I have been an advocate of open source software most of my working life. The benefits are well known, namely: Continue reading
Category Archives: Software
I have just heard the sad news that Hermann Zapf, one of the greatest type designers, passed away today. If the name “Zapf” rings a bell, that is because he designed Zapf Chancery, Zapf Dingbats, and the beautifully flowing Zapfino with the myriad typographic variations. Continue reading
I was proud that the Council of Science Editors (CSE) asked me to host a panel to discuss a rather specialized subject, namely the techniques for typesetting mathematical content, at the upcoming conference in Philadelphia. I was happy to accept the request and you can see details of my panel near the top of this page. Continue reading
This is the second in my series of evaluating open access publishers who have the good sense to make the XML as well as their PDFs of their documents available. To emphasize why I am doing this, I support open access, and I particularly advocate the publication of XML, which is supposed to be the definitive version of an article. Continue reading
Our company is based around free software, so we are not fans of Adobe, who have become money-grabbers like M***Soft, but your jaw will drop at the capability they have built into the next version of PhotoShop. “Content-aware” fill makes up parts of the image that were never there. If you can’t wait for your jaw to drop, forward to around 2:40 on video. Continue reading
I am broacasting 
Fast on the heals of the US government taking a good look at using free, open software in place of proprietary software, the UK government has followed suit. This is great news. Let’s hope this sets a trend and gives a big shock to software vendors who have been fleecing the citizen, and reducing their freedom at the same time!
Here is an innovative way to input text on touchscreens. The guys who brought us T9, the predictive text input method now on most mobile phones, have now come up with a new way of entering words without lifting the finger or stylus off the screen. The computer will guess which word we are trying to type. I look forward to trying it out on the iPhone when it is released.
I have just discovered Evernote which is a great application for filing anything from ideas to pictures to business cards. You have to see it to believe it. I recommend you look at the introductory video on their site. It works particularly well in conjunction with the iPhone camera. Here is what has been most useful for me: Continue reading
Here is a nice way to break up a long post in WordPress, so it doesn’t take up too much space in the main list.