Heh, thanks for the thoughtful response. Reading back, I can't believe I'm defending paper so fervently! But I've been learning lately how CAD has been hindering my creative abilities.
Up until just a few years ago, I never drew on paper, I did everything in CAD. But then when I went back to school for my 5th year, I found it a little difficult to be as creative as some of the younger students around me. (Despite being only 33 myself at the time.) So I decided not to use CAD in school, and although I didn't keep that promise to myself, I learned how much I'd been missing in the immediacy of pencil in hand on paper. Sure, it has some weaknesses, but I'd never valued the strengths enough, even though I've drawn art since childhood.
The profession of architecture is taking a beating right now because the act of design has been reduced in most people's minds (at least here in the US) to drawing a simple floor plan. They see it as a science, with mathematical parameters that some program some day will do without human input. Input the space requirements, pull the lever, out pops a floor plan.
But if these types could understand the expressive requirements embedded in any act of design, maybe most of the houses in the US wouldn't end up as big boxes with stupid fake gables pasted on the front. Honestly, in my part of the country, you can't find a subdivision without big boxes jambed together, all of which have a minimum of 7 fake gables on the front, and not a single one on either side or the back. Talk about lack of integrity. Design is not science, people! Stop paying good money for ridiculous looking houses!
Sorry, guess I'm a little over-sensitive about architecture. I often think people see CAD as this design utopia, when in fact it does little to improve our environment and might be responsible for the repetitive stamping out of these repulsive cookie cutters that the real estate market seems to value so greatly. CAD is the tool, but it doesn't think. The do-it-yourself model of everybody drawing their own floor plans is the wrong approach, it neither designs a house nor solves any of the real construction problems. I figured in the company of geeks here, I'd have to yell pretty loudly to make my point, but I was perhaps a slight bit over the top.;) Thanks for the thread.
Outlook Express is a completely different code base than Outlook. Twice as much to maintain means twice as many bugs.
No more free ride. As Linux (and other Free OSs;) begin to become competitive, the scrappy, free software on the perimeter of the main encampment is the obvious first target to eliminate to save money and cut losses.
Plenty of people are hooked into Outlook Express that a forced migration at this point will bring plenty of profit. At least more than none, although probably the target audience already has MS Office, but maybe not all.
In moving to some global control / central services scheme (.net, Longhorn, whatever) there's no point in trying to migrate some basic client package.
I was an OE user for rather a long while and it had always seemed a bit nicer interface than Outlook proper. In maybe three years, I never had a data failure and it was quite reliable. Obviously the security angle was, er, non-existent (anti-secure perhaps) but it felt fast and mostly did what I told it.
But I'm an Evolution user now, so OE won't be missed. Better for all of us, if you ask me.
You're certainly not the first architectural sophist to posit their ineptitude is really a skill.
Since you question my abilities, let me bore you with my credentials: I started using CAD in 1984. I've written 10,000 lines of AutoCAD VBA, plenty of AutoLisp, and set up CAD customization for two different offices, and was hired away to my current position for technical experiences. (Did some sysadmining, too, but that's another story.) I'm co-author of a GPL AutoCAD customization system that we hope to release in a few months. I've drawn working documents (100% CAD) for several $25m buildings, and have been a key team member for more than $100m of construction total. I know DataCAD, AutoCAD, Architectural Desktop and Vis, and have used Microstation, ClarisCAD, QCAD, even Draw Turtle back in the early 80's. I'm sure you'd like to think I don't know CAD so your points have some kind of weight, but all you say to me is that you don't yet have an appreciation for the weaknesses of CAD, or the computer in general. But have *you* ever drawn working drawings by hand?
The OP is looking for some simple tool to help him design a layout. (If his father really is an architect, he could draft the entire design in a fraction of the time this guy is going to take, and will probably revise most of it just so it's buildable.) CAD is the wrong tool for him, he doesn't even know what he's drawing. (Although I'm sure he thinks he does.)
Good designs are iterative....With pencils, you use trace. How long does it take you to trace the whole frickin' floor plan? Option 'A'.. Option 'B'.. Option 'Z'. Too long.
Well, I certainly wouldn't re-trace it! The whole point of using trace is that you draw new possibilities *over* the old, not redraw the whole thing! Have you ever designed with trace paper before in your life?! I think you're confusing design with drafting.
Even for someone who knows both, it's a matter of the task at hand. Over grid paper, I can iterate countless designs in just minutes. Drawing to precise scale (as is done with CAD) is not the first necessity for designing a building. Site strategies, basic building masses, circulation structures, access diagrams... all happen before scale. If you know what you're doing, sketching over grids gets you very close, without having to be anal about fractions of inches that matter nothing before you've even resolved schematic design.
Once schematic concepts are proven, drawing the program to scale is necessary to check those strategies. But even then, locking into CAD can ruin the flexibilities required to complete a successful project. One always has to be careful. You are quite emphatic the CAD is always a time saver, but I'd say that's true only for someone who has both plenty of experience and an equal enough skill in sketching so as not to bias the design into some course monolithic extrusion that has neither any efficiency *or* beauty.
Ok, I'll laugh. But for the record, verbal/oral communication isn't
spacial. There's quite a difference between the iterative process in
writing a paragraph and drawing form and space. I think my point is to
not let the tool get in the way of the brain. We've all written plenty, but designing buildings is a completely different realm.
I haven't, we use Architectural Desktop 3.3. Now that AutoDesk owns both, we've heard Revit will be the prefered parametric solution towards the future, but I don't know much about it. Have you used ADT enough that you could give us a brief comparison?
Disclaimer: I'm an intern architect currently taking my architectural registration exams.
There's two reasons not to use software to represent your designs. First, it's much slower. Unless you're a professional, you can't possibly draw contract document quality drawings with software at the same speed that you could with a pen and a good parallel bar. Even as a professional, drawing with CAD is about the same speed as by hand. The real advantage is working collaboratively (file reference sharing) and making modifications once everything already exists.
But the better reason for not drawing with some software package is that they don't design. A floor plan is just a fraction of the total picture! Just because you put lines on a page doesn't mean it can be built. There are countless details even in simple residential construction that can cost you *serious* dollars if you instruct a contractor to build something one way and in process it's discovered that some adjustments will be necessary. (Best example: Sydney Opera House. It was 700% over budget, because it required computer calculations even to design, during the 60's, and was re-worked three entire times before being completed, something like 10 years off schedule. Yet it stands today as the most significant architectural icon of the entire continent, despite remaining a miserable place for opera.:)
Rather, you should draw by hand. Having to make the marks yourself will force to you ask a lot of questions. These are questions that you need answered, questions that no CAD software can answer. An experienced architect can draw an accurate floor plan in just an hour. I've seen interns take more than a week to resolve a bathroom. It's a matter of what you know, not the manual act of drafting. Using a software to draw glosses over many of the questions you need to have a handle on prior to signing any contracts.
Trust me, I work on incredibly expensive laboratory buildings every day for a very large international firm and I know that there does not yet exist software to construct something in 3D that can be accurately sliced into construction details for bid or construction. (I've got AutoDesk's AutoCAD, Viz and Studio on my machine at work.) There are numerous vendors who, through smoke and mirrors, will attempt to peddle their products at such, even at the high end. But I've found none that can stand up to the prodding of an experienced architect in less than five minutes. Maybe some day, but not today. And certainly not for an amateur.
Which leads me to my final point: software will *never* be able to design in the highest sense of the word (at least not until AI is beyond human capability). Design is more than scientific, it is creative. There is no mathematically correct layout for the most efficient space, much less the most beautiful. Add in user personality, material efficiencies, fire protection, accessibility, re-sale value and durability and the whole thing becomes this big balancing act, best handled by an experienced architect. There's a reason architects do 5 years of school, 4-5 year internships and take a 9-part exam here in the US before even becoming licensed. And like a brain surgeon, you probably don't want to hire an architect whose still wet behind the ears.
I love using the Sydney Opera house as an example of great architecture because it fails in every way imaginable for what we expect in a building, except one: beauty. Despite all its failings, it is the best investment Australia ever made because of the incredible richness that it expresses.
Design with your mind and use a pencil. Draft it with a computer only after the design is finished.
Uh... $25/hr? What if the graphics you're working on are for a new ad compaign for a large corp. to sell $500 million in products? What if they are intended to represent a $40 million dollar building? (My case.) Many, many jobs don't pay by the hour. Most real ones don't. Graphics frequently represent something else, they don't just have to be sold as an end product!
As someone who has used GIMP for about 3 years on both Windows and Linux, and PhotoShop 7 now for about 3 months, here's my list of GIMP weaknesses compared to PhotoShop:
No CMYK. Includes all the related and dependent features like transparency blending space, embedded color profiles, printer matching, Pantone palettes, proofing, gamut warnings, etc.
Worse than abysmal user interface. Example: What is the point of making a tear off window via right click if as soon as you go back to the graphic image behind it the menu disappears? This is *not* a window manager issue, this is a GIMP UI issue. There's a reason PS has tinier, interlocking, magnetic menus with their own pushpin, shading mechanisms. Plus PhotoShop's toolbars use about half the real estate that GIMP's do.
Polygonal selection tool. (Used it today.)
Text re-selection and editing. (And many other subtleties.)
No Alt key modifier for bucket fill to get color under cursor. (This *has* to be an oversight in 1.2.4, maybe it's fixed in CVS already?)
Smart handling of new images in preparation for paste from clipboard. (Size, color depth.)
Filters, although I would agree that these mean little to a professional.
Export PDF.
Plenty of other essoteric features that I don't use, but others probably do: Healing brush tool, background eraser, etc.
Just to be clear, I'm a *huge* fan of GIMP, Free Software, and the whole GNU/Linux effort. My hat is off to the GIMP developers who have *volunteered* a great amount of time to make an excellent application. Progress has been at times slow, but GIMP is now my usual recommendation to novice/web graphics types on Windows. It's good, just fine for simple needs, and even better considering the price. But it point blank doesn't have the power or polish of PhotoShop. I have no doubt that someday it will, especially if they could raise more money for development. Too bad Walt Disney and friends chose to invest in the half way solution, $45k (WD + two other unnamed) would have funded a good deal of GIMP improvement.
Because RGB-to-CMYK conversion is an approximation. When dealing with a 256 color.gif, a 24-bit color.tif, and a bit of composed CMYK text, all embeded within one document (such as a paste up program like Adobe InDesign, use it for this purpose daily), there's no way to guarantee the "same" color in all three objects will match at printed output. Add in an export to PDF prior to printing and a little transparency blending space, and you will have no hope of color matching at the end through conversion.
RGP is an addative process for producing color to the eye. CMYK is a subtractive process for producing color on surfaces that bounce light to your eye. They don't equate.
Maybe it's just the pressure for profitability, but I continue to be blown away at RedHat's committment to Free Software and community commitment. These guys have a huge share of the GNU/Linux commercial market and yet they continue to be as open as is possible for a for-profit company.
They have invested a ton of effort into software now distributed by most other distributions (GNOME, RPM, kernel development, graphics, etc.). I don't mean that there aren't others playing, too. But it seems every time I expect RedHat to start trying to greedily hawk their enviable position, they do just the opposite.
Vim's author, Bram Moolenaar, is working on a multi-platform software installer/maintainer called AAP. It's still young, but might be what the OP is looking for.
Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I have. (This is probably the most stupid question I have ever answered.)
You are keen to impress upon us your intelligence, but I see little insight in your comments. Although apparently not obvious to you, this was a rhetorical statement, intended not to find fact, but to place perspective on my following comments through linguistic turn.
Please forgive me that I (quite foolishly, as you imply) assumed that those are in fact intelligent and literate people.
Again, intelligence of the users has nothing to do with the question. The OP is asking for a method with which to exchange information with MS Word users collaboratively. TeX mark-up via CVS, while certainly a desirable method for exchange among skilled users, does not even slightly address the usability issues presented by colleagues skilled only in MS Word. They may have doctorate degrees but that doesn't mean they have facile abilities with code.
Are you trying to suggest that I should not recommend a good, meritoriously optimal solution becuse those people are in your opinion too incompetent to follow my advice?
Posing a solution with accompanying explanation as to the advantages and disadvantages I find most helpful. That you see TeX/CVS as "optimal" in an instance where exchange with unskilled associates is required does not strike me as entirely balanced. Not even most of a problem is the technical solution. Thus my emphasis on usability.
Likewise, seeing others as more incompetent than yourself is at the least short-sighted, or worse, arrogant.
How convenient. However terribly sorry to disappoint you I might be, I will never assume that people whom I talk to are so stupid. Never. I am sorry.
Resorting here to Shakespeare's lowest form of wit does indeed mark you as a troll. Ah, yes, your targeting of me as your SlashDot Foe does confirm it... I have fed another one.
Did you actually read what you wrote? I took this to be a humorous comment until about half way through when I realized you were serious. Given the MS Office bias we see in the article, I doubt the average computer user the poster suggests would be able to understand (much less be productive with) the sophisticated combination of software you present as a solution. Starting from MS Office, I wouldn't expect anyone in this scenario to migrate to the process you recommend.
Granted, the advice appears technically adequate, but it needs to be packaged in some singular, usable, GUI product, appropriately named to illicit thoughts of "easy", "simple" or "obvious." Collaboration does not need to be a complicated affair, but most solutions to date do not inspire those in userland to demand them.
Despite Microsoft and Corel word processors having offered collaborative features for years, there is something blocking general usage. Perhaps it's the document model itself or perhaps it's the complicated implementation in these applications. Your CVS method solves the former issue, but the process as described doesn't suggest one easier to use.
Just discovered a fantastic one this morning: TopoZone. In an age where everybody everywhere is trying to make a buck on information, it's refreshing to find an government/academic grade information store accessible (digitally at least) for free.
This is a redundant comment to another more detailed one I entered farther down in the thread, but if you want a simpler Vim, check out my Cream for Vim project.
I guess my point was that it's not automatic. And it also applies only to syntax highlighting, not:set filetype=. This means you can't use filetype-specific mappings and auto-template insertions, e.g., p{key} can't insert a paragraph tag in the HTML portion and a bracket full of paragraph styles in the CSS portion.
Indeed Vim rocks! Not only does it have blinding speed, but with some effort, it can be made to do almost anything. I'll respond specifically to each feature requested:
aimed at HTML/XHTML/CSS/JavaScript/JSP/XML -- Vim recognizes over 375 languages
CVS integration -- Available
stellar UTF-8 support -- Yes, plus at least 35 other encodings
correctly recognizes and highlights HTML, JSP, JS, and CSS within a single file -- No, not yet. This gets discussed on the lists often though.
does some rudimentary auto-completion -- Yes, far beyond rudimentary
is easily configurable -- Yes, perhaps even too configurable
runs on Win2k (oy vey) -- Yes, plus Unix, BSD, Apple, Amiga, OS/2, and others
supports bookmarks of various kinds -- Yes
supports code collapsing -- Yes, called folding, even supports nested
...although other posters have already pointed out various scripts you can add to give you the features you want, you can also try my pre-assembled package of scripts for Vim, Cream. It makes Vim keyboard shortcuts nearly CUA-compliant (Ctrl/Alt/Shift + letter) and otherwise masquerades Vim as a more familiar feeling power text editor. Most long-time Vim users barely recognize it, but Apple/Windows users will find it much more familiar than the sometimes cryptic Vim.
I've been liking this guy's stuff lately. He did the Blender3D site, and if you follow the links, some others that have a similar look. Just clean color bars with a nice asymetric balance, navigation is integral to the design, not just patched into some corner block some where.
Chris Croome (hi dude!) had a role in the WebArchitects page which IMO is the right way to do a text-only approach... let color do the work, not graphics.
Finally, my own Cream for Vim page is a monochromatic (single hue) design in a text-only approach. It uses a simple sidebar positive/negative design, which is not only easy to read, but very easy to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, this thread is stale, but I have to keep coming back to re-read your comment. Heh, "beam of pure lawyers", that kills me.
Heh, thanks for the thoughtful response. Reading back, I can't believe I'm defending paper so fervently! But I've been learning lately how CAD has been hindering my creative abilities.
Up until just a few years ago, I never drew on paper, I did everything in CAD. But then when I went back to school for my 5th year, I found it a little difficult to be as creative as some of the younger students around me. (Despite being only 33 myself at the time.) So I decided not to use CAD in school, and although I didn't keep that promise to myself, I learned how much I'd been missing in the immediacy of pencil in hand on paper. Sure, it has some weaknesses, but I'd never valued the strengths enough, even though I've drawn art since childhood.
The profession of architecture is taking a beating right now because the act of design has been reduced in most people's minds (at least here in the US) to drawing a simple floor plan. They see it as a science, with mathematical parameters that some program some day will do without human input. Input the space requirements, pull the lever, out pops a floor plan.
But if these types could understand the expressive requirements embedded in any act of design, maybe most of the houses in the US wouldn't end up as big boxes with stupid fake gables pasted on the front. Honestly, in my part of the country, you can't find a subdivision without big boxes jambed together, all of which have a minimum of 7 fake gables on the front, and not a single one on either side or the back. Talk about lack of integrity. Design is not science, people! Stop paying good money for ridiculous looking houses!
Sorry, guess I'm a little over-sensitive about architecture. I often think people see CAD as this design utopia, when in fact it does little to improve our environment and might be responsible for the repetitive stamping out of these repulsive cookie cutters that the real estate market seems to value so greatly. CAD is the tool, but it doesn't think. The do-it-yourself model of everybody drawing their own floor plans is the wrong approach, it neither designs a house nor solves any of the real construction problems. I figured in the company of geeks here, I'd have to yell pretty loudly to make my point, but I was perhaps a slight bit over the top. ;) Thanks for the thread.
This seems a logical step given several factors:
I was an OE user for rather a long while and it had always seemed a bit nicer interface than Outlook proper. In maybe three years, I never had a data failure and it was quite reliable. Obviously the security angle was, er, non-existent (anti-secure perhaps) but it felt fast and mostly did what I told it.
But I'm an Evolution user now, so OE won't be missed. Better for all of us, if you ask me.
Since you question my abilities, let me bore you with my credentials: I started using CAD in 1984. I've written 10,000 lines of AutoCAD VBA, plenty of AutoLisp, and set up CAD customization for two different offices, and was hired away to my current position for technical experiences. (Did some sysadmining, too, but that's another story.) I'm co-author of a GPL AutoCAD customization system that we hope to release in a few months. I've drawn working documents (100% CAD) for several $25m buildings, and have been a key team member for more than $100m of construction total. I know DataCAD, AutoCAD, Architectural Desktop and Vis, and have used Microstation, ClarisCAD, QCAD, even Draw Turtle back in the early 80's. I'm sure you'd like to think I don't know CAD so your points have some kind of weight, but all you say to me is that you don't yet have an appreciation for the weaknesses of CAD, or the computer in general. But have *you* ever drawn working drawings by hand?
The OP is looking for some simple tool to help him design a layout. (If his father really is an architect, he could draft the entire design in a fraction of the time this guy is going to take, and will probably revise most of it just so it's buildable.) CAD is the wrong tool for him, he doesn't even know what he's drawing. (Although I'm sure he thinks he does.)
Well, I certainly wouldn't re-trace it! The whole point of using trace is that you draw new possibilities *over* the old, not redraw the whole thing! Have you ever designed with trace paper before in your life?! I think you're confusing design with drafting.
Even for someone who knows both, it's a matter of the task at hand. Over grid paper, I can iterate countless designs in just minutes. Drawing to precise scale (as is done with CAD) is not the first necessity for designing a building. Site strategies, basic building masses, circulation structures, access diagrams... all happen before scale. If you know what you're doing, sketching over grids gets you very close, without having to be anal about fractions of inches that matter nothing before you've even resolved schematic design.
Once schematic concepts are proven, drawing the program to scale is necessary to check those strategies. But even then, locking into CAD can ruin the flexibilities required to complete a successful project. One always has to be careful. You are quite emphatic the CAD is always a time saver, but I'd say that's true only for someone who has both plenty of experience and an equal enough skill in sketching so as not to bias the design into some course monolithic extrusion that has neither any efficiency *or* beauty.
Ok, I'll laugh. But for the record, verbal/oral communication isn't spacial. There's quite a difference between the iterative process in writing a paragraph and drawing form and space. I think my point is to not let the tool get in the way of the brain. We've all written plenty, but designing buildings is a completely different realm.
I haven't, we use Architectural Desktop 3.3. Now that AutoDesk owns both, we've heard Revit will be the prefered parametric solution towards the future, but I don't know much about it. Have you used ADT enough that you could give us a brief comparison?
Disclaimer: I'm an intern architect currently taking my architectural registration exams.
There's two reasons not to use software to represent your designs. First, it's much slower. Unless you're a professional, you can't possibly draw contract document quality drawings with software at the same speed that you could with a pen and a good parallel bar. Even as a professional, drawing with CAD is about the same speed as by hand. The real advantage is working collaboratively (file reference sharing) and making modifications once everything already exists.
But the better reason for not drawing with some software package is that they don't design. A floor plan is just a fraction of the total picture! Just because you put lines on a page doesn't mean it can be built. There are countless details even in simple residential construction that can cost you *serious* dollars if you instruct a contractor to build something one way and in process it's discovered that some adjustments will be necessary. (Best example: Sydney Opera House. It was 700% over budget, because it required computer calculations even to design, during the 60's, and was re-worked three entire times before being completed, something like 10 years off schedule. Yet it stands today as the most significant architectural icon of the entire continent, despite remaining a miserable place for opera. :)
Rather, you should draw by hand. Having to make the marks yourself will force to you ask a lot of questions. These are questions that you need answered, questions that no CAD software can answer. An experienced architect can draw an accurate floor plan in just an hour. I've seen interns take more than a week to resolve a bathroom. It's a matter of what you know, not the manual act of drafting. Using a software to draw glosses over many of the questions you need to have a handle on prior to signing any contracts.
Trust me, I work on incredibly expensive laboratory buildings every day for a very large international firm and I know that there does not yet exist software to construct something in 3D that can be accurately sliced into construction details for bid or construction. (I've got AutoDesk's AutoCAD, Viz and Studio on my machine at work.) There are numerous vendors who, through smoke and mirrors, will attempt to peddle their products at such, even at the high end. But I've found none that can stand up to the prodding of an experienced architect in less than five minutes. Maybe some day, but not today. And certainly not for an amateur.
Which leads me to my final point: software will *never* be able to design in the highest sense of the word (at least not until AI is beyond human capability). Design is more than scientific, it is creative. There is no mathematically correct layout for the most efficient space, much less the most beautiful. Add in user personality, material efficiencies, fire protection, accessibility, re-sale value and durability and the whole thing becomes this big balancing act, best handled by an experienced architect. There's a reason architects do 5 years of school, 4-5 year internships and take a 9-part exam here in the US before even becoming licensed. And like a brain surgeon, you probably don't want to hire an architect whose still wet behind the ears.
I love using the Sydney Opera house as an example of great architecture because it fails in every way imaginable for what we expect in a building, except one: beauty. Despite all its failings, it is the best investment Australia ever made because of the incredible richness that it expresses.
Design with your mind and use a pencil. Draft it with a computer only after the design is finished.
Yikes, the Death Star analogy is maybe not a good one. After all, it didn't take but a speck to destroy it now, did it?
Uh... $25/hr? What if the graphics you're working on are for a new ad compaign for a large corp. to sell $500 million in products? What if they are intended to represent a $40 million dollar building? (My case.) Many, many jobs don't pay by the hour. Most real ones don't. Graphics frequently represent something else, they don't just have to be sold as an end product!
Try this article: RGB to CMYK: Gamut Warning!". Cool, eh?!
Close. If you turn on red, green and blue (RGB) lights, you get white. If you print cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK), you'll get black.
Heres the best explanation I've ever read: "RGB to CMYK: Gamut Warning!".
As someone who has used GIMP for about 3 years on both Windows and Linux, and PhotoShop 7 now for about 3 months, here's my list of GIMP weaknesses compared to PhotoShop:
Just to be clear, I'm a *huge* fan of GIMP, Free Software, and the whole GNU/Linux effort. My hat is off to the GIMP developers who have *volunteered* a great amount of time to make an excellent application. Progress has been at times slow, but GIMP is now my usual recommendation to novice/web graphics types on Windows. It's good, just fine for simple needs, and even better considering the price. But it point blank doesn't have the power or polish of PhotoShop. I have no doubt that someday it will, especially if they could raise more money for development. Too bad Walt Disney and friends chose to invest in the half way solution, $45k (WD + two other unnamed) would have funded a good deal of GIMP improvement.
Because RGB-to-CMYK conversion is an approximation. When dealing with a 256 color .gif, a 24-bit color .tif, and a bit of composed CMYK text, all embeded within one document (such as a paste up program like Adobe InDesign, use it for this purpose daily), there's no way to guarantee the "same" color in all three objects will match at printed output. Add in an export to PDF prior to printing and a little transparency blending space, and you will have no hope of color matching at the end through conversion.
RGP is an addative process for producing color to the eye. CMYK is a subtractive process for producing color on surfaces that bounce light to your eye. They don't equate.
Yes, yes, you're exactly right. The silence is killing us SlashDotters, but I think we all just need to wait this out.
Maybe it's just the pressure for profitability, but I continue to be blown away at RedHat's committment to Free Software and community commitment. These guys have a huge share of the GNU/Linux commercial market and yet they continue to be as open as is possible for a for-profit company.
They have invested a ton of effort into software now distributed by most other distributions (GNOME, RPM, kernel development, graphics, etc.). I don't mean that there aren't others playing, too. But it seems every time I expect RedHat to start trying to greedily hawk their enviable position, they do just the opposite.
Thanks RedHat!
Vim's author, Bram Moolenaar, is working on a multi-platform software installer/maintainer called AAP. It's still young, but might be what the OP is looking for.
You must be new here.
<sigh> Trollish, but I'll bite...
You are keen to impress upon us your intelligence, but I see little insight in your comments. Although apparently not obvious to you, this was a rhetorical statement, intended not to find fact, but to place perspective on my following comments through linguistic turn.
Again, intelligence of the users has nothing to do with the question. The OP is asking for a method with which to exchange information with MS Word users collaboratively. TeX mark-up via CVS, while certainly a desirable method for exchange among skilled users, does not even slightly address the usability issues presented by colleagues skilled only in MS Word. They may have doctorate degrees but that doesn't mean they have facile abilities with code.
Posing a solution with accompanying explanation as to the advantages and disadvantages I find most helpful. That you see TeX/CVS as "optimal" in an instance where exchange with unskilled associates is required does not strike me as entirely balanced. Not even most of a problem is the technical solution. Thus my emphasis on usability.
Likewise, seeing others as more incompetent than yourself is at the least short-sighted, or worse, arrogant.
Resorting here to Shakespeare's lowest form of wit does indeed mark you as a troll. Ah, yes, your targeting of me as your SlashDot Foe does confirm it... I have fed another one.
Did you actually read what you wrote? I took this to be a humorous comment until about half way through when I realized you were serious. Given the MS Office bias we see in the article, I doubt the average computer user the poster suggests would be able to understand (much less be productive with) the sophisticated combination of software you present as a solution. Starting from MS Office, I wouldn't expect anyone in this scenario to migrate to the process you recommend.
Granted, the advice appears technically adequate, but it needs to be packaged in some singular, usable, GUI product, appropriately named to illicit thoughts of "easy", "simple" or "obvious." Collaboration does not need to be a complicated affair, but most solutions to date do not inspire those in userland to demand them.
Despite Microsoft and Corel word processors having offered collaborative features for years, there is something blocking general usage. Perhaps it's the document model itself or perhaps it's the complicated implementation in these applications. Your CVS method solves the former issue, but the process as described doesn't suggest one easier to use.
Dude, that was hilarious. (And I *never* laugh at SlashDot humor.)
Just discovered a fantastic one this morning: TopoZone. In an age where everybody everywhere is trying to make a buck on information, it's refreshing to find an government/academic grade information store accessible (digitally at least) for free.
This is a redundant comment to another more detailed one I entered farther down in the thread, but if you want a simpler Vim, check out my Cream for Vim project.
I guess my point was that it's not automatic. And it also applies only to syntax highlighting, not :set filetype=. This means you can't use filetype-specific mappings and auto-template insertions, e.g., p{key} can't insert a paragraph tag in the HTML portion and a bracket full of paragraph styles in the CSS portion.
Indeed Vim rocks! Not only does it have blinding speed, but with some effort, it can be made to do almost anything. I'll respond specifically to each feature requested:
However...
...although other posters have already pointed out various scripts you can add to give you the features you want, you can also try my pre-assembled package of scripts for Vim, Cream. It makes Vim keyboard shortcuts nearly CUA-compliant (Ctrl/Alt/Shift + letter) and otherwise masquerades Vim as a more familiar feeling power text editor. Most long-time Vim users barely recognize it, but Apple/Windows users will find it much more familiar than the sometimes cryptic Vim.
I've been liking this guy's stuff lately. He did the Blender3D site, and if you follow the links, some others that have a similar look. Just clean color bars with a nice asymetric balance, navigation is integral to the design, not just patched into some corner block some where.
Chris Croome (hi dude!) had a role in the WebArchitects page which IMO is the right way to do a text-only approach... let color do the work, not graphics.
Finally, my own Cream for Vim page is a monochromatic (single hue) design in a text-only approach. It uses a simple sidebar positive/negative design, which is not only easy to read, but very easy to maintain.