TAS Editing Software?

[Sketchy]

Great initiative to support higher quality community contributions!

Is it necessary to purchase InDesign in order to publish? Or can Mangoose provide templates for Scribus (for example) which is open source?

 

[Golan2072]

You could use MSWORD as well, as we at Stellagama Publishing did for our The Bronze Case adventure.

 

[Sketchy]

Thanks Golan! But then I would have to by Office 365 or.. *shudder* a PC!

 

[Golan2072]

You can also use LibreOffice and Ubuntu MATE (or your favourite Linux distro). It can do the same layout work and IIRC there is even an ODT (LibreOffice) template file for PoD books on DTRPG!

And it all runs on minimal hardware. Even my mother's antiquated Pentium-d with 2GB RAM runs Ubuntu MATE and LibreOffice perfectly.

 

[AndrewW]

You can also use LibreOffice and Ubuntu MATE (or your favourite Linux distro). It can do the same layout work and IIRC there is even an ODT (LibreOffice) template file for PoD books on DTRPG!

LibreOffice and OpenOffice both run on a Mac just fine as well.

 

[Golan2072]

They work on Macintosh as well? Great! So no need for expensive Microsoft products!

 

[AndrewW]

They work on Macintosh as well? Great! So no need for expensive Microsoft products!

I never found a need for them myself...

 

[NOLATrav]

Both Numbers (Excel) and Pages (Word) on Mac can export PC-friendly Microsoft versions of anything you do in them, and also open MS docs and spreadsheets (you have to use the drop down menu and navigate to them, double-clicking won't work). I do that all the time.

There may be some minor formatting errors and font differences but it's pretty flawless.

 

[Sketchy]

Thanks all for the tips! It was when I downloaded the templates and tried to open them with Pages that I realized they weren't supported. Didn't even think about {Libre,Open}Office! I'd best get busy!

 

[Sketchy]

No dice.. Tried both Libre- and Open-Office but no go; they wouldn't open nor import the INDD-template (.ai files could be opened however)

I'll try M$ Word at work tomorrow..

EDIT: The .ai files can be read with InkScape on Mac OS X, and saved to a compatible format. I saved them as "InkScape SVG" and could open them with Scribus.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

No dice.. Tried both Libre- and Open-Office but no go; they wouldn't open nor import the INDD-template (.ai files could be opened however)

I'll try M$ Word at work tomorrow..

EDIT: The .ai files can be read with InkScape on Mac OS X, and saved to a compatible format. I saved them as "InkScape SVG" and could open them with Scribus.

Inkscape and Scribus are what I've been using so far. I guess we'll see how well it works when I finally put something out.

I started from scratch, though. I haven't used the templates.

 

[JRoss]

I use Scribus for layout and both GIMP and Inkscape for art. I haven't done any TAS stuff, but other projects. Scribus and InDesign are superior to word processors because they can create print-ready PDFs. Not sure if you can put out a print option for TAS, though. Both Scribus and InDesign have a learning curve. The thing to know about Scribus is that most of your work will be in Text or Image frames. A handy reminder is to go into the preferences menu and set your default font, then start a new document using those defaults.