Le Tigre wrote: > Christoph Sch?fer a ?crit : > >> Am Montag, 3. April 2006 00:52 schrieb Louis Desjardins: >> >> >>> Hi everybody, >>> >>> There is an article about Scribus posted Wednesday last week on News Forge. >>> >>> >>> >>>> "I began seriously planning this change last school year, when I >>>> realized how fully the current feature sets of free software >>>> programs could satisfy the technical needs of the students in my >>>> classes. I decided that the time had come to teach our undergraduate >>>> art students about free software programs such as the GIMP, Scribus, >>>> and Quanta Plus, instead of proprietary programs such as Photoshop, >>>> QuarkXpress, and Dreamweaver." >>>> >>> The rest of the article can be read here: >>> http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/03/09/2238246.shtml?tid=37 >>> >>> Cheers! >>> >>> Louis >>> >> Hi Louis, >> >> have you also read the comments? >> >> ;) >> >> >> > That kind of stupid comments look a bit like this one: > http://forum.framasoft.org/viewtopic.php?p=128073#128073 (in french) - > to whom I respond. > > I'm always surprised when people try to compare free softwares with > non-free, without thinking that it's absolutely 2 different things. > > By the way, I wrote an article about free softawres in our previous > revue, that was in 2002... And in French, of course - and at that time I > was not even working on Linux... It's there: > http://rdereel.free.fr/volLQ1.html > > Cya > > Raphael > This poster has it exactly correct: http://business.newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=54572&cid=124016
This guy was pushing his open source agenda on the paying students taking his class. Unless there is an alternate class where the students get to use 'real (working) world' applications, this guy is doing them a disservice. I totally agree that open source dtp apps have a place in the schools, just not as the only option. I have been seriously contemplating getting my teaching certification to become a technology teacher and doing something like this. But that would be in high school. For this to be the only option in a university is just plain shortsighted. It is hard enough to find graduating students who know anything about printing without any real world experience. For them to not know the tools of the trade makes them completely unhirable. Sure I could train them from the ground up, but why would I do that with so many (even crappy) Photoshop artists out there? It is easier to steer someone into better practices than to completely train them from the ground up. There is nothing wrong with teaching students about open source, but the fact is that the OSS tools just aren't robust enough to replace the established tools. I really wish that weren't the case, but it is. I am in the middle of a project making signage for a restaurant here in town, and I had fully intended to use all OSS tools, but was unable to maintain it. I am now in process of converting the Inkscape files back to Illustrator to finish my work. Now I am looking at reinvesting in my Mac hardware, and upgrading to CS2. I cannot do my job without, at the very least, Photoshop and Illlustrator. Once Scribus v1.4 is released, with a slight change in my current workflow, it would possibly work in place of Quark or Indesign as long as you do most of the heavy lifting in the Illustrator file. I guess what I am trying to say here is that I am happy to see a lab like the one in the article, but I believe he is misguided to think that not knowing the industry tools will somehow help the students he teaches. While OSS tools are getting better, Adobe and Quark have about a decade head start on the likes of Scribus and Inkscape. In the professional world, even the Corel studio is viewed as a "mickey mouse" suite of tools incapable of real work. The OSS world faces an uphill battle in the war against proprietary software on proprietary systems, especially in the DTP world. But one thing that Scribus and Inkscape have over all of those apps is that they are FREE. That will account for much with respect to user adoption, but the tools need more work before they replace the current tools of the trade. ~Nate
