On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 13:52 +0530, Andrew Michael Lynn wrote:
[...]
> I did a mini-project in collecting digital content development tools for 
> e-learning
>  a few years ago - and eventually went the same way that the Sarai team is 
> planning
>  - Final Cut Pro on the Mac and Adobe Premiere/Photoshop/Pagemaker for both 
> the Mac
>  and Windows platforms. 

Yeah, that is where we seem to be heading to at this time. However, I
would like for a real FOSS alternative to be available.

> It was not because the open-source versions were inferior in capability - or 
> promised
>  features. Just lacked documentation or howtos for the newbie and irregular 
> user.
>  Unfortunately the professional digital designer was normally inseperable 
> from the Mac
>  platform with its proprietary tools and once familiar does not want to 
> change..(Who
> does! Old dogs...new tricks... aside: I love still love Fedora inspite of the 
> Ubuntu
>  wave!)

Actually, I completely sympathise with such people. Once you have
learnt a tool, and become familiar enough with it that it has become
second nature, an alternative will have to be significantly better
in order to convince people to switch. And, from what I hear from
people, the FOSS tools are as yet not even up to the mark of existing
closed-source equivalents. If Final Cut Pro is the industry standard
for now, maybe we should do the standard FOSS trick of cloning its
interface.

> Many of the tools are available in Dynebolic or Ubuntu Studio. Maybe we
> should move discussion from "development" to "deployment" of FOSS multimedia: 
> Here is a suggestion: We can run a extended workshop that comprehensively
> checks out software for digital content creation, and generates HOWTOs and
>  tutorials... 
> 1.Space and hardware - I can provide space - and PC's with relatively good
>  graphics and RAM for a workshop/ especially over the summer/winter/diwali
>  vacations - prelude to FREEDEL
> 2.People - Students  are aplenty for testing/kearning  and documentation -
>  but would do far-far better with some guidance...

OK, this sounds like a plan. Though, rather than a single workshop, I
would think that this would take a continued engagement for several
months. Someone at Sarai was supposed to have been doing exactly this,
but there has not been much progress. At the same time, I would like
to put together a team of developers to tackle specific programming
tasks in the domain of multimedia FOSS applications. We should talk
about how to make these two things happen.

> Any takers from those with  professional experience in digital design?
> .....?

I do believe that Niyam has "been volunteered" :-) People at Sarai would
probably be willing to pitch in if they saw a concerted effort, with a
real chance of success.

Regards,
Gora


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