Japan openSUSE User Group publishes a technical magazine every half year. The title of the magazine is Geeko Magazine. It consists of technical articles on openSUSE and applications running on openSUSE. For example, the latest issue of the magazine contains articles like "Launching Kubernetes Cluster with Kubic in 10 minutes", "Accessing to Google Drive from openSUSE", and "How to enable HTTPS with Let's Encrypt." Since 2014, we have published 9 issues of Geeko Magazine. In this talk, after explaining the culture of self-publishing in Japan, I will talk about the process from calling articles from the user group until distributing Geeko Magazine. Another topic is our challenge: editing the magazine on openSUSE. Thereby, we cannot use popular desktop publishing (DTP) applications like Adobe InDesign. Instead of such applications, we have been using Scribus, an OSS DTP application to edit Geeko Magazine. It supports CMYK color and DTP data such as trim marks and bleed areas, required by print shops. However, in 2014, Scribus was not adequate for writing a Japanese document. This is because typesetting rules are much different from English etc. To publish Geeko Magazine, we went OSS way; we have improved Scribus one by one at every issue of the magazine in cooperation with the upstream community. I will talk about a brief summary of those problems we have resolved.

1. Fuminobu TAKEYAMA
Japan openSUSE User Group
ftake@geeko.jp
Geeko Magazine:
A Technical Magazine on openSUSE,
edited on openSUSE

2. About me: Fuminobu TAKEYAMA (ftake)
●
From Japan
●
Roles in openSUSE community
– Japan openSUSE User Group
– openSUSE.Asia Summit Comittee (2014-)
●
Chair of openSUSE Asia Summit 2017
Tokyo/Japan
– A maintainer of openSUSE M17N
– An admin of ja.opensuse.org
●
My main job: In-house software consultant in a civil infrastructure company
© Al Cho, at openSUSE.Asia Summit 2018
Handing over the photo album of Asia summit
from Japan to Taiwan

3. openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019
Bali, Indonesia
CFP is open until June 22
Photos at openSUSE.Asia 2016, Jogjakarta, Indoenesia

4. What is Geeko Magazine?
●
A technical magazine on openSUSE
– Issued by Japan openSUSE User Group
– Published every half year (Aug. and Dec.) since 2014
●
9 issues
– JIS B5 (size between ISO A4 and A5) with about 40 pages
– JPY 500 (approx. €4)
●
Motivation: no commercial magazine does not mention openSUSE
– Of course, publishing our own magazine looks fun

5. Those cover works are NOT licensed under CC-BY-SA 4

6. What are contents of Geeko Magazine like? 1/3
Building a Kubernetes Cluster
using Kubic in 10 minutes
By Syuta Hashimoto
Geeko Magaizne 2018 Winter

7. What are contents of Geeko Magazine like? 2/3
Let’s start high speed packet
processing with DPDK
By Kento Kawakami (@emaxser)
Geeko Magaizne 2017 Winter

8. What are contents of Geeko Magazine like? 3/3
Accessing Google Drive from
openSUSE
By ribbon
Geeko Magaizne 2018 Winter

9. Self publishing culture
in Japan
●
Comic Market
(aka. Comiket, since 1975)
– Events for self publishing (doujin)
●
Comics (the majority),
novels, musics, ...
– Every August and December
– Half million people in 3 days

10. We have a booth at Comiket
●
Groups around us also distribute
technical books related to FLOSS

11. Tech Book Fest. （技術書典, Gijutsu-sho-ten）
●
The market of self publishing of technical books is growing
●
A new event only for technical books (2016-)
– 470 groups/indivisuals writing technical books
– 10,000 visitors
in a day

12. How to make
Geeko Magazine

13. Step 1: Call for articles
●
The articles are written by 3, 4 members of
Japan openSUSE User Group
●
Ask to reply the following information on our mailing list
– title, the expected number of pages
●
Return to authors: a copy of Geeko Magazine

14. Step 2: Draft and review
●
Each author writes their
draft with LibreOffice
●
The drafts are reviewed
by all the authors

15. Step 3: Design and making pages
Layout texts and images
on Scribus

16. Step 4: Print
●
Send PDF data to a print shop
●
Receive printed books at our booth at Comiket
€300 for 48 pages, 150 copies

17. Technical Challenges

18. Edit Geeko Magazine with FLOSS on openSUSE
●
Without Adobe products, etc.
●
Fonts
●
Applications
– Scribus
– Krita
Scribus logo: CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Promotion_material

19. Fonts
●
In 2014, no choice among Japanese OSS serif and sans fonts
with enough quality
– IPA ex Mincho (serif) fonts
– M+ Fonts (sans)
●
Provides multi weights
●
Now, the situation is better
– Adobe Source Han (aka. Google Noto CJK) fonts
Because Japanese consists
of many complex letters

20. Scribus: a powerful DTP application
●
Now using 1.5.x SVN head for Geeko Magazine
●
CMYK color
●
PDF/X format
●
Trim marks and bleed

21. Trim marks and bleed
●
Bleed: area printed but trimmed out
– Necessary to place an image at the edges of a page
Bleed
Scribus PDF Print
Trim marks

22. Limited Japanese Support
●
Difficult to implement
– Even MS Word nor LibreOffice Writer does not fully support it
●
Go on an OSS way:
improve Scribus together with upstream community
– CTL project: rewrite of its core engine for complex text layouts
(e.g., right to left)
●
I just sent feedbacks and wrote only a few code 😉
Requirements for Japanese Text Layout
W3C Working Group Note 3 April 2012
https://www.w3.org/TR/jlreq/

23. Text justification
●
Add implicit (auto) spaces between every CJK characters
– because a CJK text doesn’t have a space between words
●
Scribus 1.4.x (stable) does not support CJK justification
– I pulled some patches from 1.5.x (devel) SVN and applied to 1.4.4
CJK
Chinese, Japanese, Korean
The end of a column

24. Spacing between CJK and Latin letters
●
Add a ¼ space (kerning) between CJK and Latin letters for clearance
– But there was an unnecessary space before a symbol
The first implementation
Add an ¼ space (kerning)
between CJK and non CJK
openSUSE は、ドイツ生…
日時 : 2019-05-24 14:00
The current implementation
Define characters which need space
before/after a CJK letter
We don’t need it here!
日時: 2019-05-24 14:00
openSUSE は、ドイツ生…

25. The patch is simple
What happens with Cyrillic letters?
No spaces added. Need to be extended.

26. Problems not resolved
●
Japanese input from keyboard does not work
– We have to copy & paste from another editor
●
Or use scenario editor dialogue
●
Turning On/Off some Japanese type setting rule
– E.g., turning off spacing feature between CJK and Latin
for mono spaced program code
We will fix some bugs by the next Geeko Magazine

27. Concluding Remarks

28. FAQ
●
Will you translate to other languages?
●
No. But we are planning to release an archived version of
Geeko Magazine under CC-BY-SA
– So that everyone can translate it

29. Summary of this talk
●
Geeko Magazine
– written by Japan openSUSE User Group
– Self publishing of technical books in Japan is growing
●
Scribus
– A powerful open source DTP application
– We have been improved it for better Japanese support

30. Join Us at www.opensuse.org

31. License
This slide deck is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
It can be shared and adapted for any purpose (even commercially) as long as Attribution is given and any
derivative work is distributed under the same license.
Details can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
General Disclaimer
This document is not to be construed as a promise by any participating organisation to develop, deliver, or
market a product. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be
relied upon in making purchasing decisions. openSUSE makes no representations or warranties with respect
to the contents of this document, and specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of
merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. The development, release, and timing of features or
functionality described for openSUSE products remains at the sole discretion of openSUSE. Further,
openSUSE reserves the right to revise this document and to make changes to its content, at any time,
without obligation to notify any person or entity of such revisions or changes. All openSUSE marks
referenced in this presentation are trademarks or registered trademarks of SUSE LLC, in the United States
and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Credits
Template
Richard Brown
rbrown@opensuse.org
Design & Inspiration
openSUSE Design Team
http://opensuse.github.io/branding-
guidelines/
This slide deck contains some third party works, not licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Please see copyright notice around such works.