex stuff (I have in mind things that would NOT be easy in word, and would probably involve writing stuff in VBA).
4) Okular is faster and has a better UI than Acrobat Reader
5) Kate is an amazingly good text editor.
6) Qood Libet music manager has a people column (so you can browse composers and performers at once in an unclutters UI), edits info on the files themselves (so if you add a missing composer label and copy the file to another device its still corrected), and generally does things write
7) Linux has multiple desktops to organise my work. Windows does not.
6) KDE is hugely customisable: being able to set things up to suit myself helps productivity, and makes the best use of screen space on my laptop. The desktop UI I have is far superior to Windows cramming everything onto one bar or the MacOS equivalent which always seems to end up incredibly cluttered.
7) The remaing apps I use regularly (Sylpheed, Akregator) do what I want reliably and simply.
8) Pulse audio lets me play two streams at once, and move them between sound cards. Kids can listen to a story while I listen to music, for example.