[CS-FSLUG] Fw: A Little Success Story

[Nigel Ridley]

This was on the Libranet mailing list -- hope it encourages some of you:

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 21:16:46 -0500
From: Crispian Thorne <linux at crispian.org>
To: libranet-users at libranet.com
Subject: A Little Success Story


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Just wanted to share a small victory I had today (and blow my own horn a
bit).

I work for a largish, suburban Episcopal church just outside NYC as the
Verger (a strange title- often referred to as "verging on the
ridiculous"- but which really means building manager/stage
manager/etc./etc.). Amongst my duties are maintaining the churches
network of a dozen or so computers- a mixed bunch, mostly Win98, but
with a coupla WinXP, one Win2000, and a coupla Macs (one OS9, one OSX),
along with now three Libranet boxes!

I've got the parish database being served off one of the L'net boxes (a
donated PIII 450), and another (also donated PIII, but with three new
120GB hard drives) is the network-attached-storage that backs up every
other box on the network twice a week. The latest is (another) donated
PIII 500 that I've had on my desk for a while next to my Mac G4 to fool
around with in odd moments.

I have a dream of converting the whole shebang to Linux, but I know I'm
a few years away from that! I do have almost everyone converted to
Firefox & Thunderbird however, so there's hope!

Well, along with everything else I do I produce the weekly service
bulletin for our sunday services (usually 8-12 pages 8.5x11 folded
booklet) that contains the hymns, the weeks readings, announcements etc.
I have always done this on Quark XPress on my G4 running OSX (well,
since I got rid of Publisher- a period of my life I try to forget!), but
I've been getting increasingly frustrated that I have to run Quark in
"classic mode" as the version I have (4.1) will not run native in OSX
(and the church can't afford the $500 to upgrade to V6 that does). And
my now 4-year-old G4 is seeming slower and slower in comparison to my
Athlon 2000 running L'net at home.

So, last night I decided I would try and do the Sunday Bulletin using
Open Source software only! I've tried Scribus (great potential!!!- just
not quite ready for prime-time just yet), and the demo of PageStream
won't let you save, so I fired up OOo on the PIII 500 and went to work.
And damn me if OOo can't do pretty much everything I did in Quark! (And
about $1000 cheaper!) Linked text boxes, automatic page numbering,
wrapping text around graphics, etc. etc. I had a hiccup trying to put a
graphic behind some text like a watermark, but I fired up the GIMP,
dropped back the transparency, saved it as a PNG and slapped it in! I
used XSane to scan in some music (actually a LOT easier to use with my
LiDE 30 than OSX is) and slapped that in too.

Using the excellent drivers from BrightQ for our Canon ImageRUNNER 7200
(great machine! folds, saddle stitches etc. & is fast!) I ran off a
couple for our weekly staff meeting & waited to see if anyone noticed
any problems. Well, from the Priest and the Organist on down they loved
it! Looks clean (in fact the text looks much crisper than that printed
from Quark for some reason), and I was able to duplicate all the
features of the previous Quark bulletins, while improving on a couple!

Long story short- the faithful who come to church this Sunday will find
a small notation on the back of their bulletins that reads-

"This Bulletin was created using only Open-Source software:
Text & Layout- OpenOffice.org
Scanning- XSane
Graphics- The GIMP
All running on Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1"

I have a .pdf of it (again- just a click in OOo- used to need a $250
full version of Acrobat) is anyone's interested in seeing how it came
out- just contact me back channel & I'll send it along.

So now instead of replacing the aging G4 with a G5, I think I'll see if
they'll let me build my own AMD 64 & load Libranet 3.0 on it!

- --
Crispian Thorne
linux at crispian.org
*linux & lovin' it*
Linux User # 329400
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBksuOAWT0cB0UVWYRAshcAKCBVQqlq2fXBlNsDwCxSKjA7EJi/QCdGbfY
4ISHu4hKqx9TUor/OgGt9Vc=
=K5zb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
To unsubscribe, send email to libranet-users-request at libranet.com
with a subject of UNSUBSCRIBE.


Blessings,

Nigel

-- 
It's not a problem -- it's a learning opportunity.
--

I AM Bible Studies and Resources
http://www.i-amfaithweb.net

Messianic E-Cards.com
http://www.messianicecards.com

OliveRoot Ministries
http://www.oliveroot.net

Praying For Israel.net
http://www.prayingforisrael.net