Re: booklet

On Thursday 16 September 2010 17:13:08 Carl Symons wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 3:52 AM, Felix Michel <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Felix Michel <[email protected]> 
wrote:
> >> > sorry,
> >> > 
> >> > so i failed to upload it correctly.
> >> > 
> >> > my fault. now it should be up.
> >> > 
> >> > cheers
> >> > 
> >> > felix
> >> > 
> >> > here the link again:
> >> > 
> >> > http://community.kde.org/File:Kde_booklet.pdf
> >> 
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> it looks very nice so far.  ;-)
> >> 
> >> However, it would be an eternal pity, if this nice work was spoiled for
> >> users by some "technical" problems. I notice it is made with "Adobe
> >> InDesign CS3 (5.0)". Due to some ugly personal experience with some
> >> CS3/CS4 created PDFs in the past, I think that *could* lead to problems
> >> when you try to print it on "cheap" home printers, or when you try to
> >> otherwise process it. Also, some (older) PDF viewers may have rendering
> >> problems with some areas (esp. if you use transparencies and other fancy
> >> graphical design elements).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >> Cheers,
> >> Kurt
> > 
> > thanks Kurt. i only used this font once and it is not really useful for
> > my purpose because i need a bold version of this font. i am new at this
> > whole pdf printing stuff, so i am happy to get some hints. maybe we
> > should provide to versions, one without indesign signature and so on and
> > the other one for printing the booklet. what do you think?
> > 
> > cheers
> > 
> > felix
> 
> How about using an open source DTP application? Say KWord? Or Scribus
> if KWord functionality is not adequate to the desired result. I'm
> pretty green with KWord, so I don't know if it can produce a pdf such
> as kde_booklet. Scribus certainly can.
> 
> This is kde-promo. I don't feel good about promoting one of the strong
> proprietary software oligopolists. Especially when open source
> alternatives are so close at hand.

In principle, you're right of course :-) Ideally, as you say, we're KDE and we 
should use KWord.

However, there are a few reasons I don't think a switch is wise this time:
- Felix has already spent some time on this in InDesign. I doubt  transferring 
that work in to Scribus or KWord would be easy. Then there is also a different 
interface to learn
- I'm not sure if KWord is up to it - only because some people still see font 
rendering issues with KWord, though it's not something I tend to notice (and 
that is being worked on too)
- Scribus has issues too. I've never used InDesign so I can't compare it to 
that, but I used to use Quark Xpress quite a lot - that's what you use if 
InDesign is too cheap and nasty ;-) Scribus is a long way lacking in ease of 
getting things done, if not in final results

I know there's an argument that we should use the free tools to breaking 
point, report bugs and make them better. We should.

Ultimately though, I think (s)he who does, decides - so in this case as Felix 
is leading on the layout elements, we let him choose :-)

Having said that, I'd back using ghostscript to redistill the pdf as Kurt 
suggested (seems there are valid technical reasons and as a bonus it hides our 
'sinning' a bit).

Stu

PS: We were here before with Google docs, had a discussion in which we 
couldn't find a free alternative and then etherpad popped up and we switched. 
Personally, I think we might find we can do a lot in KWord in the near future.
 
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