Introduction To Inkscape And Its Future

WarriorC writes "Bryce Harrington, Inkscape's founder, wrote an article introducing his brainchild and where its development is heading (see: Illustrator-killer). Some screenshots of the latest CVS version are included." It's also a nice glimpse into an "unorganized" but nonetheless successful open source process.

Comments

Speaking of Vector Graphics program

[JoeShmoe950]

Another interesting Vector Graphics program is Flash 4 Linux; http://f4l.sourceforge.net/ Although in Alpha, it is quite usefull. Its a flashlike program (very similar interface to flash studio), and it is quite far along. It does animations and everything (I believe it doesn't have full flash script abilities yet). It can create flash files.

Re:Speaking of Vector Graphics program

[Anonymous Coward]

Although a very good looking and interesting project that F4L one, looking at its CVS commits, it seems abandoned. Last changes were made 8 months ago! :(

Re:Speaking of Vector Graphics program

[jaaron]

Yes, and speaking of other open source vector graphics programs someone should also point out that Inkscape is a fork of Sodipodi. And if I understand the story correctly, Sodipodi was based on earlier efforts called "Gill" for GNOME Illustrator. I'm not sure why the Inkscape team forked Sodipodi.

Re:Speaking of Vector Graphics program

[ZaMoose]

I believe politics (both development and global) played a roll in this. The primary developer on SodiPodi was being a bit authoritarian and capricious in the ways he incorporated changes, etc. and some people didn't care for that.

Cool

[Mind Booster Noori]

This is really good... But wouldn't it be better if there was a Gimp plug-in to add vectorial drawing support?

Re:Cool

[BenjyD]

Better vector support in GIMP would be nice, but I think that the Vector vs Raster is too radical a difference to incorporate nicely in one package with a good UI. I think the workflow for most web artists is draw in vector (Illustrator etc) and then finish the image in raster (Photoshop etc).
A vector drawing package on a par with commercial offerings would be a huge addition to the free software world, and UI is very important in that area. Sodipodi is pretty good, IIRC.

Re:Cool

[Slack3r78]

Please god no. The thing about that article that got me interested in Inkscape is the fact that the developers, and more importantly, UI designers are artists themselves, so clearly they want to build a UI that's focused around getting work done, and it sounds like they're doing a good job of that.

While I keep reading that the Gimp's interface was greatly improved with 2.0, when I've tried it, it felt as kludgy as ever. The Gimp does a lot of cool things, but create a smooth workflow it does not. For that reason alone, I feel it's better that this be a stand alone project. It allows them to build a much lighter system aimed at doing one thing and one thing well.

In general, if you're working with vector graphics, you're not really going to care about immediately working with raster. That said, I do think it'd be cool if someone could take the Gimp and strip it down to a very focused UI like Inkscape seems to be doing, creating a set of interlocking common programs like Adobe currently does with their Creative Suite. However, for this type of work, the plug-in-replacing-an-app mentallity is exactly what needs to be avoided because while it may work, an artist will usually be much happier with a lighter program aimed at doing what they want it to do, not ten thousand features they'll never need creating a cluttered and confusing menu system and obscure keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Cool

[Omnifarious]

No, vector graphics are a different enough beast, that you need a completely different set of tools for dealing with them. What you really want is for gimp to be able to import external SVG things and convert them to an arbitrarily scaled bitmap representation in a layer. From what I've seen, gimp 2.0 can already do that.

Though, It would be nice if gimp could regenerate the layer automatically when the source SVG file changes. I don't think it can do that yet.

Re:Cool

[Deusy]

Sodipodi is pretty good, IIRC.

Inkscape is a fork of Sodipodi, with a more open approach and an emphasis on using C++. The result is a program that builds upon Sodipodi's good points by adding a better user interface, handsome new features (like boolean operations), as well as being a lot more stable.

My impression is that Lauris Kaplinski (the Sodipodi maintainer) was doing a David Dawes impression and holding Sodipodi development back in one way or another, and Inkscape is the result of all the frustration that built up. Now the momentum is with Inkscape which has a bright future with a lot of active developers.

Also, the "unorganised approach to open source" comment in the story is very unfair. Inkscape is a very well organised project and Bryce in particular is very diligent about keeping the future well mapped out. The "unorganised" jibe is really because Bryce and Co let people hack on features they want to hack on, and readily accept them if they meet a decent standard. But isn't that what open source is all about? And isn't the reason for many forks and/or project stagnation due to this being prevented? I'd say "open minded" is a more appropriate term.

Re:Cool

[BiggyP]

The Gimp does a lot of cool things, but create a smooth workflow it does not.

that's a matter of opinion, i find that it provides me with an excellent workflow personally.

one important point to bear in mind is that Inkscape, while fairly usable, has a heck of a long way to go before it can compete with the commercial alternatives, the GIMP, on the other hand, is already at that stage.

from what i hear, Jimmac, head GNOME artist, has no need for Photo$hop, but can't replace Illu$strator with any of the free offerings.

Trivial?

[th1ckasabr1ck]

"...one of Inkscape's distinguishing features is that it stores its drawings in a web-friendly XML format"

Isn't that a fairly easy change to make to current open-source vector-drawing utilities? Serializing the output to XML instead of a binary format doesn't seem like the first feature you should mention when describing the advantages your program has over others... Then again, it is open source.

Re:Trivial?

[Bishop923]

It isn't serializing the data, it is actually creating a Scalable Vector Graphics file which is an XML based language that you could then use on a web page or in any app that can read it. Think png vs psd.

(Yes I know that PSD is a published format...)

Re:Trivial?

[Alan Shutko]

The feature is that it stores its drawings in SVG, not any random XML format. That's a bit harder, and far more useful, than just using an XML format instead of a binary one.

Come on, you only needed to read just a sentence or two more of the article to get the explanation.

Re:Trivial?

[rdewalt]

I'm surprised that one of the first features isn't "Fully Skinnable Interface"

Unlike a certain OS video editor that the name of escapes me, which had -THAT- as its very first Feature element. Yeah, that makes me leap into inspirational fury.

What makes this a killer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or to state more appropriately, what is Inkscape going to do to get marketshare from Illustrator that the GIMP hasn't already tried and failed to do when attempting to grab Photoshop marketshare?

Re:What makes this a killer?

[quinto2000]

Gimp actually has a fairly closed development structure, and I don't think it would be accurate to say that they're trying to steal Photoshop's userbase. They seem to have their own goals and interests, and seem to be pretty stubborn about them (especially interface decisions).

Re:What makes this a killer?

[metamatic]

What's Photoshop's market share on Linux? I've not seen any figures.

Re:What makes this a killer?

[Sweetshark]

what is Inkscape going to do to get marketshare from Illustrator that the GIMP hasn't already tried and failed to do when attempting to grab Photoshop marketshare?
1) There is no GIMP marketshare because GIMP is free. This might change with the buyable version at WinGimp.com.
2) This is one tool less missing on a linux desktop. The list of "missing apps" got rather short recently ....

This bothers me

[stratjakt]

Following our policy to "Patch first, ask questions later", we integrated the new feature as soon as practical, without wasting time arguing about it on a mailing list

The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.

At least Linus wants folks signing patches now. But how much damage has been done to the various Free projects we all rely on? How can anyone guarantee the pedigree of any of the code on my linux box with a "go ahead and paste it in!!" attitude?

Anyhow, I call this Kinkscape since I use KDE. You may know it as Ginkscape.

Re:This bothers me

[grasshoppa]

So...which is worse? Not reading the article and commenting, or reading the article and only reading what you are looking for?

Right before your quote, "We quickly double-checked that the licensing was clean, that the code was the author's original work, and that it indeed implemented the feature as promised; it passed on all counts.".

Did ya miss that on your way to bash these folks?

Re:This bothers me

[_Sprocket_]

The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.

Perhapse you missed in the paragraph above the one you quoted:

We quickly double-checked that the licensing was clean, that the code was the author's original work, and that it indeed implemented the feature as promised...

Re:This bothers me

[stratjakt]

I wasnt bashing these folks, I was bashing this cavalier attitude that 99% of the project maintainers on sourceforge have. If one subroutine is suspect, the whole project is suspect.

Ie; if the SAMBA team wasnt prepared to prove (and no doubt they are, this is for the sake of argument) that the code was indeed their own original work, and none of it was copy/pasted from the leaked Win2k source, then it's a timebomb ticking on all those servers.

The SCO fiasco crap could have easily ended if Linus could produce some sort of audit trail, send it to SCO, and say "here's who contributed what, go take it up with the author".

And, I mentioned that they checked the code was indeed PD. It was beside my point.

Did ya miss that on your way to bash me for karma?

Re:This bothers me

[flossie]

Following our policy to "Patch first, ask questions later", we integrated the new feature as soon as practical, without wasting time arguing about it on a mailing list

The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.

You have completely misunderstood what the author of the article was saying. The questions he was referring to are the developer questions - "should we include this feature?", "is this the best way to implement this feature?", etc.

He explicitly emphasised that licence issues can be a problem and that was the first thing he checked when the patch was submitted.

Re:This bothers me

[schemanista]

The SCO fiasco crap could have easily ended if Linus could produce some sort of audit trail, send it to SCO, and say "here's who contributed what, go take it up with the author".

Linus did say that.

"It's not our side that isn't identifying the code. We'll work damn hard to identify everything they care to name," Torvalds said. "In fact, the source control system is out there in the public, and it identifies the source and the reason for patches," mentioning the BitKeeper repository he's used for the past two years to keep track of code in the heart, or kernel, of Linux

...

No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the Linux process is already the most transparent process in the whole industry. Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the evolution and source of every single line of code out there. The only party that has had serious problems clarifying what they are talking about is SCO, and now when details start emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that they are confident that they own the collective work of Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from being the actual copyright owner of any specific section of code.

How much more of an audit trail do you want? The SCO-job was gonna happen. One way or another.

Re:This bothers me

[Bryce]

The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.

Perhapse you missed in the paragraph above the one you quoted:

We quickly double-checked that the licensing was clean, that the code was the author's original work, and that it indeed implemented the feature as promised...

And also note that before this there had been another patch that implemented booleans that we had to reject on licensing problems with a General Polygon Clipping library it used. We'd contacted the GPC author to see if he would let us use it under the GPL, but his license was firm (it allowed for educational, non-commercial use only IIRC), so we ended up not being able to use it.

"Check licensing, then patch, and ask other questions later" doesn't quite have the same ring though. ;-)

Not that easy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that easy to kill off Adobe Illustrator. For example just take a look at Illustrator's type options - it has probably more of them than other good layouting programs!
Good luck and success nevertheless, Bryce!!

Re:Not that easy

[NamShubCMX]

Why should it *kill* Illustrator?

A usable alternative is okay. Both project can coexist you know...

Offtopic rant: Why is every software company deemed NOT successfull if it doesn't kill its competitor? You don't have to be Microsoft to be successful...

Inkscape Rocks!!!

[carlback]

I use inkscape all the time as a jump start for any svg based graphics i build.

my job right now is creating svg based graphs and data visualizations and inkscape is by far the best product I've used (illustrator, sodipodi, xmlspy and even vi) for creating the base graphic before i have to build all the data driven elements.

now just let me link in a .css or use a style block for styles and i have a 99.999% solution.

Re:Inkscape Rocks!!!

[Mattintosh]

As a guy who sits here at his desk with about 200 Visio-made drawings in a stack on his desk, I say...

ANYTHING IS A GOOD REPLACEMENT FOR VISIO.

Thank you. That is all.

I'm waiting for milestone 9, EPS, PDF export

[elwinc]

according to the roadmap, pdf and eps export will arrive at milestone 9 (inkscape 0.43). The project has currently completed milestone 4 (inkscape 0.39, though .38 is what sourceforge has for download). It'll start to get real interesting for me when I can make .eps and .pdf objects

Re:I'm waiting for milestone 9, EPS, PDF export

[Cthefuture]

You don't need to wait. You can currently "export" (print) to Postscript/EPS. Convert that to PDF, and you're done.

Going the other way is what I'd really like to see. That is, import ps and PDF into Inkscape.

Re:I'm waiting for milestone 9, EPS, PDF export

[MenTaLguY]

We (the Inkscape developers, anyway) currently use Scribus for PDF and EPS output when we need it.

Scribus is kind of a sister project, and we've been working closely with them to get perfect import of Inkscape SVGs.

That's not to say that Inkscape shouldn't have PDF etc support in the future, but it's already not too painful if you have Scribus handy.

Re:I'm waiting for milestone 9, EPS, PDF export

[scribusdocs]

We on the Scribus Team have begun over the past few months working closely with the Inkscape devels on improving SVG import export with with both apps. You can take your Inkscape created SVG, import it into Scribus and create a highly compliant "press-ready" CMYK or PDF/X-3 PDF. Thanks to steady efforts and collaboration, support is improving daily. A few notes and comments:

• SVG is a large and somewhat complex spec. However, it has many excellent features. Props to the Inkscape Team for making a goal of real compliance to the W3C spec. Not even Adobe can match all the spec.
• We on the Scribus team really consider Inkscape to be the future of SVG drawing in the open source world. The Inkscape project is very well managed and has approached their development roadmap with enviable discipline and professionalism. We have a lot of respect for the know how of their devels.
• EPS/PS import/export is not trivial by any means. Not every app on the planet exports good EPS and some introduce their own quirks. After 3 years of development, we are finally getting EPS import to where we want it to be.
• Likewise, exporting PDF is not particularly easy. The kinds of effects and transparency Inkscape is capable of creating requires high level PDF 1.4 features, which not all apps can support properly. A simple bitmap dump is not likely to obtain satisfactory results all the time. This is one area where Scribus really shines and the collaboration has allowed end users the ability to reliably export high quality PDF 1.4 with commercial grade reliabilty.
• Most importantly, they are a great bunch of folks who are very attentive to end users and lots of fun to work with.

I need it

[InternationalCow]

Apart from showing nicely how the "hive" model of software development can and *will* work (although I am not sure whether patch first, ask later is always a good idea), this development has me hoping that people who, like our group, use Illustrator and Photoshop for scientific illustrations, can finally escape vendor lock-in. For relatively simple illustrations (we always keep illustrations as simple as possible for reasons of clarity), Adobe's solutions are really overpriced. Licensing issues have us worried anyway since it is almost impossible to keep track of all the licenses we're supposed to have... Anyways: we're on a budget and are always looking to open source alternatives. We have our students on OpenOffice and lots of touching up is already done with the Gimp. If we can now do other illustrations with an open source tool that is equivalent to Illustrator, well... And we would be happy to contribute to the effort financially as long as it is cheaper than buying Adobe :)

Why SVG?

[nagora]

What is the problem with EPS? No one in OS seems to be putting any great efforts into supporting one of the most important file formats in the world. There is not a single decent EPS editing system for Linux (decent: imports and exports EPS and can cope with TrueType fonts). But SVG, there's plenty. Why? What's the advantage? Does nobody use Linux for designing logos for use in the real world?

TWW

Re:Why SVG?

[noewun]

It has, as far as I know, no inherent value as a file format.

Um, dude, it is the standard file format for vector graphics in the print publishing world. Saying it has no inherent value is like saying computers don't need solder.

Re:Why SVG?

[farnerup]

SVG is a lot easier to support than EPS.

The EPS format is just a set of comments around a PostScript program. Now, postscript is a complete programming language. People have implemented things like ray tracers and web servers in postscript, and there is nothing to prevent you from putting things as complex as that in your EPS files

Even if your program had a complete postscript interpreter, how would it translate an arbitrary program to something that makes sense in a gui?

Re:Why SVG?

[dmoore]

EPS is an output file format. It is not meant to be an intermediate file to be edited. For example, SVG keeps track of what objects are "grouped" and their relationship to each other. EPS just contains the lines, curves, characters, etc to be displayed.

The correct solution to your dilemma is to write good import and export filters for EPS into the SVG editor. Naturally, there are times when you would want to edit an EPS file, but such cases should be avoided. You almost always want to go back to the original program which created the EPS and edit in its native format. When this is impossible, you want the ability to convert EPS to SVG. That can currently be done with pstoedit, but unfortunately the SVG plugin is not free software.

Re:Why SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Illustator uses a very limited and mitilated version of Postscript as its .ai format. And because most other PS and EPS producing programs use a very limited subset of the language in very similar ways. In other words, it's pure luck. PS was good as a printer language, but the decision of Adobe to base a vector editor format on it was a disaster. The amount of stupid hacks they had to do in their AI files to keep them editable over the years boggles the mind. Note that NONE of their competitors ever used EPS or PS as native format, only for export/import. The limitations of PS held AI back for a long time; it was one of the LAST vector editors around to implement transparency, for example.

That's why PDF was a success - it was basically a codification of a very limited and therefore tractable PS subset. Everyone has moved to PDF, even the AI format in last versions is PDF based. Which is much better than PS, but still rather stupid. Note my words: Adobe itself will be moving AI towards using SVG as a native format, simply because their old format is such a huge mess by now.

Re:Why SVG?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

EPS is PostScript. There are maybe a half dozen things that you can't do in EPS or must do that you otherwise have freedom to ignore in PS.

The problem with EPS as a file format is that it is too powerful. It is a language far more than it is a standard file format. To make a EPS importer you need a major chunk of code to parse all the possible EPS files that one could generate. You need a PostScript parser - a complete one. You just don't need the PS renderer. You need all the memory management and font handling.

I am not an SVG expert (I'm not sure I qualify as a PS expert either, but I work with it for a living), but I think it is much simpler in theory to implement one than a PS interpreter. Especially since the base language is XML and the parser for that already exists. I also believe that animations (automation?) in SVG is based on Javascript (and/or others?) so that already exists too.

Last, SVG has a nice structure. (E)PS is pretty damn free-form. Writiing tools to work with SVG without actually having to parse all of it is much easier than doing the same with EPS.

Re:Why SVG?

[WWWWolf]

As I see it, SVG is "The Future." As for "real world", I believe SVG will be in the "real world" pretty quickly, and it's already gaining a lot of foothold, which can only be a good thing.

It works fine as an editable format that can be worked on in many different applications without losing any data in between (EPS is just an intermediate format that loses editing-related information) - there's common stuff that specifies the image data and additional, program-specific stuff can be added with additional XML namespaces (sodipodi and inkscape both do this).

Also, you can put any kind of XML metadata inside SVG, for example, Dublin Core elements, Creative Commons tags, you name it. You can do that much hot "semantic web" stuff in it, I suppose.

SVG also interfaces nicely with web browsers, right through the DOM. (At least in theory. Let's wait until Mozilla finally gets SVG out of the alpha, and Microsoft to catch up within a decade or two =) Think Flash, but without a stone wall between the plugin and the browser.

Also, SVG supports graphically stuff that's pretty hard to find in PS world. I still have slight problems getting alpha blending to work beautifully in EPS files (at least in OSS apps!), but I've not had any problems with that in SVG.

SVG is technically easy to work with. It's just XML with some plain-text sublanguages (like path declarations). It is not a Turing-complete language like PS, but it's rather purely just data, so it's probably far easier to work with. Yeah, in this respect, it's perhaps not as "powerful" as PS, but I've mostly seen PS's "power" being used only in gimmicky situations. Algorithms may get you to the stars, but Data gets you pretty damn far in real world.

Autopackage!

[arvindn]

The latest contribution that I think will have widespread and exciting ramification's was brought to Inkscape quite out of the blue by Mike Hearn. Mike's project, called AutoPackage, seeks to solve the perennial problem of easily installing software on Linux. It wrappers the underlying RPM, Debian, etc. systems with a friendly GUI front end, similar to what's used on Windows. Mike's hoping Inkscape can help be a good proof of concept for his work, and we're looking forward to gaining an extremely easy installation mechanism for non-technical users.

Mmm... I'd love it for two of my favorite open source projects to come together.

Re:Autopackage!

[IamTheRealMike]

There are already nightly builds of Inkscape CVS available for autopackage 0.5.1 here. To those who haven't used autopackage before, download and run that file.

Note: there are known issues with certain (rare) setups which have a non standard umask and X security settings. If you are on a stock Red Hat/Fedora install all should go smoothly (let us know if it does not). If you have tweaked your umask or have X security too restrictive (programs run as root must be able to connect) things will break.

If you want to test inkscape quickly and you are on x86 Linux, this is an easy way to do it. Just be careful. autopackage is in beta. If it breaks you get to keep the pieces.

The Open Source Office is here, and getting better

[SteamyMobile]

This is yet another component of the Open Source Office. Right now, OpenOffice.org and Evolution together provide a great deal of functionality, and programs like this one are going to fill in. When OpenOffice 2.0 comes out, with good KDE integration, everyone else will be trying to catch up with Linux on this. Here at SteamyMobile, we already use all Open Source office products.

-----------
Mobile porn faq

Re:What about Sodipodi?

[darksmurf]

A good number of the developers on Inkscape used to work on Sodipodi but left for various reasons. Read the mail lists for the details.

The Inkscape project is (as I understand it) flying past Sodipodi in features partly because it has a more liberal feature inclusion process.

Bryce deserves a good bit of credit for that.

How bout we shut up about killing?

[Rhesus Piece]

Although the poster seemed to think so,
I really don't believe the Inkscape folks
are trying to make an Illustrator Killer anymore
than Linus is trying to make a Windows Killer.

Like most OSS developers, they are just trying
to make good software that is free and does what
they want it to do.
When people start calling them ___ Killers,
then we get all the crap about "But Gimp can't
compete with Photoshop!" and suddenly
they get compared and deemed poor because they are
not as good as the best product in the world
in that particular field. Of course not,
they're younger, less complete, impeded by
patents, and worked on for free.
Judge absolute worth, not relative worth,
and if a free product isn't good enough
for your purposes, buy the one that is.
Let's just avoid characterizing things as
Davids to the commercial Goliaths, k?

Re:Anyway to import Illustrator files???

[MrLee]

Illustrator from version 10 on can save in SVG format and Inkscape reads them in perfectly!

Reasons to fork

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think the main motivations were to change the code to C++, to rely on third-party libraries if these were actively maintained and (I think) were available on different platforms, to get an interface more HIG-compliant and to make emphasis on a small core with extension capabilities.

But you could read it better in this pages of Inkscape's wiki.

Missing important features

[PastaAnta]

Last time I tried Inkscape I was surprised that no support for Layers could be found. IMHO Layers is an essential feature in any decent modern graphic editor. And what is the deal with the "Spiral" tool as a main drawing tool? Does anybody ever have a need for a spiral drawing tool? In my eyes it seem like the featureset is more determined by the inherent capabilites of the SVG format rather than the needs of the users.

But OK, OK... it may be because my need is for technical drawing tool more than an artistic drawing tool. You may also read the opinions in the The Grumpy Editor's diagram editor followup

Illustrator killer

[tit4tat]

If he wanted to write an Illustrator killer, shouldn't he have called it "Killustrator"? Oh, wait. That name's taken.

(Sorry, couldn't stop myself.)

Re:Its called The GIMP 2.0

[youknowmewell]

Personally, I find the GIMP 2 UI to be easy for my uses. However, going from PS to GIMP is like going from using a calculator for dividing, to using long division. Things like an inner shadow which are simple to implement in PS take many more steps to implement in GIMP. Because it's so easy to make an inner shadow with PS it makes it easier to experiment, and it saves me time. However, I want to use a Free alternative to PS for things like web design and GIMP is that.

Re:Layers

[ishmalius]

Yes, layers are nice, and I like them myself. But how do you store that information in the SVG format?

Maybe storing each layer as an invisible node that the user can't alter, might do it.

There are a lot of features that the developers want to provide (multiple pages, scripting, whiteboard), but just haven't brought into fruition yet.

Be patient. Or better yet, contribute. There is room for all at the table.

Re:As a user, I'm disturbed

[Anonymous Coward]

With Photoshop, Illustrator, etc the vendor waits until a feature works, then releases it. It may not have all the bells & whistles that people want, and it does get refined as time goes on, but they do wait until its perfect (in its current state) before releasing it.

You and I must be living in different universes, then. Propeprietary vendors are at least as bad feature whores as Open Sourcerors... those bells'n whistles are THE very first thing sales people get added, well before things that would make things more stable or easier to use.

And yes, I'm software engineer and have worked for a few shrink-wrap software vendors, including Adobe's biggest competitor.

This is not to say developers shouldn't try to think carefully about what to add, how and when, just to point out commercial companies are not much better. It's just that THEIR process is a black box, and outsiders generally do not see how screwed up it is, whereas process (or lack thereof), goals, philosophies and practices of Open Source projects are usually transparent and can be freely debated.

Correction about "brainchild"

[Bryce]

Bryce Harrington, Inkscape's founder, wrote an article introducing his brainchild and where its development is heading

Quick correction - I was one of several people that founded the Inkscape project, but I definitely can't claim credit for the application itself. As mentioned in the article, it derives from Gill and Sodipodi, so if it is anyone's "brainchild" it would be the developers of those projects. That said, Inkscape as it is today is the amalgam of a number of people's ideas and hard work, so it is most definitely a team effort. :-)

Re:Layers

[MenTaLguY]

Basically, the plan is groups = layers. I implemented a first cut at that a long time ago (set inkscape:groupmode="layer" on a group [hopefully I'm remembering the attribtue name here..]), but nobody's gotten around to doing UI for it yet.

I expect it'll get done fairly soon since even I'm beginning to feel the pain of not having it implemented all the way yet. ^_-

color models

[MenTaLguY]

Color models are going to be tricky ... SVG is currently limited to only sRGB by CSS2/3. We're trying to find clean ways to extend SVG/CSS without breaking backwards compatability (and of course we're tracking future W3C proposals along these lines).

Re:color models

[MenTaLguY]

W3C compliant, I think. We are trying to modularize the code more, though, to provide a basis for other (possibly non-SVG-based) tools (implemented by us or someone else). It might eventually mean an internal or external fork, but that's okay. People gotta do what they need.

The other thing is that once we've reached a decent level of SVG-compliance we should be in a pretty good shape to get involved with the development of the SVG spec and help nudge it in appropriate directions.

So we'll see how it works out.

Re:Oy – first the GIMP. . .

[MenTaLguY]

Agreed.

I'm one of the founding developers. We might joke about being an Illustrator killer occasionally, but really that's not what we're about. That wouldn't be a healthy focus, and the _best_ we could hope for in that case would be becoming a (marginally) better Illustrator clone.

That wouldn't be so great, IMO. Illustrator does a lot of things, but it doesn't always do them well, and the UI is painful at times.

Realistically, we are going to do some things well which Illustrator does poorly, and we will do some things poorly which Illustrator does well.

We just wanna make a good and useful tool and be the best we can be dammit. All this "foo-killer" stuff is silliness. ^^;

Inkscape is awesome!

[ecloud]

I tried it the other day, and my first impression is man, I won't be missing Corel Draw anymore! It even has some features Corel doesn't. I liked Sodipodi somewhat before, but this is much better.

Now somebody needs to fork Dia and make it work as well as Visio.

Re:Inkscape is awesome!

[Aaton]

Dia and Xfig have some features I would love to see in Inkscape. I actually prefer Xfig over Dia for drawing layouts and wiring plans (checkout the library for some 2u machines ). Dia is better for doing UML objects and such. Then there is DiaCanvas which seems more like Inkscape.

The item I like about Xfig is I can create template objects quickly and easily and add them to it library of objects. The last time I tried to make an object for Dia I just gave up.

Now if Inkscape could export to the .xfig format and Xfig to the proper .svg format that would be great! Using both tools would save me sometime.

Re:Inkscape doesn't need to kill, its an alternati

[Xabraxas]

OpenOffice is free, market share has nothing to do with price, only the size of the userbase

Actually market share has a lot to do with price and nothing to do with user base. User base and market share have little to do with each other. Debian has no market share in the OS market but they do have a user base. A market implies commerce and price, which is not necessary for a distro like Debian, in order to have a user base.