Sharing is caring: our first git repository!

We are very happy to announce that we opened a git public repository on Codeberg!

https://codeberg.org/MisterD

Honestly, this is my first time opening a repository, I have never had one mostly because my main thing is designing, and there isn't all this culture about releasing your artworks or design pieces as "open-source". Artists and Designers are usually very conservative about their works and really dislike any kind of external alteration.

For non-coding stuff the natural choice would be to use a "Creative Commons" license but for the few works I made "freely" available I preferred to release them as a bare "Public Domain"; however this time the perspective is slightly different because I am "open-sourcing" — although I would prefer saying "sharing" — some Speedata Publisher templates I made.

Publisher templates are both code (such as HTML) and design, the distinction is that with non-interactive software you say to the "computer" how to draw and then you wait for the result. The conventions say that everything you ask to a machine to do is basically a program, therefore it make very sense for these templates to use an "open-source" license rather than a Creative Common ones.

So far I've published a "business card" demo: this has been used for a demo with a client; and a "Word" style plan template — used by me for a real presentation — optimized for black and white printers, of which I am particularly satisfied. The result looks very "corporate" oriented, the one you would expect if made with a word processor like MS Word or LO Writer, but with the steroids because such quality can only achieved with a professional DTP software.

I am deeply thankful to Patrick from Speedata because he really helped me to chisel this layout, hopefully it would be also available from the Speedata repository too. As a matter of fact I decided to release such templates with the MIT permissive license. Thus anybody, even the ones from within a corporate environment, is invited to use it without any concern to infringe any rule or law.

I hope to share more layouts in the future, open source is also about sharing knowledge, and for me it extremely important to support Speedata Publisher as a professional alternative to standard and interactive DTP software. I anticipate that I am working on a big side project that will help my customers to streamline the catalog pre-production in order to arrive at the final production with AGL flawlessly and faster. I am going to release it as MIT as well and I am looking forward to finally testing with my clients and get their feedback, I am pretty it will be a great resource!

Meanwhile it is your first time reading about our main product: AGL — Advanced Grid Layout; please do not hesitate and read more about it!