Book Update, and Question About What Other Open Source Products to Write About

Hi all,

Well, the pieces are all on the board, kind of -- just not together yet.

The good news is, my book is in line to be proofed. (argh.) And we're going to do a new title and cover but who knows what.  I still love the road theme stuff we all came up with but not sure what will happen. I will know more in October.

The more interesting news is that my editor at Prentice Hall is eager to have me write mini-books for their Shortcuts program. They're roughly 30-50 page short PDF books on particular topics. I'm not a programmer so won't be covering Ajax or Ruby anytime soon, or ever, for that matter. But I can definitely elucidate how to use open source end user programs: Moodle, perhaps, and other K-12 oriented programs, or whatever else.

So that's my question to you:

- What end-user open source product would you like to see a Shortcut written on?

- What  end-user open source product do you think there's the most demand for?

- Any other thoughts on topics to write about?

Thanks,

Solveig

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Comments

[Pablo]

Hi:

I think there are two programs that you must be consider: Inkscape, the draw program and Scribus, the desktop publisher. Maybe those programs are not the most popular, but it represent good tools for professional work.

greetings!!!

[Euan]

Seconded, Inkscape and Scribus.

[Linker]

Maybe beginning GIMP? (If possible in that small a format)

[Solveig Haugland]

I was hoping someone would give me encouragement to talk about Gimp. ;> I love the graphics stuff.

I would really like to get into Inkscape -- haven't looked at it and that sounds like a great pairing for Gimp.

And I do need to look at Scribus since Publisher is something that there isn't a clear substitute for in OOo, though one can do a lot of useful and similar things.

Thanks!

Solveig

[Samuel deHuszar Allen]

It's funny, I was going to jump on the scene and shout Inkscape and Scribus from the rooftops, but here you all are already doing that. :)

GIMP is an awesome program, but is definately the over-served of the bunch. There's a fantastic book which was recently released: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-GIMP-Professional-Akkana-Peck/dp/1590595874/sr=8-1/qid=1158425783/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6744318-0121541?ie=UTF8&s=books

If you're going to address GiMP, I'd definately recommend that you find some piece of it that no one talks about.

With that in mind, I think both Inkscape and Scribus go hand in hand with your OpenOffice.org niche. Inkscape is a perfect Illustrator-like app which is a natural leap from Draw, for when one needs more sophisticated tools. And as you said, Scribus could be a fabulous Publisher alternative, but the community has not Published much in the way of any documents or articles which give a solid grounding in the DTP way. Only in various pieces of Scribus and how you'd do DTP stuff with it.

One of the most powerful aspects of Open-Source is that it allows anyone to become proficient in a given skillset without having to invest tremendous sums in it's tools. But the drawback is that there is not much to inform users about the skillset itself. And while most commercial apps have extensive documentation, they ALSO have books which use their tools as a launchpad to discuss how to explore a new skillset.

There are very few texts like this, though I would argue the above GiMP book I linked to takes this approach.

Food for thunk.

[Samuel deHuszar Allen]

errr... that should read: "there are very few texts like this in the Open-Source world."

[André Cotte]

I also think that Scribus is a good choice.

[Dan Moore]

Firefox. Unless there's already a good written guide out there I don't know about. (I looked for one, briefly).

I think anything promoting RSS readers is good, so pick your favorite open source RSS reader.

Does winamp have a good manual? (I think it's open source.)