Tag Archives: Tux

Don’t Fear the Penguin, Part 3 – Linux Publishing Tools

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TuxTattoo

At one time, Linux aficionados who write – especially self-published authors – faced the hassle of getting access to a system running Windows or Mac to get their books ready for publication. Those days are over. The open-source world offers increasingly powerful tools for writers. Though I’m not aware of a Linux version of the popular writer’s tool Scrivener at this time, I’ve never really felt a need for it, except for its handy e-book conversion feature. Now there are other options.

The first is Calibre, a general-purpose e-book management program created by Kovid Goyal. The program allows you to catalog your e-books, read them on your computer, and synch with your e-reader device. More important to me as an author is the e-book conversion feature. Calibre lets you import your word processor document, apply formatting, and generate features such as tables of contents. It also lets you view and manipulate the raw HTML code that comprises your book, which is really handy for both editing and troubleshooting. I want to give props to the program’s creator, because when I posted a question on the program’s forum, he answered it personally.

At this point I must note that there are two ways a writer can proceed in book creation, One way is to do the formatting in a standard word processor and a conversion application to get it ready. I’ve tried this in the past (on my first book Centrifugal Force) and it was a troublesome approach. Conversion tools inevitably mess up some of the formatting, particularly if you’re using Open Office or Libre Office rather than Microsoft Word. The better approach is to do as little formatting as possible up front, saving if for the publishing program. With this approach it’s helpful to use unique and consistent text markers for specific features of the book, for example, to use asterisks or hash-tags to indicate scene transitions. These can be updated by using the search/replace features of the publishing program. This is how I did my second book, Fidelio’s Automata — and I didn’t have to reboot to Windows AT ALL to do the conversion.

This brings us to the topic of desktop publishing. For those of you have never used one (PageMaker and QuarkXPress ) are popular non-free options), it’s a whole different animal than word processing. Desktop publishing applications are focused on layout, and making the printed matter look good. Word processors do this, but not well. For example, I’ve gone through a rather involved process to make Open Office suppress page headers on the first page of each chapter. Another important consideration is that just-in-time publishers like Lightning Source require a very specific type of PDF (PDF/x-1a:2001) to be submitted for book manufacture. Yes, any good word processor can export a generic PDF, but can they embed fonts and do other necessary setup?

For desktop publishing, the Linux world has Scribus. In the past the program had a number of serious problems. The worst was that the stable version didn’t create the correct PDF formats; for that you had to use an unstable beta version of the program. As of version 1.4.5, this is fixed. Another weakness affects Scribus’ most powerful feature, its scripting facility, which allows you to perform repetitive programming tasks quickly. Scripts must be written in the Python language, which isn’t at all difficult for someone who already knows programming. The difficult is with the program’s library functions, which the script must access to do anything useful. The Scribus help files contain a reference, but it’s not thorough enough. It took me hours of tinkering to figure out how to do search/replace within a multi-page document. It’s also not totally intuitive how to insert or delete pages without corrupting the left/right formatting. As with most open-source programs, there’s an online forum; unfortunately most participants seem to be doing short works like newsletters or fliers, not novels. There are “how to” books for Scribus, but I hate buying a general-purpose book to learn one task. Sometime soon I will convert my notes into a quick step by step guide for novel creation, which I’ll make available for 99 cents on Amazon, along with my custom python formatting scripts.

As you’d expect both of these programs are also available for Mac OSX and Windows.

Next week’s installation, if I don’t get distracted by any wacky news events, will discuss Linux tools for musicians.

About the illustration: some people are crazy enough about Linux to get the Mighty Penguin Tux embedded in the skin. Tattoo by Kyle Dunbar.

 

Emperor Penguin of the Arts

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PenguinArts

I think it’s safe to say that the days when few people had heard of Linux (and its Penguin mascot Tux, as shown above) are over. It still has a “for nerds only” reputation, which I would like to dispel. Over the years this free, open-source operating system has been adapted to run on almost every kind of hardware for just about every purpose. It’s now full of excellent tools for writers and artists, and musicians to the point where it can challenge Mac for the crown of the creative persons’ preferred OS.

I’ve been using Linux since the early 1990’s, not long after uber-hacker Linus Torvalds first created it, deriving it from AT&T’s powerful and versatile Unix operating system. At that time, it was a place where only true techies dared venture. Over the years Linux has evolved from an engineer’s toy to a tool friendly enough to be used by the masses. Though you won’t see it advertised on product packaging, Linux integrates easily with a wide range of hardware: everything I need to interface with my PC, from Android phones to MIDI keyboards.

Unlike commercial systems like Microsoft Windows, developers don’t need anyone’s permission to create their own distributions (or “distros”) of Linux. There are many, and I’ve tried most of them, but settled on Ubuntu, currently one of the easiest distros to install, maintain and use. (The name is a Bantu word meaning “human kindness.”) Ubuntu is available for free download from ubuntu.com, though the site requests a modest donation to fund further development. Like all open-source projects, they also depend on the help of volunteer developers and testers to create these amazing projects.

Recently, though, another distro has become my favorite – Ubuntu Studio, available from ubuntostudio.org. Studio is a modified version of Ubuntu that comes pre-loaded with many tools (also free) that are useful for writers, artists and musicians. Though not all of my favorite programs are pre-loaded, most are easy to get, with an amazing tool called “apt.” Apt helps you find these applications on the Internet, and automates their download and installation. Another reason I prefer the Studio version is that it uses the older desktop-icon based user interface. The mainstream Ubuntu distro looks and feels somewhat like Windows 8, which I find rather annoying. As with most Linux distros, Ubuntu works on all Windows-compatible PC’s. The installer includes a tool that allow the user to shrink the Windows partition on their disk drive, so that a Linux partition can be installed alongside. When the computer starts up, it displays a start-up menu from which one can choose either Linux or Windows.

In the following posts I’ll detail some of the programs I use on Ubuntu in my creative endeavors. In compiling the list, I realized it was far too long for one post. For now, for the sake of those who fear they’d miss their Microsoft Office if they switched over, I’ll briefly mention the application that I’m using to created and edit this article.

Open Office and Libre Office are two versions of a free, open-source office suite similar to Microsoft Office, but not as gratuitously complicated. They provide excellent replacements for Word, Excel, and Power Point, which I use on a daily basis. These programs can inter-operate with MS Office by exporting Microsoft formats such as “doc” and “xls.” (The version I’m using can’t output the newer formats, such as docx and xlsx, but it can read and convert them.) Open Office (available from openoffice.org) is the original, which I prefer because I’m familiar with it. Libre Office, which now comes standard on most Linux distros, was split off from Open Office by members of the original development team, but has a similar feature set and interface. By the way, these programs are, like many other open source applications, have available versions for Windows and MacOS.

As I anticipated, this post has gotten plenty long. Next week we’ll discuss free graphic application that are just as powerful as Adobe’s pricey products Photoshop and Illustrator.