[FM Discuss] FM Newsletter April 2012

Tue Apr 3 03:37:50 PDT 2012

FLOSS Manuals Newsletter April 2012

1. Adam Hyde in Brussels for LGRU meeting
2. News from the FM communities
3. FM invited in a research network on the 'Digital Manual'
4. Editors notes
5. FM Manual spotlight

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Adam Hyde in Brussels for LGRU meeting
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FLOSS Manuals is an associate partner of the Libre Graphics Research 
Unit (LGRU). The LGRU is a two year project to develop new ideas for 
creative tools. Founded by four European Media Labs: Constant, Medialab 
Prado, Piksel and WORM, LGRU was initiated because they understood that 
to develop innovative tools for creative practice, designers and artists 
need to do more than file bugs and create pretty logos for their 
favourite F/LOSS applications.

In February, Adam Hyde represented FLOSS Manuals at the LGRU's 
Co-position research meeting in Brussels. Well not knowing what on earth 
Co-position was, I had to do some research as the term. I discovered 
that Co-position is to do with re-imagining 'lay-out', for the page, 
big-screen, or small-screen, and from static to dynamic lay-out.

The work of FLOSS Manuals fits right into this topic and at the meeting, 
Adam talked about “The (New) New Typography” reflecting on his 
experience of the advanced management of fonts, in particular with 
Javascript, built through his work on BookType and with FLOSS Manuals.

To find out more about the LGRU: http://lgru.net/
Learn about Co-position: 
http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/lab/wiki/index.php/Co-position
For Further details: 
http://www.flossmanuals.org/news/adam-hyde-representing-floss-manuals-lgru-meeting-brussels

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News from the communities
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In February, FLOSS Manuals Francophone (represented by Elisa De Castro 
Guerra and Laurent Giacobino) participated in a gathering about digital 
security for journalists called #J Hack 
(http://lacantine.org/events/j_hack-transparence-en-milieu-p-hostile-p-numerique).

Where, among other discussions, they present the FM books, "How to 
Bypass Internet Censorship" and "Basic Internet Security".

For further details: 
http://www.flossmanuals.org/news/floss-manuals-invited-jhack-saturday-cantine-paris

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FM invited in a research network on the "Digital Manual"
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FM has been invited in as an affiliated research network member in a 
research project named 'Creation and Publication of the “Digital 
Manual”: Authority, Authorship and Voice.'
The project is lead by Dr Penny Travlou and Dr Smita Kheria from the 
University of Edinburgh and is sponsored by the Arts and Humanities 
Research Council [AHRC].

The project aims at studying the 'Digital Manual', which it defines as a 
model of emergent multi-authored publication employing open source and 
co-creative practices.

The project investigates how the Digital Manual can be a paradigm for 
exploring multi-authorship, co-creation and publication in other 
digitised textual forms as well as how it can have relevance to the 
analogue book and serve as a premise to learn valuable lessons. It will 
investigate both the structures of power (e.g. hierarchy, heterarchy, 
peer to peer, etc.) within creative communities as well as the authority 
and power of the manual itself, within and outside these communities 
(e.g. the relationship of the ‘manual’ with current regulatory 
frameworks, such as Intellectual Property law and, in particular, 
copyright).

The investigations focus on case studies of four creative communities: 
Fake Press, UpStage, Sauti ya Wakulima and, you guessed it, FLOSS Manuals.

For further details see: 
http://www.flossmanuals.org/news/floss-manuals-invited-research-network-digital-manual
For more information on the project: 
http://sites.ace.ed.ac.uk/digital-manual/

Living down in the south Pacific, one can get jealous of all the 
exciting events and projects happening in the open source/open culture 
community in the northern hemisphere!

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Editors Notes
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Firstly, I must apologise in advance for the length of my introduction 
to the Inkscape manual, but as this was the manual that introduced me to 
FLOSS Manuals, I felt it was important to highlight the effect it had on me.
Second and most importantly, if you have been following FM, but haven't 
yet had the courage to edit a manual... Just jump in a do it! One of the 
important things to remember is that you don't need to be an expert on a 
piece of software to edit a manual. I started by just making grammar and 
spelling corrections to the Inkscape manual. When I moved to actually 
adding content, I didn't already know how to use all the tools I was 
writing about. I used writing the manual as an opportunity to learnt the 
tools as I went along, recording what I discovered, and if I got stuck, 
I asked the community for help.

Areas where you can add value to a manual include (but are not limited to):
1) Writing new content – of course.
2) Adding or updating screen-shots.
3) Grammar and spelling changes.
4) Translation.
5) Structural changes.
6) Filling out the content. Sometimes while the content is there, adding 
a few more details can help a text connect to a wider audience.

The most important thing I'm trying to communicate with this is 'Have a 
go', if you need to, just start small and work your way up. -Happy 
writing, John

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FM Manual spotlight – Inkscape
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I chose the Inkscape manual this month as it is the manual that lead me 
to discover FLOSS Manuals. I had been using Inkscape for basic graphic 
design tasks for some time, but had been having trouble creating a 
desired effect whilst designing a logo for a customer. A thorough search 
of the Internet led me to the Inkscape book at FM's Lulu store which of 
course led me to FM. From the first couple of minutes of reading through 
FM's website and the Inkscape manual I became incredibly impressed with 
the FM community and the content it produced. I was hooked!

Inkscape is a powerful vector graphics editor similar to Adobe's 
Illustrator. Not only is Inkscape Open Source, it also uses an open file 
type: W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file type which is becoming 
natively supported by most web browsers.

Inkscape has many vector image manipulation features including: Path 
manipulation tools – including Inkscape's Tweak tool which allows you to 
edit vector images in a similar fashion to editing raster images, 
Advanced text manipulation tools, Tools to create vector images from 
bitmap images and Many filters and extensions.

The Inkscape manual was one of FM's first manuals and was produced 
during one of FM's first booksprints. The published manual can be found 
at: http://www.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/ and you can by a print copy 
from the print on demand site Lulu.com 
(http://www.lulu.com/content/4617381). Since the Inkscape manual was 
first produced, it has been translated into Suomi (Finnish): 
http://fi.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/ with translation projects also 
beginning for other languages.

The manual takes a comprehensive looks at Inkscape's tools and features 
beginning with it's interface. You are then shown through Inkscape's 
many tool-sets, including the Toolbox, where you access Inkscape's core 
creation and manipulation tools. The manual also provides an in-depth 
look at editing paths and text in Inkscape two features that can be 
produced to create amazing designs. The manual goes on to take a look at 
some of Inkscape's advanced features such as Live Path Effects and SVG 
Filters. Also included towards the end of the manual is a tutorial on 
Icon creation.

This is a good manual and I learned a lot about Inkscape from reading 
it, but as with all software documentation, there is still more that can 
be done. The currently published manual was written for Inkscape 0.46, 
the latest version is Inkscape 0.48.2 so there are a number of new 
features that are yet to be documented in the manual and some 
screen-shots that could do with updating. Some chapters in the manual 
are really bullet point summaries on what a tool can do rather than 
instructions on how to use the tool. These chapters are just begging to 
be fleshed out. And of course as with any written work, there are always 
spelling and grammatical improvements that can be made.

So don't be shy, if you see something that needs improving, visit 
Inkscape's editing page (http://booki.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/_edit), 
sign in and make those changes. If you would rather help translate 
Inkscape into another language, you can visit one of FM's language 
communities (Farsi, Finnish, French or Dutch) and help there translation 
efforts. If the language you wish to translate to doesn't have a 
community yet, visit http://translate.flossmanuals.net/ and help one of 
the translation efforts there, or if the manual doesn't yet exist for 
your chosen language, start your own translation project. The more we 
all contribute, the stronger these manuals become.

Catch you next month.

John