Open Source PDF Authering in Windows Vista

PDF Creator 0.9.4 RC1 overcomes enough Vista compatibility issues to start working.


PDF creator has been my favorite PDF converter for about 2 years now and I was disappointed when I found it didn't work on Windows Vista. Of course there are retail solutions and online converters which have helped me limp along but in the office I need a solution that works on a barrage of operating systems and can be deployed without breaking the bank. I was happy when I found a release candidate for PDF creator that fixes the major Vista issues.


The development team is stressing that this update is for testing only so you should only consider trying this out on Vista machines.

http://www.pdfforge.org/node/837

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Free Office Software

No one has as tight of a grip on business software as Microsoft, which is raking in nearly $2.4 billion a year from its Office line of software. Who would expect less when their most popular package will set you back $500 for a single user. But Microsoft's greediness has created an opportunity for competition from the open source world. Lets take a look at some of the best alternatives to MS Office, most of which are platform independent.


Open Office http://www.openoffice.org

Open Office, originally Star Office, is probably the most well known and highest quality free MS Office replacement available. It is broken into 6 components:

• Writer: Very similar to Word 2000. By default writer saves your work in an open document format, but can be set to be 100% compatible with Word, Works, Work Perfect, and many other word processors.
  
• Impress: Almost a replica of Power Point, can open and save in a Microsoft compatible format.
• Math: Allows you to create sophisticated mathematical formulas. I don't think MS Office has anything like this.
• Draw: Create drafts and diagrams similar to 'insert chart' in MS Office but has more options.
  
• Calc: An Excel clone. Files can be saved in many different formats just like Writer.
• Base: A database manipulation tool like Access but not as powerful.
  

With Open Office you should be able to forget about Microsoft Office all together. Best of all it works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Although there are a few dark spots in this picture. The main things I've run into are lack of visual basic compatibility and Base is just a few key features away from really standing up to MS Access.


Scribus http://www.scribus.net/

Scribus is an excellent open source publishing program that is an easy replacement for Microsoft Publisher.

"Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation."

With Scribus you can easily generate all kinds of publications like pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, e-zines, cards, and more. A testament to this is the new E-zine, Full Circle, which is produced with Scribus.

Another interesting use for Scibus that I have discovered is PDF creation. There is not much more that you can do with Acrobat Professional that can't be done with this software and other free tools. Like Open Office Scribus works with Linux, Mac, and Windows.


Google Docs and Spreadsheets http://docs.google.com/

Although it's not as feature loaded as MS Office, Google Docs is an excellent online document and spreadsheet builder. The biggest difference between this and the other products listed is that Google Docs is completly online and runs within your web browser. This has fantastic implications like being able to access your work from any internet connected device with a compliant browser. Other great things about Docs include:

• Direct compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats.
• Able to open documents for editing from anywhere online without downloading.
• PDF exporting
• Easy collaboration with fiends and colleges.
• Automatic revision tracking and recovery.
  
• Nice integration with Google's ever-improving web platform.
  

Google Gmail and Calender http://www.google.com

Combined, Google Gmail and Calander match most of Outlooks features. Along with all the online advantagesof docs and spreadsheets, these applications offer:

• Easily share your calendar online and control who can view and edit it.
• Built in chat features lets you IM your gmail buddies when they are reading their mail.
• Send offline IM messages as an email.
• Setup SMS phone notifications.
• Practically unlimited storage space for email.
• Extended attachment features like being able to stream music and videos without downloading.
• Cross over features with other Google web applications.
  

Google is really moving forward with their web platform and many big companies are copying them. I'm glad to see such innovation in this sector.

With free options like the ones we have gone over I hope you see that you can save a ton of money without giving much up. Combine this with other open source and free software packages and you can do anything you want on your computer for the price of learning some new layouts and commands.

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Linux commercial

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Ubuntu News and Goodies

Some news out today on my Linux distribution of choice, Ubuntu

• -Gutsy Gibbon public testing commences. I'll take a look at some of the new features and discus porting them to the version your running
  
• -Ubuntu E-Magazine 'Full Circle' Issue 1 released. Read on for my brief review and links.
  

Public testing begins for Gutsy Gibbon

The newest edition of Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon, has opened up for public test. Where do they get these names? In case you wondering, thats a Gibbon to the right.

Some of the key improvements coming to Ubuntu are:

• Upgraded Linux Kernel to 2.6.22-6.13. This brings better power management (especial for laptops), better performance for native virtualization(yawn), and more native driver support.
• User friendly failure management. Failure to boot up properly now starts a helper program which collects some information from the user and attempts to fix the problem. This is a big improvement for casual users who , in the past, where just dropped down to a command prompt.
• Better automatic handling of various audio and video formats. Ubuntu should now be able to install the needed components on its own.
• A new interface for managing desktop video card settings. Looks like this
• Finally, more customization of booting and login screens (yawn)

My computer has serious heat problems so I'm looking forward to the Kernel upgrade. I'm also hoping for more wireless network options like connect on boot. Check out the full announcement and details here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/tribe1

Usually these improvements can be installed in your current Ubuntu release with just a few steps. The forums are a great place to look for help: http://ubuntuforums.org/


Full Circle, the Ubuntu E Magazine Issue 1 Released
On the 7th the first issue of Full Circle was released. For being openly developed and free I was impressed by its polished look and in-depth content. Here are some of the highlights of this issue:

• New Ubuntu branch aimed at mobile phones in development.
  
• Detailed guide on installing Feisty Fawn.
• Explanation of the Linux file system.
• Tutorials, Reviews, Interviews, and more.

Full circle has allot of great information presented in an easy to read format. I'll be reading their releases and tracking their progress in the future on this blog . Check it out here http://fullcirclemagazine.org

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Open Source Projects: 15 To Watch

Open Source Projects: 15 To Watch

Datamation just posted an excellent article looking at some up-and-coming open source projects. I was particularly interested in:

Ardour: A full featured music composition and mixing studio
Virtual Box: Virtual server host simial to VMware.
Refrencer: A meta tag composer/manager

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Spring Cleaning - Windows Edition - Part 2

In the first part of this series we cleaned out the garbage that windows hides from the casual user. Now we are going to scour your drive for forgotten programs, archives, and large folders. We will finish up with a proper defragmenting of the windows partition for a speed boost.

Find large files and folders with J Disk Report
J Disk Report is a great tool for finding out how the your storage space is being allocated.

1. Get J Disk Report: http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
2. Install it with its default options and start it up.
3. At the first screen you will choose to 'Scan a file tree'
   
4. With JDiskReport you can scan any directory tree that you have access to including network locations. For this post we are mainly concerned with local windows partitions, particularly with the drive that windows is installed on.
   
5. After JDiskReport scans your file tree you are presented with the following report. From this screen you can see which directories are taking up the most space.
   
   
   From here you can drill down into large folders by clicking on slices of the pie chart or on the folder list to the left. If a directory seems bigger than it should you can right click on it for more options.
6. There are a few tabs across the top of the screen. The TOP-50 tab shows you the 50 largest files within your file tree. This could help you find large archives or image files you forgot about.
7. You can also view this report by the number of files in a folder. This is useful for finding folders with many temporary files that previous cleanup steps may have missed.

Manual Cleanup
When you uninstall programs for windows there is almost always files and folders that get left behind.


Program files - C:\Program Files\
Check this folder for programs that you have removed from your computer. Usually there are only a few small files in these folders but if there was a problem during the removal process there could be gigabytes of files.

My Documents
Many programs like to put saved data in 'My Documents' by default, especially games.

Application Data
C:\documents and settings\%user_name%\application data\
AND
C:\documents and settings\%user_name%\local settings\application data\
Programs that make or download allot of data usually dumb it in this directory. Google and Microsoft are big hitters in that regard. This is a good folder to analyze with JDiskReports.

Root of the windows drive - C:\
Error reports, memory dumps, and logs files are usually abandoned here


A Proper Defrag
Now that you have stripped your system of all that unwanted junk you should defragment your hard drive to close up the holes, this will speed up your hard drive access time. There are many programs that, while active, will lock down files on your system and stop the defragment process from optimizing them. To avoid this I recommend defraging from Safe Mode.

1. Enter safe mode:
1. Restart your computer
2. Hold down the F8 button before the Windows loading screen appears.
   
3. A list of boot options should appear, if not and windows starts to load then you probably didn't press the F8 key at the right time. You can try restarting and tapping the F8 key. If you still don't get a menu and you're using an USB keyboard you'll need to repeat this process with a old-style PS2 keyboard.
4. At the menu choose 'Start Windows in safe mode'
5. When windows starts you will get a warning about being in safe mode, just click OK.
2. Open 'My Computer'
3. Right click on the drive you want to defragment and choose properties from the list
   
4. At the properties dialog switch to the tools tab and click the defragment now button
   
5. The defragment process will take at least 20 minutes. When its done report your computer.

Viola! You now have a clean hard drive, hopefully without causing any new problems.

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Spring Cleaning - Windows Edition - Part 1

A windows partition collects garbage like hell gathers souls. Especially with multiple users, work, music, and gaming going on. In this post I will go over some free tools you can use to optimize your free space and system performance.

• Basic cleanup with Windows tools
• Remove old programs and registry entries with CCleaner
• Find large files and folders with J Disk Report
• Some manual cleanup
• A proper defrag
• Tips
  

Make sure you have administrative privileges on your system before preforming these steps.

Basic Cleanup
For starters we want to do a basic disk scan/cleanup.

If you're running genuine Windows XP I would recommend you use "Windows One Care Online", which is a free online tool offered by Microsoft. One Care requires Internet Explorer. If you can't use this program for any reason skip down to the next section about CCleaner which performs many of the same tasks.

Using Windows OneCare:

1. Use Internet Explorer to access the website: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
2. Run a 'full service scan'
   
   
3. You may have to agree to install the scanner on your system.
4. When asked what type of scan you would like to preform choose 'Complete Scan'. This will take awhile...
   
   
5. When it's done you'll see the results. You should have One Care correct all the problems it finds with the exception of defragmenting, which we will do later. If One Care says it can't correct a specific issue you should look it up.
   
   
6. Done
   

Remove old programs and registry entries with CCleaner
CCleaner is great tool for clearing out old windows junk from your system. It can be a bit brutal at times and break things. You should create a windows restore point before continuing.

1. Download the latest CCleaner from: http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
2. CCleaner tries to install a yahoo tool bar by default. You can avoid this by un-checking the option in the installation wizard.
3. Once installed start the program.
4. First we will run the cleaner. Be careful what you have checked! Here are my suggested settings:
   
   
5. Next run the 'Issues' checker. I usually keep everything checked for this section. When asked if you would like to backup your registry choose yes. You can go through each issue individually but I would recommend click the "Fix all selected issues" button.
6. Next lets use the uninstall tool. This is much like the built in 'Add/Remove Programs' application but it has an extra option called Remove Entry. Be careful with this option as its only made to remove items listed in the uninstaller that don't work. If an uninstaller isn't working and you have to remove a program manually then you can use 'Remove Entry' on that item in the list. You should uninstall programs/games that you haven't used in awhile. Some games in particular can take up massive amounts of storage space.
   
7. The final tool is the 'Startup' tool. Here you can see what starts automatically when you start windows. If you get a strange error when windows starts then this is the place to find the source. If you think you see an item that should be removed you should research it before doing anything. If you accidentally remove something important you'll have to reinstall/repair the application that put it there originally to correct the problem.

That takes care of the basic stuff. Check back next week for the next part where will clear out junk that most clean-up programs leave behind.

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