Thank you. I will take a look. Another problem I ran into with Google Docs was the user agreement. Specifically section 11.1 where it says they have permanent irrevocable rights to publish my works. We decided that was a deal killer.
I admit I'm a bit hazy on the formatting requirements. I asked on this and it sounded like they could work with pretty much anything. I anticipate some surprises. But for now I figure the important thing is to get the content assembled. If the formatting is a little amateurish it won't really offend me. The publishing will be done in Ukraine and will be about Ukraine. The writing will be in Ukrainian and English. -- Allen Brown abrown at peak.org http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/ Q: How many astronomers does it take to replace a light bulb? A: One---The astronomer holds the bulb while the galaxy rotates. ----- Original Message ----- From: "marbux" <mar...@gmail.com> To: "Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux User Group" <euglug@euglug.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 11:08:01 PM Subject: Re: [Eug-lug] Google Docs Hi, Allen, I was a typographer for 20-some years before a midlife career change, so keeping an eye on the state of the art is a hobby. I think it important that before deciding on a solution, you determine what format(s) will be required by the folks who do the final typographical production work. Do you plan to self-publish? Will others need to process the work in editable form before publication? If so, what formats are they equipped to work with for a work of the type? Will the book be printed, online, or both? Do you need to pass your work on to others for refinement and need only deliver copy that can be rekeyboarded and digital photos for insertion? There are free and inexpensive desktop publishing systems, but when you add the need for collaboration in their use, I know of no solutions other than expensive proprietary software. E.g., solutions for publishing businesses with staff who need to collaborate such as newspapers and magazines. There are also free and inexpensive single user systems that can achieve very high quality typography. But as with the high end publishing solutions, there is a fairly steep learning curve that you may not wish to traverse to do it yourself. High quality typography requires far more than the ability to issue commands to a computer. It also requires intangibles such as a keenly honed sense of aesthetics, what is possible with a system, and deep experience in its use. So you need be concerned with what the final formats have to be as well as any intermediary formats the data must pass through before it reaches the final format. Then you can determine what collaboration ware is compatible. If the work produced by the collaboration can be passed to the next app in the processing chain in .ODT, .DOC, .DOCX, or .RTF format, then I suggest that you spend some time playing with the Zoho service for the collaborative portion of the work. <http://www.zoho.com/>. Zoho has collaboration features much more advanced and mature than Google Docs. And Zoho Writer is way out in front of Google Docs in typographical (and other) features. Zoho is Google's major competitor in terms of market share for the type of apps included in Google Docs. It's a company based in India that from the git-go has been far more aggressive than Google in rolling out new integrated apps and in adding features to their apps. Most of their apps are scriptable, sharing a common scripting language, so a single script can manipulate multiple apps. That isn't to suggest that either company's apps are suitable for the polishing phase. But if the listed formats can get you to the app that does the polishing, Zoho has a superior collaboration solution with more capabilities. It's my favored service for collaborative editing. First gig of storage free, $3 per user per month for the next increment. Signing up separately, each of you would have a gig of storage and and can invite the others to collaborate on a document-by-document basis for docs stored in each account. Questions don't go unanswered in their Help forums. They've got staff who make sure of that. Hope this helps, Paul _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list euglug@euglug.org http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list euglug@euglug.org http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
