Thuswise.org

Credits

Here at Thuswise.org, we are big fans of Open Source software. We make it a point of principle only to use Free, Libre and Open Source (FLOSS) tools in our work.

This means we owe a huge debt of gratitude to all those who contribute to these projects. They give their time to provide the world with a body of software which everyone, whatever his means, has the perpetual right to use.

Here is a list of all the tools and applications we use to create this site. We hope you might take some time to try them out.

Vim

This famous text editor can be found on almost every computer platform in existence. We use it for writing code, web pages, and documentation.

Python

Everybody should know a scripting language, and Python is our favourite. It runs on Windows and Unix, and will do just about any job you can imagine.

Kid

This is the templating system we use to generate Thuswise.org. It's one of countless useful Python toolkits.

Docutils

Another Python utility, docutils is an ingenious system for formatting text files into PDF or HTML documents. This site uses it to structure the content of some of the project pages.

Sanscons

It takes a lot of skill to design simple logos which communicate strong messages. The signage on the site came from this set of free icons.

The Gimp

This program is our first choice for image editing. We used it to create the banner you see above and to crop photos elsewhere on the site.

Inkscape

Another graphics program; we used Inkscape to prototype the layout of our pages and pick out our colour palette. In more experienced hands than ours, Inkscape can create gorgeous vectored graphic designs.

Firefox

This is our reference Web browser for checking the look of Thuswise.org. We hoped this site would look the same no matter what browser you use, but unfortunately we were disappointed by the behaviour of Microsoft Internet Explorer. You should consider upgrading from IE to a browser like Firefox.

CSS Play

Creating a standards compliant, accessible site which looks consistently good across different platforms and user agents is hard. We did as much research as we could, and we learned a lot from the many blogs and portfolios we found on the web. This particular site stands out, firstly because of its creative exploration of the capabilities of CSS, but also as an example of how much of an influence a single uncelebrated individual can be. So thankyou, Stu Nicholls.