Comics using GIMP and Inkscape

GIMP and Inkscape are two of my favorite opensource programs. But both programs are tough to learn for any one who hasn't used graphics programs before. That is why I am thrilled that John Bintz wrote this detailed tutorial on how to digitize comics using these two programs.

The tutorial is quite detailed and contains a lot of pictures so you will learn exactly how John imports and places the comics on a digital page. He doesn't unfortunately go into the details of coloring the comics.

Now, its entirely possible to color the comics in GIMP, and the here is the link to a tutorial to do just that on GUG (GIMP user group - a great place for GIMP tutorials by the way).

You can also create beautiful bubbles in GIMP and type the text into them using a script written by Tomcat.

So, what are you waiting for! Go ahead, publish your first comic strip. And let me know so I can put a link to it on this site.

Configuring OpenOffice 2.0

So, then, now that you have Openoffice 2.0 installed on Mac (If not, read the previous entries on installing OO2.0 here), and have installed the Mac Fonts, you must be rearing to use it. So you double click the OO icon, and Xterm opens up and Openoffice spashscreen comes up. Open office window is open, and boy does it look nice!



But soon you realize that OpenOffice is configured to work with Windows key boards. In other words, Copy command is CTRL C, not Apple C. You can change this easily, by changing the preferences in X11.



Now that you have selected only the "System Keyboard Layout", you can use the mac based commands Apple C for copy, Apple V for paste etc.

Installing OpenOffice 2.0 on Mac

If you were to go to the OpenOffice website it would seem that while the rest of the world has access to version 2.0 of Openoffice, Mac users would have to wait another few years. Well, not so. Below is the link for the Mac build of release candidate 1.9.128. So, download away and enjoy!

http://ftp.stardiv.de/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/MacOSX/

This is not a native port, and requires Apple's x11 which is free to download from Apple's website. It is also advisable to have the XCode installed from the Panther dvd.

Setting up Fonts for Openoffice

One problem with the X11 based Openoffice RC 2.0 that has been ported to Mac is that it does not automatically create the ttf fonts from Mac fonts. So here is a way to address this situation. This will require a two step process:
1) First download the stable version of Openoffice (1.1.5) from here

2) Run the installer once it is downloaded. This installer comes with a program called "fondu" which converts all the mac fonts into ttf fonts.

3) Once the program is installed in the applications folder, dig into the folder called "share". There should be another folder in there called "Fonts" All the ttf fonts will be in the "truetype" folder. Select all.

4) Now Ctrl click on "Openoffice" (2.0) icon in the Applications folder, and navigate to the Fonts folder.
/Applications/OpenOffice.org 2.0/Contents/openoffice1.9.130/share/fonts/truetype

5) Now go back to the fonts folder of 1.1.5, where you had selected the fonts. Option click on the selected fonts, and drag them to the truetype folder of OpenOffice 2.0 version.

Thats it! Next time you click on Openoffice2.0, it will show all the fonts you have on your mac.

Now you can conveniently delete the OpenOffice 1.1.5 version from Applications folder.