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Interview With the Editors of Libre Graphics Magazine
TheSilentNumber writes "I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the editors of Libre Graphics, a magazine made entirely using free software (even using version control so you can see every change ever made) after they gave a talk at this year's Libre Graphics Meeting. This project is living proof of the printing abilities of Free Software, 'That really is a constant refrain even within our own community. People always still talk about the printing problem. So what printing problem?' Libre Graphics Magazine is doing a truly outstanding job showcasing free works made with free tools, creating a publication of record, and reaching out to designers with this project."
Has some interesting, useful stuff, from basic to about as free-wheelingly complicated as you'd like. Nice bit about customizing The Gimp.
I can't bring myself to press play on the video. Is the person on the far right Pat's...um...sibling?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Not really, everybody knows that you can create great products using the right commercial tool, but in order for OSS to get any sort of credibility it's going to take people going public with their support. Particularly when one is in a position to create a professional product using just OSS.
The more examples there are, the more likely it is that there's going to be funding to develop them further.
When the tools cost thousands of dollars it becomes a large barrier to entry for beginners and small shops.
This group is trying to demonstrate that there is an alternative (other than piracy). Also, with increased adoption most open source software generally becomes far superior to commercial alternatives. Apache, Linux, nmap, there are tons of examples. Maybe with a few thousand more users and developers these publishing tools will become the benchmark.
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Huh? If you have a high quality end product the tools used are very relevent, as that is what made it possible. "Ooh, how'd you do that?" is a great thing to hear. If you have a low quality end product, the tools used are irrelevant. Nobody cares what went into a piece of shit.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But for me, and our club that I edit the magazine for, open source is brilliant, as it means that when I want to hand on the job, I can give the new editor everythin, the layout, editing tools, graphics manipulators, etc and it will all work with whatever OS they have. My wife edits the source material using open office and stores all edited documents as .dot. I use the GIMP mainly for co our correction, alpha transparency, and minor graphical edits, and the layout is done in scribus. We then output a high quality .PDF for email distribution and print master. I also then compile the edited material into an .ePub file using sigil, and publish the book to our calibre server for distribution and download for those that want our mag on ther ebook readers.
Now I'd have to say we are NOT a pro publisher, but all of this cost us nothing except the hardware to run on, but if I made any money from the gig I would definately pay for the software. Only the Mac version of Scribus gives me some grief now and then, much buggier than the Linux version, but all of the features work just fine, and has got better with every release. (I layout mainly on my Mac because it has the best screen, but I have a Linux vm that I can give anyone that has everything they need to view and edit the source material. A real open source publication 8)
When the tools cost thousands of dollars it becomes a large barrier to entry for beginners and small shops.
That is undeniably true (speaking as someone putting his own hard-earned cash into a new company right now). On the flip side, good tools typically pay for themselves in greater productivity and better quality of results very quickly. If you don't want to spend a few thousand on the right equipment and software, then it's possible that you're in a very awkward position, but IME it's far more likely that either you have the wrong idea about something or your business plan isn't really viable.
I did download the high-quality PDF of the magazine. The idea is interesting, but without meaning to be harsh, they're actually a pretty good demonstration of why I would never rely on today's FOSS tools to do serious work. As a guy who takes some pride in his design work, I can immediately see dozens of little details where the magazine does something poorly but professional grade software would just get it right. I won't have a dig by listing them all, but as a couple of examples, several of the pages seem to be one big bitmap, and the typography is lacking basic elements like ligatures and true small caps. They do acknowledge the limitations of their font and they're open about how they're working to improve it, but the bottom line is they could drop a few hundred bucks on some pro fonts from Adobe, do their layout in InDesign, and get the job done right.
My vote for most unintentional self-defeating article: the one starting on page 40, which contrasts proprietary with FOSS approaches. The characterisation of proprietary software is pure FUD:
Graphic artists using propriety software might spend an afternoon opening a graphic in a big bulky graphics application just to convert its colourspace.
Seriously? This is followed by the wonderful:
Proprietary software typically has two answers to your problems: don't do it, or spend more money to be able to do it. This might apply to a specific file format you want to use, or an effect you want to achieve, or a way of working.
Actually, one of the main reasons we've spent so much on various big ticket proprietary software is precisely that they do just work with the industry standard data formats out of the box. If anyone thinks FOSS does better, please get back to me once Firefox can play H.264 video, Blender can work with FBX files, and LibreOffice can reliably interoperate with MS Word while working on docx files with non-trivial formatting.
The article about AdaptableGIMP on page 47 is another enlightening read, mainly for the interesting contrast between the approach it advocates and what you read in Microsoft blogs from the guys behind the Office UI redesign. There are two completely different mindsets at work there, but one is the product of a few people doing some basic experiments and the other is the product of a massive global study funded by the kind of money and drawing on the kind of resources that no FOSS project can access. As a Brit, I'm naturally inclined to root for the little guys, but as a businessman, I know which data I'd prefer to bet on.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.