OSIA has a stand at OpenCeBIT this year. As a member I’m entitled to have my logo displayed on a screen that’s been installed at the stand (thanks to Andrew Yager). So this means I need to produce an encapsulated postscript (eps) file to load into the display.
Recently I got some help with my business cards from Donna Benjamin. Donna not only helped with the layout, but made sure the fonts used in the cards were free fonts – I now have “Free” Cards (actually, mostly free, because the logo itself uses non-free fonts). Donna was kind enough to send me an svg file which I could edit myself in the future if I wanted to. So I decided I would use the business cards as a base for creating an eps logo for the display.
My stomach has been a little upset, so I decided this after getting up at about 5:30am this morning. In order to edit the svg I need a tool (in this case Inkscape). Not having this tool installed on my computer doesn’t pose any problem for me, even at 6am. I can just download it from a repository, install it and go (which I did). I could not have done this with a closed system. I might have been able to search for a program with equivalent functionality, but then I wouldn’t have the same level of comfort as to what I was downloading (eg is it a “limited trial version”) and whether I’d be losing my files if I worked in it. Not only that, but I know that the tool I have is exactly the same tool used to create the svg in the first place.
I sent the eps off a little while ago. I now have inkscape installed. I could remove it if I wanted to, safe in the knowledge that I could download it again in the future as the need arose.
I also found out that download speeds at this time in the morning are pretty impressive.
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