On 8/26/14 3:53 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Ken Springer <snowshed1@...3003...> wrote:
Not being "end-to-end" is an issue where it seems most open source projects have some catching up to do. Plus bugs, which is why I finally gave up on Libre Office. I think that's frustrating for many new uses of open source software that are used to more options instead of having to go to extra work to do the additional converting.
I find the opposite. I have InDesign 2014 and it's impossible for me to overstate how much I loathe booting into Win7 to use it. And from the days of Illustrator 6 and Photoshop 4 all the way through the current versions of the Adobe suite there have always been potential pitfalls when moving items from one program to another. In other words, I find it *easier* to move most things through formats in the open-source world. To be fair, some things are harder.
Agreed, there's always been the pitfalls, and always will be. Simply no way around it, as programmers make mistakes, specs for a particular file format often changes as time goes by, and new features will always come along.
These days, though, most people who use computers don't want to have to do things outside the program they are using. I'd wager most don't know how, and don't want to have to go through those extra steps. In fact, my friend is downright pi$$ed it doesn't export jpg, which arguably is probably the most common file format out there for graphics. And for her use, and my usual uses, jpg is the better choice.
Myself, I'll do it, but I don't like doing it anymore. I simply want to get the job done as fast as I can. By fast, that means eliminating any other needed steps of other software when I know some software will do it for me.
Is it Adobe, Win7, or both that you loathe?
I'm way happier with linux as my main OS and XP running in its little virtual "jail cell" for when I need the Adobe stuff. I have lots of little scripts and tweaks that really make my life a thousand times easier than when in I'm in Windows. I think my favorite is the 'chop' command. 'chop 2 4' means: take every PDF in the folder, remove all pages except 2 and 4. Really stupid, but beats having to fire up some GUI once a month to trim a set of files. I could go on, but I won't ;)
I really would like to try Linux. On the computer I built, I even left space on the boot drive to install Linux some day. But time is a factor, I have none. LOL So, those extra steps you don't mind doing keeps me just further away from the opportunity to try Linux.
The fact that you have those scripts and tweaks puts you in a class of user apart from the average user today. That's not a bad thing, but it's also something I lost interest in long, long ago. There are other things in my life I'd rather do. :-)
It also depends on the users needs. For me, I might have to do something like your chop command once in 4 months. That's not worth my time to even attempt a script, since I can do the same thing using Preview in OS X Mountain Lion. Not as quickly, but not really egregious either.
Anyway, wandering a bit more toward the topic - Scribus doesn't have all of the features of InDesign (nor will it, or should it). But it is a solid DTP program, and makes excellent PDFs. When I need to lay out a multi-page item, it's my first choice. Never had any trouble importing Inkscape drawings into Scribus either.
I can't imagine ever needing all the features of InDesign. Heck, I don't even know what they are. LOL Even worse, I can't imagine even wanting to pay for it. <G>
Being an open source program, I'm not surprised there's no problem importing Inkscape drawings. Just like you rarely have problems importing MS files into MS software. From the outside looking in, it seems there's a lot of cooperation in this area.