[evergreen-outreach] annual report printing

Wed Jan 3 13:01:10 EST 2018

Just my two cents into this...

First of all, thank you...continually...to Rogan and Kathy for your
extensive work on the annual report.  I like the idea of moving away from
expensive, proprietary tools to open source ones when possible.  That's
"when possible" is a big statement.  I think, if Rogan feels confident
(reasonably) with the proposed worse case timeline, it'd be a worthy thing
for Kathy to look at migrating to Scribus.

On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 12:54 PM, Rogan Hamby <rogan.hamby at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, that's not too bad of an indicator.  Different dev communities have
> different expectations of the dev version.  How did the bitmaps import /
> link?  Did you do any tests of PDF export yet?
>
> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, well, that's why I mentioned 'pitfalls' in the 2nd option because
>> I'm more concerned about them happening with a development version than the
>> stable branch. Here is how their development community describes the
>> release:
>>
>> As of version 1.5.1, we consider the development branch reasonably
>> stable, so it can be used for serious work by users who accept that not all
>>  *new*features are already working perfectly. Features already available
>> in the officially stable version will work *much* better in 1.5.1+,
>> though.
>>
>> I'm guessing idml support is one of the new features, but if importing
>> IDML files is one of the potential issues, I assume it would pop up as a
>> problem early on.
>>
>> Kathy
>>
>> On 01/03/2018 12:44 PM, Rogan Hamby wrote:
>>
>> I have some concerns about using a development version.  Do you have a
>> sense of how stable it's considered to be?
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 12:40 PM, Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all!
>>>
>>> Thanks for sending this along Rogan. I finally had a chance to look at
>>> using Scribus with Rogan's files today. The development version of Scribus
>>> (1.5.3) seems to handle idml file whereas the older, 1.4.x version of
>>> Scribus did not. The file does not import perfectly: fonts needed to be
>>> changed and we would need to adjust some of the layout, but I think I could
>>> turn it into something workable.
>>>
>>> There are two issues to consider then:
>>>
>>> - The original reason this topic arose was because of concerns that the
>>> font size was small, making it difficult to read the annual report. Last
>>> year's report is available at https://evergreen-ils.org/wp-c
>>> ontent/uploads/2017/03/Evergreen-Annual-Report-2016-Print-Version.pdf
>>> if anyone wants to look at it for context. This could be addressed by
>>> increasing the font size in the current layout, which will necessarily
>>> reduce the amount of content we can include, or by switching to a larger
>>> booklet. However, the issue with switching to the larger booklet, as Rogan
>>> noted below, is that it requires a lot of labor time. Rogan has already put
>>> in hours to create the current layout, and time is valuable.
>>>
>>> - The other issue is that the current report is done in Adobe InDesign,
>>> which, due to cost and OS support, is not available to most of us. This
>>> means that the work of creating the annual report always falls on Rogan's
>>> shoulders. By creating it in Scribus, which is open source, we might be
>>> able to divide up the work so that two or three of us are helping to put
>>> the report together. Even if we didn't change the layout of the report, it
>>> might not be a bad idea to consider this change so that we can divide and
>>> conquer.
>>>
>>> We have a few options.
>>>
>>> - We could decide to go with the current format (with or without font
>>> size changes) for this year and look at moving to Scribus for next year's
>>> report. If we start the work in the spring, it gives us time to
>>> troubleshoot any issues in time for the 2018 report.
>>>
>>> - I would be willing to commit to working on transferring the file to
>>> Scribus and the larger size before the February meeting. This would give
>>> us  layout to work with over February as we plug in the content. However, I
>>> can't guarantee that I won't find pitfalls along the way. If the pitfalls
>>> are too large, we would need to go back to the InDesign booklet, which
>>> would give Rogan less time to work on this year's report on his own
>>>
>>> - We could also decide to keep things as they are for now as it has been
>>> successful in generating a nice annual report.
>>>
>>> I'm sure there are other options we can discuss during today's meeting.
>>>
>>> Thanks Rogan for all of your work on this!
>>> Kathy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/29/2017 07:47 AM, Rogan Hamby wrote:
>>>
>>> Another quick follow up.  In looking at moving the work on the annual
>>> report to Scribus Kathy and I both did some research on migrating the file
>>> format.  My experience has been that the print layout world of software is
>>> fundamentally different in terms of exchanging data between applications
>>> then graphics and this is bearing out to be true.  Both of us found the
>>> same set of suggestions and neither are working for me in a way that would
>>> be useful.  The postscript export is per page not document and does not
>>> export embedded data.  The xml output is not parseable.  I'm still waiting
>>> to see if Kathy had any better luck but at this point that does not look
>>> like a viable option to me.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 7:39 AM, Rogan Hamby <rogan.hamby at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Good morning,
>>>>
>>>> There has been a little discussion off list about printing of the
>>>> annual report.  Last year we printed 250 saddle stitched trimmed to bleed
>>>> with a cover at 8.25x 5.75 with 100# gloss at full color.  Terri, at
>>>> Equinox, was kind enough to get me an updated quote for this year from the
>>>> same printer we used last year and an estimate for increasing the book
>>>> size.  The reason for the increase in the book size is that there have been
>>>> questions about increasing the font size of the report without decreasing
>>>> the amount of content.  The only way to do that is to increase the paper
>>>> size.
>>>>
>>>> A new printing at last year's specifications is $985.55
>>>>
>>>> Increasing the paper size to 8.5 x 6 (which is a very small increase)
>>>> jumps to $1,228.60.  The cost has to be considered of course but it's not
>>>> my greatest concern.
>>>>
>>>> While I'm very sympathetic to the access issues it's necessary to point
>>>> out that we have attempted to keep labor time under some constraints by
>>>> reusing the same basic layout.  Print layout software isn't quite like
>>>> responsive web design and you can't just tell it a new paper size and have
>>>> everything re-adjust.  If we do go the route of a new paper size we need to
>>>> finalize this very soon and it will be a great deal of labor to implement.
>>>>
>>>> Just to make it clear I am _not_ in favor of doing this.  We produce a
>>>> web friendly PDF so that it can easily be scaled and a limited print run
>>>> for the conference.  We can certainly increase font sizes an average 25%
>>>> but I don't think it will make for an attractive product.  However, I would
>>>> much rather do that than change the printed format of the report.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> evergreen-outreach mailing listevergreen-outreach at list.evergreen-ils.orghttp://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-outreach
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Kathy Lussier
>>> Project Coordinator
>>> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative(508) 343-0128klussier at masslnc.org
>>> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>> --
>> Kathy Lussier
>> Project Coordinator
>> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative(508) 343-0128klussier at masslnc.org
>> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
>>
>>
>
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