[wplug] Book published using Open Source software

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 21:47 -0400, DK wrote:
> Always good to discover such uses of OSS.  Wish Amazon made that known
> on their site.  Maybe submit to Slashdot for alittle more publicity.

I wasn't going to say much, but here's a little "insight" from an author
who has dealt with publishing for over a dozen years.  ;)

- Desktop Publishing (DTP) is what publishers use, including MS itself

The biggest and most grossly proliferated falsehood is that books are
written in MS Word (or any word processor, WP) at publication houses.
They never have been.  They never will be.  Publication houses "cater"
to home writers who will not use anything but MS Word, and allow them to
"typeset" in MS Word, but they are actually having them export that
"typeset" and aren't using MS Word at all.

I ran into this ignorance first-hand with a manager at a Fortune 20
company.  He was forcing me to use MS Word to write a 200+ page
technical manual.  Crashes, issues, etc... were killing me.  I was used
to Adobe Framemaker (among other DTPs).  He just told me to call tech
support when I crashed.  He didn't believe what happened next.

Being a Fortune 20 company, we have on-site Microsoft employees as our
tech support.  The Microsoft employee went through a typical editing
session with myself, and once I inserted yet another figure, it hung and
eventually crashed again.  He then asked, "is this your first graphic?"
I then answered, "no, it's about my 25th figure."  What he -- a
Microsoft employee -- said next I'll never forget ...

"What the hell are you using MS Word for?"
"My manager told me that is our standard."
"You don't use MS Word for lots of figures, is this a manual?"
"Yes, it's our network documentation."
"Why are you not using Adobe FrameMaker?"
"I asked my manager the same thing."
"Listen, tell your manager even we, Microsoft, write our MS Office
manuals in Adobe Framemaker."

No _lie_.  That was 2003.  ;)

- DTP was the first, commodity WYSIWYG, and on Windows too

In earlier years, they were written in typeset languages, including
later WYSIWYM (what you see is what you _mean_) GUI.  And for
publishing, the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you _get_) era begins with
desktop publishing (DTP), _not_ word processing.

People forget that Mac made DTP commodity.  People also forget the first
WYSIWYG for Windows was _not_ MS Word or any WP, but Ami, later enhanced
into Ami Pro, a DTP.  Ami is why I personally started "dealing" with
Windows, although I preferred the native and true 32-bit OS/2 version of
Ami Pro once it was available.

WP is a _dead_ technology, it was a "stop gap" from the early terminals
and _died_ the day Apple introduced the production Mac and Microsoft
made OS/2 and then Windows at least partially stable with a select
version of 386Enhanced mode.

- People prefer layout, it costs companies $2B a year to use WP

People prefer layout.  Whether it's typeset with strict styles or a full
frame-layout like a DTP, people prefer formal layout once they use it.
In fact, even MS-only cronies constantly complain why they can't
Microsoft make a more capable version of MS Publisher, of which they are
rather "enlightened" once I explain DTP to them.

Several industry organizations speculate that companies _waste_ $2B a
year in productivity due to reformatting issues with WP.  Everything
from lack of style standards to "fighting" a WP insistence to screw up
layout.  Again, WP is a technology for when layout wasn't visual, but
typeset was "too difficult" for most.  Once DTP arrived, WP should have
been dead.

- The proliferation of WP and the DTP oversight

The biggest problems with WP has been assumption and proliferation.
People used Word Perfect and assumed WP was the way.  In the early '90s,
Ami and, then, Ami Pro were actually heavily used and quickly gaining
marketshare.  Unfortunately, that's when OEM bundling took over.

First off, there is the farce that Word Perfect didn't make a Windows
version fast enough.  Lie.  Word Perfect 5.2 (which had all the native
GUI widgets) was released in early 1992, and the most excellent 6.0
release came in 1993 (with tag exposure).  Furthermore, many just didn't
know about Ami Pro, a really ease-to-use DTP for consumers.

Secondly, Word Perfect _continued_ to outsell MS Office/Word on the
retail shelf (as did Lotus 1-2-3 versus MS Office/Excel).  But Microsoft
quickly realized, Jochaim Kempin with their German branch got Vobis to
switch to 100% MS-DOS from 100% DR-DOS, that 90% of consumers could get
their software from the OEM.  That's when Microsoft started bundling MS
Office "for free" with PCs, and the take-over began.

Third, in 18 months, MS Office dominated.  I mean, why would a company
pay $500+ to upgrade Word Perfect + 1-2-3 or Ami Pro + 1-2-3 when MS
Office was free.  Despite many IT departments that tried to proliferate
"there is no free lunch," corporate managers gave into the product
bundling.

Fourth, by 1995, MS Office/Word 4.x was now the standard, eroding any
gains by Ami Pro, and displacing Word Perfect -- even though many
reviews considered Word Perfect 6.0 a much better WP, with much better
document longevity (although it still stuck with law and medicine --
most of WP's remaining 20M customers).

Fifth, this is when Lotus was stupid.  Lotus thought the volume of MS
Word meant they had to change to a WP, and drop a DTP product.  So they
created Lotus Word Pro.  All that did was completely eliminate all of
their existing DTP basis with the loss of Ami Pro, and no one was going
to choose any other WP option other than MS Word.

- My professional frustration with MS Word

Like most people, I got shoved into using MS Office/Word at version
4.3/6.0, then 7.0 (95) and then by 8.0 (97) most people considered it
"the standard."  Of course, it was MS Word 8.0 (97) where I finally said
"enough."

You see, I write professional documentation, and I am a published
author.  I work on _collaborative_ documentation projects (and I'm not
talking about in the open source community), such projects that are 30+
years old.  E.g., IEEE transactions.  The IEEE long ago adopted Knuth's
1979+ LaTeX typeset, and that's why it still can be edited (not just
merely viewed or re-edited).  Although the IEEE maintains a MS Word 6.0
template for its 2000 style guide (of which I've modified for when I
need it), it's still not accepted for many things.

MS Office/Word gave me my first fits once I was forced to "upgrade" to
MS Office/Word 7.0 (95).  I lost the few templates I had at the time,
and some of my documents were either mis-formatted and a select few
completely hosed.  I didn't have much in MS Office/Word at the time, so
I didn't worry too much.

In fact, my biggest gripe of Office/Word 95 came with _lack_ of
compatibility with MS Windows NT 3.1/3.5[0].  I had to upgrade to
Windows NT 3.51 "Daytona," and I quickly began to cure how NT became
"Chicago's bitch" (Chicago = MS-DOS 7 + Windows 4 = Windows 95).  The
security was non-existent and if you installed Office/Word 95 for one
user, things would break if another user logged in.

But it wasn't even two (2) years that Office/Word 97 came out, and
that's when I finally _kicked_ it.  First, it was still ignorant of NT,
even on NT 4.0, I had the same multi-user/registry issues (forcing me to
use the very poorly implemented "Roaming Profiles").  But secondly, I
had more investments in Office/Word 95 and Office/Word 4.3/6.0 prior.  I
lost my recently designed IEEE Styles-compliant template, and virtually
_all_ of my other templates, and many documents had been raped in
formatting.

That's when I looked to an alternative.

- My history with DTP, then WP/typeset and DTP, now back to DTP

As I mentioned, I started with Ami Pro.  I ran OS/2 most of college
(early-to-mid '90s), including the latter, native version.  I tried to
keep running it (along with 1-2-3 r4) for as long as I could, into 1995,
but eventually I had to look elsewhere.  Especially now that I was
forced into Windows NT 3.51 (and, in 1997, NT 4.0 - luckily I avoided
ever having to support the "Chicago" bastard and bundle of DOS+Windows
and continuation of 386Enhanced mode -- yes, that's what 95/98/Me still
are, despite marketing!).

The one Microsoft application I didn't mind (being that I preferred Ami
Pro and 1-2-3) was PowerPoint.  That's when I discovered StarOffice.
The StarImpress 3.0 presenter was _vastly_superior_ to MS PowerPoint in
both Office 4.3 and, later, Office 7.0/95.  MS PowerPoint also lacked
HTML export, and the latter add-ins for PowerPoint 95 _sucked_ compared
to StarImpress 3.0's _native_ export.  So I bought it and started using
its Word Processor and came to a pleasant surprise.

StarWriter 3.0, even though it was a WP, had a _strong_ typeset and
framing underneath.  What did this allow it to do?  It imported my Ami
Pro 3.x documents!  Yes, this feature continued even through StarOffice
5.2 of 2000+ (although only in the Windows version), but it allowed me
to continue to use my Ami Pro documents for some time to come!  I.e.,
now that I'm on to StarOffice 8 (and OpenOffice 2.x -- yes, I actually
pay for StarOffice ;), I have a document longevity that spans back
_15_years_ (StarWriter 3.0-5.0 was very well documented and can be
read/edited almost verbatim in all Open/StarOffice versions today,
although 1.0-2.0 had a few quirks/differences)!

Of course, StarWriter is still a WP, a much better and more standard
than MS Word, but still a WP.  So that's when I tried to find a more
complementary solution.  And that lead me back to LaTeX, the standard
typeset of the AMS and IEEE.  What I found was LyX (http://www.lyx.org),
a WYSIWYM for LaTeX, so by 1997, I was sold!  I still produce all of my
articles and manuals in LyX, and have since 1997 (I actually used
FoilTeX to do presentations for awhile, but stopped once OpenOffice.org,
and OOo-based StarOffice, became available).

The great thing about LaTeX is the long, standard history.  Virtually
every standard documentation language program, including ODF programs
like OpenOffice.org/StarOffice imports/exports LaTeX now.  MathML (used
in ODF) even converts to/from LaTeX _perfectly_.  And publishers like
it, especially since it converts into PDF _very_richly_.

- Scribus:  Feature-rich (including import/export) Free[dom] DTP!

More recently, like others, I've discovered Scribus.  Scribus is
actually very, very leading-edge, professional DTP of the "Adobe
InDesign" / "Quark Xpress" calibre.  Scribus on its own may see "too
free-form," but that's until you discover it can _in-line_ ODF documents
(as well as LaTeX or anything EPS, etc...) _directly_.  I.e., you can
have your contributors write in ODF text (via
OpenOffice.org/StarOffice), and then import ODF text directly into
frames of Scribus, including re-applying styles.  Win-win-win!

Scribus really has a sprawling set of features, including several
"industry firsts" features (like select PDF and other features,
standards compliance, etc... -- a few even before Adobe's own apps!).
I'm still writing most of my technical manuals in LyX, because the
default LaTeX styles are pretty much universal and uniform.  If I had to
modify LaTeX styles (and the LyX presentation of them), I honestly
wouldn't use it -- hence why I'm glad a real DTP has made it in Scribus.

Scribus has really brought DTP to the world, again.  It runs very well
on Linux/UNIX and Mac (uses native Qt), and the Windows version is
coming along very well.  LyX also runs on all three platforms, although
getting the TeTeX and other components all "integrated" under Windows
(much easier on Mac) is a PITA, so I don't recommend it.  Using Scribus
for your frame layout of ODF text/graphics from multiple contributors is
definitely the "way-to-go" now.  Especially given the fact that Scribus
makes everything _easy_ when it comes to layout, and has _extensive_
publisher-driven output support.

There is _no_ reason people shouldn't be using Scribus now, other than
unfamiliarity (which means it's not the application, but the user ;).



-- 
Bryan J. Smith         Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org   http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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