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."

That is possible now days..

[badran]

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...

Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[johnthorensen]

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...

There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

It's possible to do, in some industries

[slusich]

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.

Re:nothing to fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It would have been nice

[gEvil (beta)]

Looking at the book that's available for download, the entire "layout/desktop publishing" aspect of it is incredibly pedestrian. He essentially set it to full justification and that's about it. No adjustments were made with regard to hyphenation. Page numbering is centered and there is no gutter. What he's done is some word processing on a 4.5x8 inch page.

Re:nothing to fear...

[heinousjay]

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.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[unavailable]

Next time you try out an opensource app and find its features below your standards, go compose a detailed wishlist, with proper argumentation and detailed description for every missing feature.

Nobody is asking for patches, but some feedback from professionals is always appreciated. Implementation hints are also welcomed, even if you are not a programmer.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Bert64]

Image editing is one area where proprietary software doesn't suck...
There are standardised image formats, regardless of what software you use. Proprietary image editing software doesn't keep you locked in to it's own formats, so publishers of such software have to compete on product quality rather than relying on you being forced to keep buying their latest versions.

GIMP!

[christurkel]

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?

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you mention Inkscape, it could do for me what Freehand and Illustrator couldn't: do what I want without reading a 800 page book. I could really start right away, and in the commercial options I didn't have a clue.

Re:nothing to fear...

[zCyl]

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.

mod parent down

[mumblestheclown]

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.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[honkycat]

If you really want to encourage free software development, one of the best things you can do is to use it. It's not always easy to find the stumbling blocks until you actually try to use the software end-to-end. There aren't many hacker types who actually work in the publishing industry, so having a publisher who is interested in feeding back his needs to the hacking community is invaluable.

It's even better that he was willing to play trial-and-error because that helps the software to improve to meet his needs, but also allows him to adjust his workflow to meet the needs of the software. This allows the possibility of actually improving the workflow compared to proprietary solutions. At the least, it means that perhaps the free software solution doesn't have to implement absolutely every feature of the proprietary software, since a change in the workflow can obviate the need for some of them.

So now, thanks to this guy, we have an example of a real-world publisher who has actually shown that you can do everything you need using these tools. If he's willing to share his methods, then that makes it easier for others to do the same. That's awesome.

So no, it's not absolutely necessary to commit yourself fully to free software just because you think it's better. However, I think you can make a pretty strong argument that you do much more for the community by doing so. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, though, so each can give according to his ability/willingness.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Kjella]

Commercial software isn't necessarily evil, it is a different development method.

And most of all, it's the #1 method to get stuff developed where there's more money than "scratch an itch" developers. Granted, there's some commercial OSS developers too, but for the most part closed source is dominating in areas like:

• Create software for newbies, where if you can develop it yourself you're pretty much disqualified from needing/wanting/liking that tool.
  
• Create software for specialized user groups where there's just too few OSS developers to get a usable tool off the ground.
  
• Create software that only corporations need, which are typically really dull. And as companies go, they don't like OSS because they're in a competition. If you and I both have a great office suit, great. If my company and the competing company both have an excellent logistics system, not so good.
  
• Once-off applications such as games, where you pull something together, release it, people use it, then shelf it. There's some classics that "live forever" though. Another good example would be tax software.
  
• Applications with serious server-side resources, such as MMORPGs.

I don't think OSS will be able to adapt to every possible form of software development. In fact, I would be happy if it could corner the market for "basic" desktop use, so that commercial software would get written for the Linux platform. For me personally Oblivion is right now (and other games to come) a huge hook to Windows, and I don't see OSS developing anything like it any time soon.

One Man Publishing House Uses OSS Only!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!!!!

Re:Not surprising

[connorbd]

Uh, how many mainstream publishers openly use TeX (or *roff for that matter) for anything but technical books and papers? Most of them don't even talk about what they use for typesetting to begin with, and if they do they might mention the fonts they use.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, the monitor is an additive colorspace, as opposed to subtractive. However, if you start your document as CMYK, then everytime you apply a filter or do something that will change any of the color values, all of those calculations are done in the CMYK space. By the way, may I ask what your professional prepress experience is?

Re:nothing to fear...

[evought]

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.

the key word is "pre-packaged"

[mangu]

In my dealings with proprietary software users, one argument that often gets thrown is the "one-stop-shopping". There is a mentality that seems to prefer having everything packed together.

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.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[johnthorensen]

Some questions:

Did you use the latest version ?
Yes. Note that I used the word "recently" to describe when I tried it out. I tried Scribus 1.3.3.1 on both Windows and Linux.


Define "immature" ?
Not having many features that most professionals take for granted. Palette windows that don't resize correctly and other goofy UI bugs. Lack of solid, professionally written documentation. No text box margins. Broken PDF exporter. Broken PostScript importer. Opening even moderately-sized documents takes forever. Would you like me to continue?

Scribus is admittedly usable for some projects but it's not yet qualified to be a mission-critical application. I certainly wouldn't stake MY job on it.


What is your professional qualifications to make such a judgement ?
Besides knowing how to conjugate the verb "to be" you mean? How about 10 years as a graphic designer? That enough for you??? That sort of accusatory question really grates on me, and doesn't exactly invite me to come over to Scribus.

Incidentally, the Scribus bios make my point nicely. I see a lot of things like "DTP/IT Consultant", "pre-press and software engineer", et cetera but I don't see much in the way of experienced designers. Scribus is what you get when engineers try to design software; typical of most open-source applications.

Live, Cinelerra, MainActor

[layer3switch]

"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.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[njh]

WTF does CMYK have to do with a low resolution web comic of dubious artistic talent? It sounds more like Illiad is just looking for an excuse. I've seen some damn fine comics drawn in inkscape by real artists.

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[Chris_Jefferson]

If it was an important part of your job, would you want "rudimentary support"?

Re:There is such a thing as pragmatism...

[larry bagina]

Evidently, he needs CMYK for gif pictures that go on a web page. Maybe someday he'll explain why he isn't funny.