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On 21/06/12 21:12, Påvel Nicklasson wrote:
> 
> 
> 2012/6/21 Rainer M Krug <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
> 
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>> 
>> The editorial work was done with free software in Linux Kubuntu.
>> 
> 
> Very nice - could you possibly elaborate a bit which programs you used for 
> what?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course he usual suspects: GIMP for image manipulation, LibreOffice for 
> recieving and
> communicating with the authors early on, none of them used LaTeX/LyX. In the 
> humanities it is
> common to recieve papers written in 20+ year old word processors and LibO is 
> very good to open
> and convert such nasty things. I converted all files to plain text and 
> imported them to LyX. I
> tested some conversion tools from LibO to LaTeX, but I think it is faster to 
> use plain .txt. Of
> course this depends on the kind of papers, quality of the text, kind of 
> publication and so on.
> 
> PDFMod is a very good program to manipulate and split PDF-files. Very useful 
> to extract each
> paper when sending the papers back to authors.
> 
> KDE may be somewhat heavy and perhaps not my favourite desktop environment, 
> but it has several
> very useful scripts for Dolphin accessible from the right click menu. The 
> scripts handle
> manipulating PDF:s, conversion of images and textfiles. Very useful things 
> when producing a
> book and as a scholar in the humanities I am able to remember just a limited 
> number of terminal
> commands. These scripts have saved me many hours and I do recommend KDE for 
> heavy work.
> 
> In the end I had to make a Postscript file and this was the only hickup. I 
> could not produce
> the ps file in Linux but everything worked perfectly in Windows. I still 
> don't know what went
> wrong in Linux, but I'll have another look on it now when I have no dead line 
> and send a bug
> report if applicable.
> 
> The ps file was converted to PDF in Adobe Distiller (another Windows victory) 
> with the settings
> of the printing house.
> 
> The printing house had never heard about LaTeX and is heavily entrenched in 
> Adobes software.
> Still they accepted my PDF right off and our cooperation was very smooth. I 
> think that they
> were surprised and impressed when I told them that the book had been made in 
> Linux with free
> software that doesn't cost a single krona (Swedish coin).
> 
> The cover was made by a specialist in InDesign and thus not produced in 
> Linux. I think it is
> hard to replace InDesign for this, since the printing house expects an open 
> InDesign file for
> final adjustments.
> 
> I have typeset several academic books in InDesign before, but I must say that 
> the process is
> simpler and with fewer hurdles in LaTeX and especially in LyX, despite the 
> fact that I am still
> learning the program. This was my second book project in LyX. Nowadays I do 
> all my writing in
> LyX and only use LibO Writer when I have to submit papers in word processor 
> format.
> 
> My wishlist includes an Adobe Distiller type of program for Linux and that 
> more printing
> houses would learn about LaTeX/LyX and offer support and advice.

Thanks for the list of tools and how you used them together - very useful 
reading.

It is effectively the same tools I use, only that I use pdftk instead of PDFMod.

Thanks a lot,

Rainer

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