[CLUE-Tech] Linux for publishing and the masses

[Matt Gushee]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 12:03:17PM +0000, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> 
> > On this topic... I think someone has already mentioned the Gimp as a
> > suitable Photoshop replacement,

Oof. I guess it depends what you want to do with it. I can remember a
few years ago when everyone was excited about GIMP 1.0 being the first
really good mainstream-ish app for Linux. In those days a lot of people
were saying that it was better than Photoshop, but I think everyone has
realized that from most points of view, that was a bit of an
exaggeration. One area where the GIMP is certainly superior is its
scripting interface. That's a very cool thing, but I'm not sure how
valuable it is, given that few people are really good at both
programming and graphic design. Nonetheless, the GIMP is arguably a
credible competitor to Photoshop for Web graphics. But print is a
problem; as I think somebody has pointed out, the GIMP doesn't do
professional-quality color separations ... nor does any other Linux
application, as far as I know.


but has anyone tried Sodipodi? It seems
> > to be an Illustrator-like application. It only saves in SVG and exports
> > to PNG, but it can (apparently) produce some pretty sweet graphics:
> > http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/
> > 
> > Since I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to computer graphics, someone
> > else will have to evaluate Sodipodi in terms of its quality as a
> > graphics app...but it looks pretty sweet.
> > 
> > Zonker
> > -- 
> > Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
> > jzb at dissociatedpress.net
> > Aim: zonkerjoe
> > http://www.dissociatedpress.net
> 
> There's also a program called Sketch.  It requires Python and a graphics 
> library, and possibly GTK or GNOME as well.

You make it sound so hard! The graphics library you refer to is the
more-or-less-standard one for Python, the Python Imaging Library.
Although it's not part of the core Python distribution, it seems like
all recent Linux distros have it as a package (usually called something
like python-imaging).

Sketch 6.x, the stable version, uses the Tk GUI toolkit, so it doesn't
need GTK. The development version, 7.x, uses GTK.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee at havenrock.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)