Re: Anyone using Debian for Graphic Design or CAD?
On Wed, 16 Oct 2002 10:15:24 -0500
"Wathen, Metherion" <mwathen@bsadesign.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
> It is my desire to set up my home debian system for use as a Graphic
> Design/ Illustration workstation, I was wondering if anyone in this
> group is currently using debian/linux for graphics; and what their
> setup was. Maybe they could offer a few pointers on what software is
> available (open source or proprietary) for Linux. Also interested in
> hearing from people who are using Debian/Linux for CAD work, in
> particular architecture.
Partially, yes. For bitmap images, I use xsane (and its dependencies)
for scanning and, the only sane choice, The Gimp. For vector-based
illustration, I recommend sodipodi (packaged), which appears to be in a
more usable condition than KDE's more featureful kontour (formerly known
as KIllustrator). The mouse and keyboard-modifier combination of
sodipodi recalls those of the (in)famous Adobe product.
For old-fashioned *WYSIWYG* Desktop Publishing, I'd recommend KWord as
soon as the Debian maintainers come out with an officially unstable KDE
3 release. Its handling of a font's character set is the best I've seen
so far (due in no small part to its being a KDE 3 program). You can
actually input paired (or curly) quotes and em and en dashes or have
them automatically inserted for you. Type "" and you get proper curly
quotes. You can also configure KWord to replace two -- into one straight
em dash.
Scribus, a more true-blue DTP program, is lacking in this respect,
probably because it's plain QT. I have yet to see any Gnome app that can
approach the usability of these two programs. It follows the Quark
XPress model.
For CAD, the only one I see is qcad, a QT app. It's 2D only tho.
Reply to: