The free software world moves rapidly, but every individual project also moves at its own pace and rhythm. Consequently, it is easy to get behind on the news. Here is a look at the state of the art in the open source desktop publishing (DTP) arena for fall 2011.

What’s new in Scribus

Scribus remains the solid leader among free DTP applications. The big news at the moment is that the next major revision of Scribus, 1.4.0, is in release candidate status. That makes it short of a recommendation for stable usage, but worth testing, and a possible option if you find yourself in need of one of the new features.

1.4.0 will sport a port to the Qt4 application framework, the newest version of Qt. A lot of the internal changes to Scribus during this development cycle have been refactoring updates; as a result the list of bug fixes from the code cleanup is impressive, while the “new feature” bullet points are not as numerous. The canvas now uses Cairo, vector file import is significantly improved, and users who have not tried the unstable builds will get their first taste of render frames, which allow embedding of externally-rendered content like TeX, gnuplot, and Lillypond.

The biggest change in development is support for tables courtesy of Elvis Stansvik, which is important because these are popular structures in word processors, but often an afterthought when doing DTP layout. Stansvik’s work is a Google Summer Of Code (GSoC) project, as is the new Scripter2 Python scripting engine.

You can download Scribus 1.4.0 RC 5 (the latest release as of press time) from scribus.net. Builds are provided for Windows, Mac OS X, and Debian/Ubuntu packages.

Apart from the official releases, the Scribus scripting community has been hard at work this year, too. ScribusStuff is a site managed by OpenDesktop.org (the same folks who brought you the leading theme browsing sites for KDE and GNOME); several new scripts have been added in recent months, including a mail merge generator and utilities to work with CSV files and the new table functionality. Also of note on the scripting front is Olivier Berten’s Pantone script, which allows you to import Pantone swatches into Scribus. Since Pantone does not allow the Scribus project to ship its named spot color lists, this is the best solution for most users.

For a more complete listing of Scribus scripts, consult the Scripts category at the Scribus wiki. Most scripts are the work of single authors, and often do not see individual release announcements when updated.

What’s new in other layout tools

Despite Scribus’ well-earned heavy hitter status, there are several other DTP layout tools that deserve a place on your Applications menu. Tom Lechner’s Laidout tackles a task not covered by Scribus: impositioning a document or image onto the page (or, in most cases, across multiple pages) for printing. Laidout received a minor update at the end of 2010; since then Lechner has been working on Polyptych, a program to “unwrap” 3-D polyhedra, and a configuration tool for XInput2 pointers. Laidout is one of the first applications to support multiple pointing devices in X (officially known to X.org fans as Multi-Pointer X or MPX), so it is definitely ahead of the curve.

Arguably at the other end of the creative spectrum is LyX. While Laidout is a visual artist’s tool geared towards customized output for image-heavy output, LyX is a GUI application designed for typesetting professional-looking articles and papers. LyX is a front-end for TeX and LaTeX, but designed to provide immediate visual feedback as is generally provided in word processors. It received a major update in May of 2011, bumping to version 2.0.0, incorporating literally dozens of new features. Among them are formatting-aware search-and-replace, inline spell-checking and thesaurus, export to XHTML, LuaTeX, and XeTeX, improved table handling, and many new math rendering capabilities.

A new project named PressBooks was announced in 2011, although it is still in alpha development. PressBooks is a book publishing system designed to help authors prepare a single text for printing, output as an ebook, or online publication in HTML. Finally, LibreOffice has been making leaps and strides since it forked from the older OpenOffice.org code base. A new release (numbered 3.4.3) was made in August, and the project announced a public repository for extensions and templates in September.

What’s new in fonts

There have been two major developments in the open font world in 2011. The first is Google’s Web Font Directory, an online repository of open source fonts covering a wide variety of scripts and styles. Although the emphasis of the project is serving the fonts over HTTP (for use in web publishing), all are also downloadable and freely resuable.

The other banner development was the relaunch of the Open Font Library with a new back-end system built on the open source Aiki framework also used by Open Clip Art Library. The revamped OFLB site makes it easier to search and test out new fonts, and to collaborate with other font developers.

In addition, the developers and designers at Open Source Publishing (OSP) in Brussels have been working on the OFLB site design and some documentation. Finally, the open source font editor FontForge made a new release in February, focused mostly on bugfixes.

What’s new in imaging

Of course, DTP without images would just be word processing, and the raster and vector applications most designers depend on have been busy as well.

Inkscape made two minor releases, 0.48.1 and 0.48.2, in March and September respectively. Both focused on bugfixing. But the project was very active in 2011′s GSoC, adding a new, faster caching system, improved support for CSS code embedded within SVGs, and support for preserving JavaScript in files. Work is also progressing on SVG Font support and a new measuring tool. These and other changes may be ready for 0.49, the next release.

Three raw photo editors made major releases in 2011, RawTherapee 3.0, Darktable 0.9, and Rawstudio 2.0, and one (UFRaw 0.18) made a minor update. In all four cases, the list of bugfixes and image development features either added or improved is substantial — perhaps too long to summarize in a paragraph. If you are a DTP designer, however, what you care about is compatibility, and all three will provide you with higher-quality photos to embed or link into your documents.

There were also updates to Hugin, MyPaint, and Digikam, and a major new version of Krita is expected to arrive shortly.

What’s new in printing

The open source printing stack saw an important new color mangement feature, a newly-revitalized project, and interesting movement on several other projects.

The color management feature is found in two important CUPS filters, foomatic and gstoraster. Both are image processors that take intermediate document formats (PDF or PostScript) and produce raster image data to be sent to the printer. The change is that both now use the colord system daemon developed by Red Hat’s Richard Hughes. Colord allows users to manage device ICC profiles at a system-wide level. Instead of maunally changing the settings for every color-aware application, programs simply query colord for the preferred profile and get back the correct result. The system automatically handles multiple profiles for different paper/ink combinations, and has a graceful fallback mechanism for coping with inexact matches.

The newly-revitalized project is Black Five Imaging’s suite of printing tools: PhotoPrint, CMYKTool, and DuoToner. All three have seen intermittant releases as the main developer’s schedule allowed, mostly in the form of source code tarballs. Now they are also hosted in a public git repository at Gitorious. The Black Five tools are still largely developed by a single coder, but moving to a public source code repository is always a healthy sign and may attract new blood.

Several other pritning projects received minor updates in 2011, including the Gutenprint driver collection (version 5.2.7), the GPL version of the Ghostscript PostScript interpreter (9.0.2), and the CUPS printing framework (mentioned earlier in the colord context).

Finally, although it is not code per se, Alexandre Prokoudine published an updated and revised version of his guide to using CMYK and spot color with Scribus and Inkscape. It is an oft-circulated myth that working with spot colors or CMYK is “impossible” in open source DTP; the truth is that if you want to do it, you can — you just need to know where to look, because RGB data is still the norm assumed by most of the tools. The guide will take you a long way.

There are still three months to go in 2011, and there are likely to be several new releases in that time frame, but then again, that is always true: open source just moves that quickly, DTP in particular.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. To get started, request an invite.

Worldlabel.com will bring you all the latest and best “printables and labels” on the net. Awesome and unique “packaging and labeling”, “clipart”, “design, art and photography”, amazing “patterns and textures” and lots more fun stuff on our pinning boards you can follow.

Click here to see what folks are pinning from blog.worldlabel.com

Logos for PrintPeelApply™ brand blank adhesive laser and inkjet printer label sheets.  Visit Labels @WorldLabel

2009 certainly proved to be a busy year for Worldlabel, as we modified the business, started a blog which was hacked and started all over again. But, it was a productive year, too, as the following blogs show. We’ve picked twelve top blog entries for 2009 and offer them below, many written by guest authors and most that focus on Open Source tutorials and products. These blogs are in no particular order, but they’re our favorites because they seemed to help a lot of our readers…

Over the next year, let us know which blogs you like so we can pick them out for our favorite blogs in 2010.

BUSINESS CARD TUTORIAL IN INKSCAPE

Business Card Tutorial in inkscapeorg: The author for this piece was Author is Ryan Lerch of http://ryanler.wordpress.com/. He wrote an impressive tutorial that received lots of raves.

OPENOFFICE.ORG NEW USER ORIENTATION

OpenOffice.org New User Orientation: Andrew Ziem has worked with OpenOffice.org since 2001 as an author, trainer, tester, and quasi-developer. He blogs about OpenOffice.org at http://www.oooninja.com and he wrote this tutorial about how to use OpenOffice.

FREE FILLABLE PDF PLANNER PRO

PDFplannerPRO: Free Fillable Printable Planner, Organizer, Diary and more: This was a popular tool that we developed, that allows users to use a template to plan, organize, write a diary and more. It is customizable and the schedule has an easy date pulldown for reference.

FREE WEDDING LABELS

Wedding Labels for Free in Fillable PDF: Our free wedding labels in PDF format were a hit with readers. There are four sets available, each with a diffierent design and each containing numerous options to use across the board, from CD labels to a thank-you card.

OPENOFFICE.ORG OPENS UP FOR BUSINESS

OpenOffice.org Opens up for Business: We’re going to have Andrew Ziem write for us again, because his articles about OpenOffice were hits across the board. This one featured the value of OpenOffice to business owernships and management.

DESIGN WINE LABELS WITH ILLUSTRATOR

Design Wine Labels in Adobe Illustrator: We must have some wine lovers out there, as this article also was very popular. Chris Spooner of spoongraphics.co.uk did a bang-up job on this Adobe Illustrator tutorial.

MUST HAVE OPEN SOURCE TOOLS FOR FREELANCERS

Must-Have Free Open Source Tools for Freelancers: While we carried a few lists this year, this one was popular because it contained open source tools – and, we’re all over open source!

CLIP ART OF THE WEEK: SUNFLOWER

Clip Art of the Week: Sunflower by Mokush: This article about the Open Clip Art Library 0.19 was popular in 2009. They hit a milestone that week at 10,000 pieces of clipart uploaded to their new system.

VIDEO EDITING MADE EASY WITH KINO

Video Editing Made Easy with Kino! Christian Einfeldt, Producer at the the Digital Tipping Point, wrote this article on how to edit video with Kino. It was a huge hit.

FREE DESKTOP PUBLISHING WITH SCRIBUS

Free Desktop Publishing with Scribus (Open Source): Nathan Willis wrote this popular tutorial, which focused on how to use Scribus. Scribus is the leading open source solution for desktop publishing (DTP); it supports professional features like press-ready color separations and PDF output, as well as every media file type under the sun.

FREE SOAP LABELS AND CANDLE LABELS

Free Soap Labels & Candle Labels Biz Starter Kit: Who knew so many people would want soap labels? Our kits, similar to the wedding packages above, focused on fillable PDF label templates with various designs and in various label shapes and sizes.

DESIGNING A BUSINESS CARD WITH WL-244 TEMPLATE

Designing a Business Card with WL-OL244 Template: Last, but not least, was a tutorial on how to create your own business cards by Scott Citron of scottcitrondesign.com. He used Adobe InDesign to create a memorable design and an effective and easy-to-follow tutorial.

A device that allows blind people to attach and read audio labels on everyday objects has gone on show. The PenFriend uses minute barcodes which – when scanned by a digital pen – trigger MP3 files recorded on the unit.

The PenFriend has been developed by a UK firm together with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

It costs less than £60, and can be used to label foods and medication as well as clothing, personal documentation and film and music collections.

“At the moment we are just scratching the surface: we are starting development of address books, organisers, diaries and calendars,” explained Alison Long of the RNIB.

The PenFriend is the result of collaboration between the charity and London-based company, Mantra Lingua. It uses optical identification technology (OID) to print microdots on to adhesive labels which are then read by the scanner in the tip of the PenFriend.

Read More at  BBC

AutofillPDF Labels is a handy web tool for anyone who’s wanted to print their own labels of any kind, but loathes the idea of manually filling out the printing template over and over.

Many print-your-own label packets come with links or CDs that provide you with a pre-formatted Word document to fill out. Unless you’re getting married or sending out other invitations, though, you’ll usually end up putting the same thing on each label, and Ctrl-C/V-ing your precious time away.

This handy webapp pops open a scripted PDF file on any system, while letting you change the font, styling, size, and other text properties, and also add images in short shrift. In other words, you create one label, and the PDF fills out the rest of them for you. The templates include CD labels, address or mailing, file folder labels, and even non-sticky business cards. Free to use, no sign-up required, and it works best with Adobe Acrobat (the free reader).

Via Lifehacker.com

via Makeuseof.com

Alltop is a new venture created by Guy Kawasaki, world-famous entrepreneur and author. Kawasaki and his team (Will Mayall and Kathryn Henkens) import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories. When you place the cursor over a headline, part of the story is displayed so you can decide if you want to read it or not. To read the story, you click on the title, and a new tab or window will open in your browser so you can read the full story at the original site.

Basically, Alltop is a news aggregator that is divided into individual topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. Two topics might interest those who are into graphics, and those are Printing Industry News and Top Publishing News.

If you don’t find your site in the Alltop algorithm, you might be able to change that omission. The news is uploaded about once an hour from sites and blogs chosen from results of Google searches, site and blog content reviews, researchs and Alltop staff “gut” instincts. Site and blog owners and people who care enough to write to them also offer suggestions. But, Kawasaki is quite frank in his policy about new additions – he states that the Twitter community is his best resource.

If you’re not involved with Twitter, it might help if you begin to use that tool as soon as possible if you want your news to be included at Alltop. Then, after you’ve developed a Twitter following, use Alltop’s submission form to ask for consideration. Those actions might constitute your best shot at one of the hottest new aggregators around.

(Update) We are pleased to announce that AllTop as accepted in the Printing catagory.

Blank Labels

Do you feel stymied when it comes to using labels? Do you think labels are dull? Do you have piles of blank labels gathering dust in that bottom drawer? You’re in the right place, then. We’re here to help you overcome your “labelphobia” so that you can realize your organizational and productive potential. Labels can simplify your life if you know how and when to use them. They also can make your life more colorful and exciting!

So, we welcome you to the Worldlabel.com blog. Our company has been in business for a decade, and we offer labels, label designs and design ideas to people the world over. Now, we want to expand on our services to provide users with even more resources. No matter whether you’re a work-at-home mom, a CEO, an artist or a non-creative type – we’re here to help you make the most of your talents and time with our ideas, tips, tricks, hacks and more.

We’ll provide you with news and information about topics such as Open Source tools, productivity and organizational tricks, “how-to” articles, reviews and downloads. We’re here to make your life easier. We’re here to have fun!

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