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."

Not surprising

[Free Bird]

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.

It would have been nice

[Arker]

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.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are looking to do a 300 page scientific manual, then no Scribus is not up to it yet. You might however be surprised by the professional posters, leaflets, pamphlets, magazines, brochures, and, yes, books etc that have been done with Scribus. It might of course depend on the version you tried...

Maybe refer to http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories [scribus.net] for some real examples.

Re:GIMP!

[arivanov]

You will have to wait for a few more years I am afraid. Adobe holds a very good selection of patents in this area and GIMP is not going to improve anytime before they expire.

Re:What is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why compare crap to crap.

Both openoffice and MSword are WYSIWYG editors and both require the user to go to dialogue boxes.

Now, if you really wanted to compare logarithmic learning curves vs. exponential learning curves, you would have to compare LaTeX to MSword/ooffice.

In latex for example, a simple \setlength along with the fancyhdr package would solve the problem in no time (and let you do some really interesting things such as size restrictions, multiple boxes not available in ooffice or MSword at the same time). The \setlength command does really give the user much more power but one has to go and find a manual for LaTeX, understand what the setlength command does to begin with to ctually be able to use it. Steeper learning curve but LaTeX leads to much more professionally typeset documents and gets the work done much faster when used by an experienced user.

Re:Scribus & Other Open-Source Software

[Anonymous Coward]

But the problem is that even after taking time out of your schedule to provide a "wishlist", developers of the project can simply reject the ideas because they don't need them (open source is like scratching an itch). A commercial company on the other hand would take missing features seriously, since they are afraid of losing customers - and in turn money. Of course the argument always seems to end with "if you want it, write it yourself". I suspect quite a few people went back to commercial software after hearing that. I think I agree with Linus Torvalds here, open source is fine for low level stuff like operating systems, however, productivity apps are best left to commercial ventures.