Document & multimedia development and use on Linux

[Lee D. Rothstein]

LUGers,

Here, as promised, are the results of my
ill-fated survey. (I'm still interested
in penetrations, but this does not
appear to be a right forum.)

still-ignorantLee

Answers
*******
- Paul <pll at lanminds.com>
- Mike LeDoux
- Tom Buskey

Thanks Guys,

Lee

Summary
*******

What have been your experiences
attempting or doing the following with
Linux?:

[Original questions are "bulleted" with
'*'s and '>'s.

Clarified text has been added since
original message between '['...']'s.

Replies have been edited and are
preceded by ' - ', and follow the item(s)
they are a response to.]

* MS Office Documents in a mix with MS-
   weenies

  > Word

  - For simple docs, OpenOffice [OO]
    does quite well
  - For *really* simple docs AbiWord
    works well.

  > Excel

  - For Excel, I've had little to no
    trouble with either Gnumeric or OO's
    spreadsheet.

  - Little experience, but, AbiWord &
    Gnumeric seem to do a decent enough
    job with Word and Excel files.

  > PowerPoint

  - For PowerPoint, I usually have no
    problems with OO. Of course, I also
    seldom change stuff and send it back
    to the source.

 [> Embedded objects in Word documents:,
    including Excel, and Word drawn
    vector graphics.]

 [> .wmf's & emf's -- Windows Metafile
    Format & Extended Metafile Format --
    2D vector graphics format, inclusive
    of bitmap image]

* WYSIWYG web page and template
  development

* DVD-R
* DVD-RW

  - I don't have a DVD-R or DVD-RW
    drive, so I can't say
  - Tools are available, I've just never
    used them.

* Playing standard music CDs

  - Very easy! x2

* Playing standard Video DVDs

  - Very easy for non-CSS DVDs
  - Slightly more work for CSS (Contents
    Scramble System -- alleged copy
    protection system] DVDs

    [Two questions:
    o Are all the commercial CDs you
      play, CSS?
    o Are commercial CDs the only kind
      that you play?]

  - Several software options for this.

* Ripping Audio CDs

  - Simple
  - Only problem is using 'cdrecord' to
    write in DAO [ddisk-at-once, versus
    TAO -- track-at-once] mode. Where
    collection is bunch of separate
    tracks, it's not a problem. If
    you're ripping a live concert, then
    you get noticeable skips in music as
    it changes tracks. Annoying, but not
    problematic.  I have not tried using
    'cdrdao' yet, which is supposed to
    better support DAO mode than
    'cdrecord'.

* Ripping (term?) standard DVDs

  - Problematic.  My digicam will take
    short (30 sec) AVI movies, and I
    can't play them back (though I
    haven't tried real hard either)
   - Never tried

* Hearing & seeing the following file
  types on the web:

  - 'mplayer' handles nearly every .avi,
    [.wmv], .asf, etc. file that I've run
    across, as it uses the windows
    codecs.  In many cases, it handles
    these files better than windows
    does. x 2

  > animated GIFs

  - any web browser will do just
    fine.

  > .avi's
 [> .wmv -- Windows movie video]
  > .mp3's

  - No problems!

  > .mov's

  - QuickTime movies [.mov's] are
    problematic, as Apple hasn't
    released many of the codecs.  Some
    of them work, some don't.
  - Most of the QuickTime stuff embedded
    in web pages doesn't work. I've
    heard good things about CodeWeavers'
    CrossOver plug-in, but I've never
    used it myself.

* Creating and editing any of the above?

  - Lots of available tools for creating
    and editing audio.
  - Available tools for video work are
    not as polished.

* Availability of [open source
  multimedia & document] applications
  [as defined above, that your are
  using]?

  - MP3 probably has the most number of
    differing applications.
  - For non-open source, There is
    software to do it under windows
    which can be used under VMware or
    Win4Lin. [Has this actually been
    used by anybody, without blowing up
    their brains and documents?]

* Interfaces?
  > IEEE 1394 Firewire
  > USB

  - Both work flawlessly on my laptop.
  - Both well-supported.

  > USB2

  - Handspring Visor and Digicam both
    work just fine under USB.
  - Judging from 'maddog', Firewire is
    available

* Drivers

  > Scanners

  - Supported by the SANE group.  See
    FreshMeat. x 2

  > Removable media (USB, 1394)

  - USB has plenty of drivers.
  - Reportedly, maddog just bought a
    Firewire drive and works just fine.
  - Works great [both?]

  > Digital cameras

  - Well-supported by 'gphoto2' --
    FreshMeat
  - Cannon G2 works well with Linux
  - Older cameras are well-supported via
    gphoto and 'gphoto2'.
  - Most newer cameras show up as USB
    Mass Storage devices, so you can
    just mount them and the photos show
    up as regular files.

  > Video cameras

--
Lee D. Rothstein -- lee at veritech.com
----------------
VeriTech -- 603-424-2900
7 Merry Meeting Drive
Merrimack, NH 03054-2934