Creating a table in Scribus DTP (not hypnotherapy)

If you have seen some of my previous posts about Linux you'll know that I made the move from Windows to Linux quite a while ago.

Part of my work involves creating desk top published documents. In the past I used the very fine Adobe InDesign (on Windows to do this. Adobe however seem to have no inclination to produce a Linux version of their products. Indeed they have now gone down the web based subscription route with Creative Cloud.

Not for me thank you.

So I persevere with the open source DTP package Scribus. Actually this is a nice program with a lot of the facilities you need except in one area; implementing tables. It's pretty hopeless at this. If you create a Scribus table it's basically a collection of frames stitched together.

This has had me stumped for a while; but now I have a work around.

It relies on the fact that Scribus can import vector based drawings in a variety of file formats.

Here's how I do it.

1) Create your table at the finished size you want in LibreOffice Writer. Save it as a document in case you need to make changes later.

2) Make sure there is a background fill or else the borders seem to get lost in the process

3) Export the table to a PDF (I'd export to Postscript but that option does not exist on the version I use). I embed the font and unclick 'make this PDF editable in LibreOffice'

4) Now open up Inkscape the vector drawing program that is similar to Adobe Illustrator.

5) Inkscape will allow us to import (under the file menu) the newly created PDF.

6) An import box will be shown. Set the precision to high and unclick the 'Replace PDF fonts with nearest font' radio box. Leave embed images and click OK.

7) Now you have your new Inkscape drawing that should look identical to the original table.

8) Go to the file menu and 'save as' a .PS postscript file.

9) Now return to Scribus

10) Go to the file menu. Select import/Get vector file. Select the file you just created.

11) A fist icon will be shown on the screen to indicate where the vector drawing will be placed. No need to be exact you can move it around once on the page. Click to place the drawing.

12) You now have a nice clean accurately sized table on the page.

I know this seems a bit longwinded but it works, looks clean and delivers for me.

Alternatively I have seen others use the Draw package of LibreOffice to create the table. This has the advantage of being able to save the table directly in a vector file without needing the Inkscape step, however being able to accurately size table cells in Draw is harder as there is no dialog allowing you to specify cell size. (They can be dragged with the mouse).

I hope you find this useful, it has certainly enabled me to make more use of Scribus until such time as table functions are fully implemented in either version 1.5 or 1.6 (I use 1.4.1)

The move to Linux continued, fonts

If you have followed my previous posts you'll know that I recently made the move to Linux. (In this case Linux Mint Debian Edition)

Things have been going well so far but as I create my own marketing materials for my hypnotherapy practice, I'm interested in the graphic side of things.

I used Scribus to create an A5 leaflet but discovered that the standard fonts loaded with the distribution were rather...limited.

However I have discovered that it is possible to bring many of the fonts from your Windows machine to your shiny new Linux one.

Rather than explain the whole process take a look at this web page http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/installing-fonts-linux.

I right clicked on my Windows font folder and zipped it into a 40Megabyte file. I transfered this to the new machine with an external hard drive.

Then it's drag and drop time.

I found that I needed to create a new .font folder in my home subdirectory. Then it was a case of unzip the package in the folder.

The next time you open your word processor or DTP program you'll have nearly all your Windows fonts available. I lost some; I'll guess that this is because of some licensing issues. However I'm well pleased to see my favourite fonts on my new machine.

Moving to Linux part 3, audio recording & mixing

I have recently made the move from Windows to Linux. these few articles will hopefully prove useful to others taking the same journey.

Audio Applications
My work with audio is based on my own need to record, mix and produce self hypnosis tracks for download and for use in my own client sessions. There are other far better resources online for how to set up microphones etc.

To record audio
You can of course record audio straight into your Linux laptop or desktop PC as long as it is equipped with a microphone. The quality is unlikely to be very good though. I have, in the past,  used two different recording studios to record voice tracks ready for mixing. However while the quality is excellent it needs more organisation and of course there are costs.

In the end I purchased an Olympus LS11 voice recorder which will save recordings in MP3 or WAV formats.  The files are transferred to the PC over a USB link. However you get those voice files recorded, you'll want a way to edit out the ums, ahhs and random breath noises.

There really is only one tool for this, and that is Audacity. It is available in both Windows and Linux formats. It is a program that you get better at using the more you engage with it (obvious really but you train your ears at the same time). Tips on how to use Audacity are worth a blog post on their own, maybe I'll do that next.

Take a look at it here http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Once you have cut, spliced and otherwise adjusted your voice file, you may wish to mix it with music or sound effects (there are lots of Audacity audio plug-ins freely available as downloads). Audacity can do this but it feels rather clunky compared to a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

I loved Traktion on the Windows platform but its development seemed to be abandoned for a long time. There now seems to be a Linux version so I'll look at this again.

So after much trial and error I settled on Ardour as my DAW. You can see more details about it here http://ardour.org/

I won't pretend to be an expert in Linux audio, I'm not. It is different to Windows but similar enough that I can get reasonable results.

Start with these few applications and a little bit of knowledge about recording and you'll soon have your own tracks (hypnosis or otherwise) mixed and finished.

Moving to Linux part 2. What software will work for you?

I wrote previously about making the move to Linux on a new laptop.

Now I'd like to let you know about some of the programs I have found useful in that move.

If Linux is still a mystery to you, the important thing to know is that it is based around the idea of free software. Not just free in the sense of not costing money but also free to be modified and reused without limit. (For more on the concept check out the father of free software Richard M. Stallman).

What this means in practical terms is that almost all the software you need is free (money) but for convenience, not all the software you want is free (open source). Some software uses chunks of non-open source or commercial code especially in areas like audio and video (think YouTube). For some this lack of Open Source is a very big deal, for others less so.

So what about the practical programs you'll want which may not be part of a standard package installation.

Graphics
Photo editing  and picture manipulation (like Photoshop) Gimp.
This is often installed with the standard distribution.

For vector drawing (like Adobe Illustrator) use Inkscape No CMYK colour though)

For Desktop publishing (like Adobe InDesign) use Scribus.

For a drawing program like (Microsoft Visio) use Dia.

For 2D CAD work consider LibreCAD.

Office Packages (Wordprocessor, spreadsheet etc)
As a general purpose package use Libreoffice. It will just about everything you need as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

Some may prefer to use OpenOffice which is available as a free download.

Skype, use Skype there is a native Linux version.

For data storage in the cloud with some great ways to share data use Dropbox. There is a native Linux application.

Video applications (web cam)
To get your webcam working check the following applications. Some may work better than others on your hardware.

Cheese allows you to capture stills and video from your web cam and apply effects too.

Guvcview a more basic webcam application that I found easier to get working on my Asus X53 machine.

Video editing
There seem to be plenty of video editing applications out there but I found two that seems to particularly useful; I have not settled on which one will be my main application yet. The first is Openshot, probably the easier of the two applications to use. It seems to be robust with just enough features to your video edited together. It integrates with Inkscape (see above) for producing fancy titles and graphics (or you can just use what is built in).

The second editing application is Kdenlive. This program seems to have more features including a greater number of effects (video transitions for example) but is possibly slightly less easy to get started with. Try both, the software is free after all!

I'll cover audio and other applications in my next post. So if you are waiting to hear how to record your self hypnosis session, stay tuned!

Linux for the rest of us...(Some shortcuts for you)

I have been dabbling with Linux as an alternative to Microsoft Windows for quite some time.

Especially with the advent of Windows 8 I no longer wanted to stay on the Windows tread mill.

So recently I purchased a new laptop and decided to go Linux.

In case anyone else should find this interesting I'll share my experience in the hope that my limited knowledge in this are can help other people taking the same path.

I bought a manufacturer refurbished Asus X53 (i7 processor) from Morgan Computer Company.

I removed the rather small hard drive (which had Windows installed) once I had established that the machine worked. I replaced the drive with a Toshiba 750Gbyte unit that was on special offer at PC World.

I had previously created a Linux Mint boot DVD (Nadia version) and so put it into the DVD tray and booted up.

This is what is known as a LIVE disc as all the information is on the DVD and it does not require a hard drive. I made sure that I had the WiFi working so that the laptop could connect to the Internet.

Next I used the option to install the operating system onto the hard drive. Since I had a brand new hard drive I let the installer program use the whole disc but there are other options possible.

After several minutes, a power up, power down sequence and some downloads to update the release I had a brand new install. Great!

The standard install provides application software that can read CD/DVDs, a media player,  LibreOffice for spreadsheets/wordprocessing etc and Gimp for image processing.

Adding more software is mostly painless and of course since it open source it is also cost free. I'll talk about packages I use in another post.

Problems? It's taken a couple of different programs to be able to fully use the built in web cam and the SD card reader does not really work. Apart from that all good and I;m pretty sure the web cam thing is sorted.

So now I can record new audio and video programs for hypnotherapy and other self change work on my laptop. That's great for me.

Goodbye Windows....for good.