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Why design the open source way?
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The process of converting proprietary formats to open formats is variable, it always depends on the complexity of the files and varies from format to format. For example, converting from .ai to .svg using Adobe Illustrator may be as easy as exporting as .svg from the software, but sometimes it may not work out. These edge cases are the hardest ones to get around to. Usually, it may be necessary to have to re-write or re-create the assets from scratch and then export them to SVG, to ensure maximum compatibility.
(mention here desktop tools to convert formats)
(mention here online tools to convert formats)There are many online (and not only) platforms that can help you to convert open formats. In this sector, we will present some ways you can convert open formats in your desktop software, online platforms and even using terminal for people that would love to pick up some new skills while working on the projects.
LibreOffice
While using LibreOffice as a software, you can convert files manually by using the option Save As and choosing the format, or directly from the terminal.
You can run LibreOffice from the command line to quickly convert one or more files. For example, to transform a LibreOffice Impress slide deck to PDF, you'd type the following:
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soffice --headless --convert-to pdf mySlides.odp |
You would have to j replace pdf with the extension of whatever file format you want to convert to.
If we go into details and you don’t want LibreOffice to open an empty window on your desktop you can enter --headless option.
Turning to the command line is a great way to convert several files at once. If for example you want to convert all of the Microsoft Word documents in a folder to LibreOffice Writer format, you'd type:
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soffice --headless --convert-to odt *.docx |
The conversion takes far less time than opening all of those files in LibreOffice Writer and doing the conversion manually.
Pandoc
Pandoc is the go-to software if you need to convert between so many formats there are out there. For using Pandoc, you need to install it in your operating system. It offers a detailed guide with instructions you can follow to download and how to use it.
Here's how to use Pandoc for a simple conversion (in this case, from HTML to reStructuredText):
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pandoc -t rst myFile.html -o myFile.rst |
You're not just limited to straight conversions. You can, for example, add a table of contents, typographic quotes, custom headers, and syntax highlighting to the resulting file. Take a look at Pandoc's documentation for details and the open formats it allows you to convert.
Zamzar
Zamzar is an online file converter platform that lets you convert documents, images, videos & sound and many more open formats.
By providing the service online, Zamzar is very easy to use and every conversion can be done without any problems or following a manual, in every operating system you have on your device. It can also be used in a mobile device.
BatchPhoto Espresso
BatchPhoto Espresso is yet another free online image converter, which means you don't need to download any software to use it.
After uploading an image, other than choosing another format to convert it into, it lets you to resize, crop, and rotate it, as well as add special effects like black and white and swirl, overlay text, and change brightness, contrast, and sharpness, among other settings.
BatchPhoto Espresso also lets you rename the picture and choose a quality/size before saving it in your device. It can be used on any operating system that supports a web browser, including Windows, Linux, and macOS.
ImageMagick
ImageMagick is an open source software where you create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. It can read and write images in a variety of over 200 formats including PNG, JPEG, GIF, HEIC, TIFF, WebP, Postscript, PDF, and SVG.
By downloading ImageMagick, you are utilizing multiple computational threads to increase performance and read, process, or write mega-, giga-, or tera-pixel image sizes. It is distributed under a derived Apache 2.0 license.
Licensing
When you create a piece of software, it's automatically protected by copyright. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.
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Creating design assets for openIMIS
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GIMP
GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks. GIMP can be used for opening and changing many types of file formats. GIMP is released under GPLv3+ licenses and is available for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. GIMP offers a Wiki page where it gives explanations and every detailed information one needs to understand.
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LibreOffice Draw uses by default Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) (.odg graphics extension) as an international standard file format.
Draw.io
Draw.io is an open source online platform created to help you design in the most simple way flowcharts, process diagrams, org charts, UML, ER diagrams, network diagrams and much more. You can create your own custom shape libraries or use their large collection of shape libraries which offer hundreds of visual elements, making it plain and easy working with metadata to pack more useful information into your diagrams.
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