[Journal] Volume 5 and beyond

Fri Jun 5 14:40:24 EDT 2009

Micha wrote: "While Latex is a bit of a fuss to work with
(non-WYSIWYG) the advantage is, as Tyler made clear, in the final
production stage. Doing a copy/paste of the *raw text* from various
authors' articles into *.tex files gets everything arranged with
uniform formatting.  Is it possible to do such a thing with Scribus?"

There is certainly a trade-off here. On one side of the trade-off you
have great layout and graphic design capabilities, and on the other
side you have easy translation into multiple languages.

I think it is possible to make graphical layouts that are easier to
translate (by separating grapichs and text into different portions of
the layout) but this won't be as easy as using a latex based format
for translation.

Landon

2009/5/14 Micha Silver <micha at arava.co.il>:
> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>
>> Thanks Rafal and Landon, your support in these ways will really help!
>>
>> Landon - I've spent a lot of time in OJS learning about how to best use
>> its workflow - having someone else who is also intimate with it would be
>> very useful.  As you've seen, I made a few videos to highlight potential
>> issues - creating more of these or improving them might really help,
>> generally speaking.
>>
>> Re: latex - it's actually not that bad and the section editors have
>> accepted DOC and ODF files and done the conversion themselves.  We've tried
>> to make it a non-issue for the authors by being flexible at our end.
>>
> Hi Tyler, Landon:
> While Latex is a bit of a fuss to work with (non-WYSIWYG) the advantage is,
> as Tyler made clear, in the final production stage. Doing a copy/paste of
> the *raw text* from various authors' articles into *.tex files gets
> everything arranged with uniform formatting.  Is it possible to do such a
> thing with Scribus?
>
> OJS will certainly help in communicating with authors, and carrying thru on
> the peer review requests. Some parts of the interface are still no clear to
> me. i.e. How do section editors finally OK an article?  I probably need to
> dive in a little deeper, or maybe a permissions problem?
> And IIUC, once a section editor decides an article is ready, he then must
> upload it in *.tex format to svn??
>
> Cheers,
> Micha
>
>> However, when we pull together the full publication, the benefit of using
>> latex cannot be overstated.  Especially when you consider that anyone with a
>> working latex installation can download the branch from SVN and run
>> "make"... and out comes a PDF.
>>
>> Then also, when Yves and the Francophone team come to translate it to
>> French, the copy the text files, edit them, then run "make" :)  No special
>> GUI programs are needed and all the text files can be kept separate from one
>> another.  It runs quick too - like 10 seconds for a 50+ page high quality
>> PDF.
>>
>> I've used Scribus a fair bit and appreciate it for sure, but until they
>> support linking to external text files for input into the text frames I
>> think it would be a lot of work.  Also, I can't help but wonder how my
>> computer will handle opening 50+ pages in it with linked text frames.  Did
>> you have something particular in mind that Scribus would be best at?  It'd
>> be great for making the cover page or laying out more graphical items
>> though.
>>
>> All this to say, I can't see it getting much easier, but I think we could
>> improve in some areas.  But at the end of the day, we should still accept a
>> variety of source document formats and we are using pretty elementary latex
>> options so it shouldn't be a barrier for section editors to convert.  We've
>> done well in the previous volumes.  I could be wrong though and maybe it's a
>> huge concern for section editors, but they haven't told me yet :-)
>>
>> Thanks again for the feedback and commitment.  I'm open to whatever works
>> best, so please just take this as my opinion and keep the discussion going
>> if I've missed the point.
>>
>> Tyler
>>
>> p.s. If you want to see how simple latex can be then look at one of the
>> article latex files, not the "master document" though since it can be a bit
>> more intimidating but doesn't change much.  For the most part there isn't
>> much to do in a typical document:
>>
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/journal/volume_5/en-us/annual_report/executive/editorial.tex
>>
>> On 14-May-09, at 7:53 AM, Sunburned Surveyor wrote:
>>
>>> I'd like to offer help in two (2) areas:
>>>
>>>  - Tyler mentioned "one or two others interested in helping oversee
>>> the process". I would be able to devote a couple hours a week to
>>> helping move the ball forward on each issue. I'm thinking about
>>> contacting authors and editors with friendly reminders about deadlines
>>> and helping them work through any road blocks they may have run into.
>>> I could help maintain a calendar or spreadsheet for this purpose.
>>> (Perhaps this tracking functionality is built into OJS?)
>>>
>>> - Tyler mentioned "latex experts to help improve look and feel of
>>> journal, plus help convert contributed content". I've discovered that
>>> I'm not a huge fan of latex. :] I'm not sure if we have contributors
>>> to the journal that feel strongly about its continued use, but I would
>>> be willing to work up a layout for the Journal in Scribus. This would
>>> allow authors to submit articles in DOC or ODF format, and would give
>>> us some more exact control over the layout of the journal. This might
>>> be worth at least a try? If there were another Scribus fan among us
>>> that was willing to help me, we might relieve Tyler of the actual
>>> layout and graphical production duties.
>>>
>>> Landon
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Rafal Wawer
>>> <Rafal.Wawer at sadl.kuleuven.be> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Tyler,
>>>> I think I can devote most of my overhead (1-2 days/month) to the work
>>>> for the Journal.
>>>> Not much, but within this timeframe I would be happy to help.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards:
>>>> Raf
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) [mailto:tmitchell at osgeo.org]
>>>> Sent: 14 May 2009 16:11
>>>> To: Rafal Wawer
>>>> Cc: OSGeo Journal
>>>> Subject: Re: [Journal] Volume 5 and beyond
>>>>
>>>> Hi Rafal,
>>>> I share your enthusiasm and direction for the Journal.  Once I've got
>>>> this report off my plate, then we will have to test the waters to see if we
>>>> can truly handle this direction.  It is a lot of work and to make it a
>>>> success there will need to be more volunteers who can help with some of the
>>>> day-to-day management of the journal processes, since I'm the main
>>>> bottleneck at the moment :-)  In 2007 we had a couple additional editors who
>>>> were able to help at all levels, but some of them are unavailable now, and
>>>> some section editors are too busy now too.
>>>>
>>>> It seems we have lots of great reviewers.  I think we have enough
>>>> section editors, and I think there are lots of authors waiting to contribute
>>>> too.  But further than that we need:
>>>> * one or two others interested in helping oversee the process, e.g. a
>>>> senior editor
>>>> * technical assistant (could be same as above) to help manage various
>>>> tasks in the online system/tools
>>>> * latex experts to help improve look and feel of journal, plus help
>>>> convert contributed content.
>>>> * peer review panel - some who are most familiar with issues of peer
>>>> review and who can help make sure we "do it right"
>>>> * promoters - to advertise and promote the journal to appropriate places
>>>>
>>>> I'm sure there is more, but thought I'd mention these in case.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes!
>>>> Tyler
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 14-May-09, at 1:22 AM, Rafal Wawer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> <So far the Journal was mainly a container for the annual report,
>>>>> while the papers appeared rather rarely.> I was rather hasty with that
>>>>> statement, although it is true for the period of my interest in te
>>>>> Journal - beginning of 2008.
>>>>> Year 2007 was very sucessfull for the Journal - 3 issues, inclusing
>>>>> FOSS4G2007 proceedings. Issue 4, containing the Annual Report is
>>>>> already published and  "cannot be undone" (-; I propose the issue 5
>>>>> and all the future issues to be released as a scientific/academic
>>>>> editions. No 5 should be publishable in 2009, as the papers are
>>>>> already after reviews. It would be very nice to achieve several issues
>>>>> a year, as in 2007. The current activity in the FOSS4G domain would
>>>>> certailny fill them up. I think a good way to increase the number of
>>>>> Journal issues to a level of 2007 would be to publish proceedings of
>>>>> the FOSS4G related conferences and workshops, not only those organized
>>>>> by OSGeo. The materials of those events often dwell on the webpages of
>>>>> the organizing bodies, hardly discoverable by readers. I think the
>>>>> organizers would be interested in publishing in OSGeoJournal, or its
>>>>> special editions.
>>>>> The Journal has no impact factor assigned, however it has potentially
>>>>> big thematic  community of readers.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards:
>>>>> Raf
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) [mailto:tmitchell at osgeo.org]
>>>>> Sent: 13 May 2009 17:19
>>>>> To: Rafal Wawer
>>>>> Cc: OSGeo Journal
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Journal] Volume 5 and beyond
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 13-May-09, at 1:53 AM, Rafal Wawer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I always wondered if the OSGeo annual reports could be kept "outside"
>>>>>> the Journal.
>>>>>> So far the Journal was mainly a container for the annual report,
>>>>>> while
>>>>>> the papers appeared rather rarely.
>>>>>> As we already streamlined the admission/review process, wouldn't
>>>>>> it be
>>>>>> nice to finally separate annual reports from the papers, placing the
>>>>>> reports not in the Journal but 4ex in annals, parallel to it?
>>>>>> The numeration of the Journal would be then given only to scientific
>>>>>> editions.
>>>>>> Now, it is quite confusing for the Journal's (potential) readers -
>>>>>> looking for papers they mostly find OSGeo annual reports. (-;
>>>>>
>>>>> Definitely possible to move it outside, if I understand properly
>>>>> your concern.  We have had 3 'normal' issues, plus one annual
>>>>> report so far.  So if people cannot find the other 3 issues then we
>>>>> have a bigger problem.  I think we need a way to easily promote all
>>>>> these articles we've collected.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here are some of the current ways:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1/ http://www.osgeo.org/ojs/index.php/journal  - lists all previous
>>>>> volumes so readers can find one to look at.  (I need to add the
>>>>> French ones into OSJ still).  With one click they see an article
>>>>> list for that volume.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2/ You can also use the "browse by..." options on lower right of
>>>>> that web page.  E.g. Browse by authors gives you a great list in
>>>>> alphabetical order.
>>>>>
>>>>> 3/ The search box also gives you great results from searching
>>>>> abstracts, authors, titles, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> What other ways can we make this clearer to potential readers?  Any
>>>>> ideas for a web page to help display things in a better way - let's
>>>>> try them!
>>>>>
>>>>>
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