> Have you ever tried making realistic looking dirt in a vector graphic program?
Yes! Just play with filters, new in 0.46. For example, using two turbulence inputs, displacement map, and blur, I was able to get an extremely realistic "watercolor on rough paper" effect.
True, filters are slow, and take a lot of memory. But that is a problem that constantly solves itself thanks to Moore's Law. Besides, very few people really need complex or realistic textures. For most people, a simple blur is all they will ever need. And for them, the advantages of much smaller, human-readable source, scalability, easy editability and maintainability of vector art are paramount.
> the last thing I want is to have the drawing surface compete for space with tool dialogs.
Sure, and with every version, more and more things are possible to do right on canvas, without opening any dialogs at all. For example 0.46 does away with the gradient dialog, now gradients are completely editable on canvas including intermediate stops - this is a lot more convenient, precise, and flexible, and no need to ever open any dialog. Color gestures help, too.
> For instance, you can map a network drive in the Windows standard one. Or drag a file into it.
"For instance," you can one-click add a favorite folder in the GTK file dialog. Or use the very convenient folder hierarchy buttons to jump to any ancestor folder.
See? It works both ways.
I couldn't care less about Windows network drives, but I do use the favorites pane all the time. For this reason, me and others weren't thrilled about the change. But I don't use Windows all that often, so I went with the majority opinion on that.
As for you, I think you are a textbook example of familiarity bias. A really bad case. I'm not sure it's curable:)
> but when a software program can't even alphabetize a freakin' list correctly, I have no confidence that it can do any other operation correctly, either.
That sounds ridiculous, yes, but not for the reasons you intended. Guess how many pages I can fill with things that Illustrator "can't even do correctly"? Guess how many bugs big and small remain unfixed for years in any sizeable piece of software, open source or no open source?
The facts of your case are simple: (1) You submitted a bug, it was noted, taken care of, and routed to the correct party. (2) It is, with all due respect, a cosmetic problem that only manifests itself on a minor proprietary platform that few developers use. For example, on Windows, there were also endless complaints about GTK file dialogs (not that they were particularly bad, they were just unfamiliar - remember, familiarity trumps usability), but due to the popularity of the platform, a volunteer eventually came and switched Inkscape's Windows port to using native Windows file dialogs. Voila, problem solved. (3) It's not an Inkscape problem and bears no relation to the quality of Inkscape as a vector editor.
If you miss out on one of the best open source applications, and one of the best vector editors in existence, just because of its version number, then it's definitely YOUR problem.
> Photoshop also has enough vector features to do most, if not all, of the other items on your list-- perhaps a bit more awkwardly, but they can be done.
"Awkwardly" is a very mild way to put that. Actually it's an absolutely braindead approach. Vectors are a higher level of abstraction than bitmaps. Forcing vectors into a bitmap editor is exactly like putting a carriage in front of the horse. It is bound to be clumsy and ugly, even if somehow workable - and yes, I did use it in Photoshop so I know what I'm speaking about. Even Illustrator is, although capable, incredibly clumsy and inconvenient; vector stuff in Photoshop is orders of magniture worse than even that simply because it's misplaced. Yet, people demand it because their brains are molded by years of Photoshop quirks, and Adobe complies. Familiarity utterly trumps usability, good design, and plain common sense.
> From the email, I gather the buck was passed to the "GTK layer" and not by Inkscape itself.
Which is exactly the right way of dealing with situations like this.
So it's not deleted after all. It's an active bug. Its being unconfirmed may mean any number of things - that it was quickly fixed (and therefore not reported or searched for by other bug reporters), or that it was something specific to your system and not reproducible on others, or that simply not enough noise is made about it to motivate someone to fix it. If you care about it, load up latest version on your Mac, test it, and add your comment to that bug report. Or write to GTK list. Or even to Inkscape list - we have some very dedicated OSX maintainers who may at least confirm the bug, and maybe even fix it for you. In short, do something if you care! If you don't, why waste time trying to use your bug as a weapon in a Slashdot discussion? It may fire upon yourself:)
> If Inkscape is so good, it's version number should at least be 1.0
Aren't you aware of the fact that open source is very version-shy, in general? And that a quality of an open source application is not correlated with its version number? I thought this was Slashdot where such things need not be explained.
> Inkscape is a better choice for graphic tasks that involve vectors.
Which is the clear majority of all graphic tasks, overall. Draw something? Best done in vector, with full freedom and editability. Compose something out of existing stock art? Pure vector. Anything involving text? Of course vector, using GIMP/Photoshop for text is self-inflicted torture. Banners, diagrams, cartoons, maps, buttons? Vector, vector, vector...
What remains to bitmap editors? Well, editing photos, naturally. Retouching, color correction, RAW work. Also, naturalistic drawing emulating watercolor, oil etc (but this is not the domain of GIMP or Photoshop either, try ArtRage). That's about all. Even things like shadows, bevels, and texturizing can now be done in Inkscape using filters.
> It's more likely they just use bitmap tools more than they use vector tools.
And this is sad. I know Photoshop came first and deeply entrenched itself into the brains of users. But come on people, it's time to give it a second thought. It's 21st century and vector editors have progressed far, far beyond what was available in the 90s.
> Last time I used Inkscape, on X11 on Macintosh, it wasn't even capable of sorting the File->Open dialog in alphabetical order.
It's curious that for your pick, you chose one of the things that is actually common to both Inkscape and GIMP - the file dialog provided by the GTK library! Of course Inkscape does not maliciously missort your files, it's just the default with the GTK version you were using. And I have just searched even deleted and closed bug reports and could not find yours. So, if it's still not fixed in 0.46, please go to https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape and report it.
Inkscape has just had a major new release, 0.46. (Yeah, its number does not look like it's a major release, but it is. It's the biggest one so far).
Inkscape's UI is a lot better than GIMP's. Everyone admits that. And it's much improved in 0.46 anyway.
Inkscape, as a vector application, is simply a better choice for a lot of graphic tasks for which clueless people still try to use GIMP or Photoshop. Just look at the "can it draw circles" thread in this discussion!
AND YET, despite all this, new version of GIMP gets front page news on Slashdot, but any submissions about Inkscape 0.46 are rejected.
This kind of arrogant attitude is not a solution. It's the easiest thing in the world to blame everything on stupid users who just won't learn. My experience tells me that when you really make an effort to explain something to people, they do listen and do understand. You just need to think out of your box. The URL line is a perfect example. We techies have many years of parsing URLs and take it for granted that it should be obvious to everyone where the domain name is. But it is not. We have to realize that it's not because of laziness or stupidity - people see a long string of meaningless characters and assume it's just NOT WORTH making any sense of. "Something technical, not for me." If we make one little step and add the bold domain, we will signal them that it's actually not entirely meaningless, that some part of it is important even for them. I'm sure this will prompt many non-technical users to pay more attention to the URL line and understand URLs better.
Make the browser highlight the domain part of the url in bold. Even if this helps just a few users recognize the scam easier it's worth it. Besides, it will somewhat improve usability for regular use as well. I often scan the URL line for to get an idea of what a tab displays, and this will save a few milliseconds of my brain time each time I do it.
1. But I actually need autocompletion. It's handy for long words and names. I just don't need it to get into my way. My text editor completes a word on pressing Tab - perfect. Can Word do that?
2. Sorry, I don't like it white on blue. I prefer green on black. Can Word do that? Too bad.
3. Oh, and I absolutely need a proper search feature. Word's is a laugh. It jumps on me and insists that I type my query completely before even starting to search. And then it starts jumping around the screen like crazy as I keep searching. Are you serious? It's the craziest and most distracting UI _ever_. Sorry but no go.
For comparison, my text editor searches _incrementally_, query is typed in the statusbar at bottom, it highlights ALL the matches on page (this alone is a life saver), and autocompleting by Tab works in the query too. Overall it's several orders of magnitude faster and easier to use than in Word.
Word users are masochists.
People are still using Word for writing?
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They're masochists. It's hard to imagine a clunkier, fussier, more limiting and more annoying UI than a typical word processor (ms word or OOo, makes little difference). It's a torture.
Now, the reviewed software appears to be better than nothing (I can't try it since both are mac-only). Perhaps they will fit the bill for those who prefer prepackaged solutions. For myself, however, I built a custom system based on XEmacs. It has all these conveniences - full screen, collapsible outlines, plus many more: one-key access to dict.org and to internet-wide concordance (actually just phrase search on google with results in a new buffer, very convenient to see how often and in what contexts a word or phrase are typically used). My analog of Scrivener's "snapshots" is much more powerful - it just commits the document to its svn repository on each save. And since my local svn server is always on, I can work on the same document from any desktop or laptop in my home easily. Plus, of course, one-key access to scripts for export to XML, PDF, HTML, etc. And many, many other small conveniences I have been adding for years.
Perhaps the cruelest thing about Word is its search. I can't believe - even in office 2007 it's still a pop-up window that jumps on you, obscuring your text, and then jumps around like crazy when you try to search forward. It's absolutely insane. XEmacs's incremental search with highlighting matches, from statusbar at bottom, with autocomplete working, is a godsend by comparison, though in fact it's just the natural thing to do. And yes, you do need to search your text all the time when you are just writing prose, not only when coding programs. Here's a chance for OOo to differentiate itself on usability, if it cares about this kind of thing.
The main reason this is not fixed is because to PROPERLY (automatically) fix it, you need to use some SVG 1.2 features. So if we do it now, it will work in Inkscape but not in most other SVG viewers. Do you really need that? So for now, use the workaround: Effects > Modify path > Color markers to match stroke. That works everywhere.
Dozens of others play music just as well (or better). Why this insane fixation of Apple? Why do you all have to have iPods, and hack them, and curse with them, and endlessly whine about their lousiness and proprietariness? It's just crazy. If it gives you problems, just throw it away and buy something decent instead.
You forget that the vast majority of Linux users don't need to hunt down websites and download software from Internet, ever. They get all software worth having nicely packaged by their distribution. So the number of Linux downloads on SF is greatly underestimated compared to the number of actual users.
One possibility is to wait for newer versions of SVG. Many good things are being added.
Another possibility is to implement something on top of SVG but in SVG-compatible way. For example, this is how we implement star shapes missing in SVG. This is not always possible, and even when it is, we do this only if it's something simple and limited (i.e. would not require pervasive changes across all of our codebase) or when the need for the feature is really very urgent. I may be wrong but to me, non-destructive unions or intersections do not seem to fall into any of these categories.
On the other hand, we have plans to implement "path effects" (non-destructive effects on shapes and paths) on top of SVG. This is relatively easy to do. Plus, in 0.45 we should have support for SVG filters, thanks to Google SoC.
If you read their FAQ, they are more than aware of the existence of Inkscape. They give credit to Inkscape for "features that Xara does not have" and a higher rate of development. In fact, they say that the ultimate goal is a single merged vector editor combining the best in Xara and Inkscape. And as an Inkscape developer, this is something I'd like to see as well.
It remains to be seen how exactly this merger will proceed, who will be on the giving side and who on the receiving side. Whichever way it goes, however, their goal is the same as mine: to create the best vector editor in the world. So I guess this means Xara and Inkscape are bound to be friends overall, even though an element of competition will be present as well.
For an overview of how Inkscape and Xara compare, read this:
> I thought it had a rocker switch like the ArtZ
Yes, it's a rocker switch. The front part is mapped to the left mouse button, the rear to the middle mouse button. I think this is the default.
> "newcomers" are turned away by their inability to work comfortably with the software
Sure that happens too. But it's inevitable that some percentage of those who leave will send us a rant. So, by intensity of such rants we can estimate the number of people who tried it but quit. We also monitor blogs and forums for any Inkscape feedback; notable postings usually get reported by someone on our jabber channel. Also, we can gauge our performance by the amount of people who, having tried both, say that they like Inkscape's UI better than Illustrator; such opinions are becoming quite regular of late.
Finally, we just listen. For example since I saw at least two people in this discussion who claim that space-mouse dragging is critical for them, I'm now thinking about implementing it as a separate option, even before we make all keys reconfigurable.
Judging by user comments, we have at least that much, if not more, people coming from Corel Draw/Xara as from Illustrator (although this proportion may change in the future, of course). And the Corel/Xara people have been always using Space to switch to Selector and back, just as we do.
> I'm proposing you don't proclaim this as a stable release unless it's rock solid so you don't lose your users.
Heh. Some people complain that we use a less than 1 version number. Others complain that we "proclaim it as stable." Will you please argue it out between you, first?:)
In any case, this is in all probability the MOST stable of all releases we've ever had. And I see no reasons for us not to say so.
> If it doesn't work and they do bother to complain and you treat them with suspiscion until its repeatable (which is what you implied in an earlier post)
You may try to read into my posts what you like, but what I really said was that we go to great lengths to extract useful information from each and every bug report. Which is often difficult because a good share of them is anonymous and provides almost no details, sometimes even no platform. Only when an anonymous bug report with developers' questions remains unanswered and unconfirmed for a long time, we close it. Where you found "suspicion" in this process is a mystery to me.
> Be very careful what you say and how you say it and you and your product have a healthy future.
I don't think I said anything which is untrue or insults anyone, which is what matters to me. As to the rest, I'm indeed not the right person to discuss "marketing strategies" - I'm not interested in this sort of stuff. I'm convinced that being honest and open is the best marketing strategy anyway. Future will tell if I'm right or not.
> I think that there are more of us than there are Xara X users
Sure, but Xara X users are more passionate:) I don't know of any Illustrator user who would say that Xara interface is horrible, while the reverse happens all the time. Also historically (since Sodipodi), we're closer to Corel Draw and thus to Xara than to Illustrator in many aspects, so often it's much easier to borrow Xara or Corel ideas than Adobe's.
> nobody should ever strive to borrow from the Gimp's interface.
We certainly don't borrow Gimp's most notirious UI quirks, but for small things (such as, which modifier to use with scrollwheel for zooming) we take it into account.
As for space toggling panning, as I wrote in another thread: 1) we already use space for switching to Selector and back; 2) if you like space+left drag for panning, why not use our shift+right drag for it. Keys are different but the key+mouse principle is the same.
> See you've lost the average end user right there.
So? Are you proposing to hold off releases until all bugs are fixed? And not only our bugs but also bugs in the libs we use (and these bugs are a very significant share of the total)? This will never happen.
> At that point it's too late. If you've fobbed off a few people, they'll tell their friends, put it up in message boards etc. and you'll lose more than just those few people.
I doubt that. People rarely bother to complain. If something does not work, they shrug and forget it. If it does work, and works better than expected, then they will remember it and tell everyone. We just need to get the critical mass of people for whom it works better than they expected, and then it will be a snowball.
I hate to say it but it will never work perfectly for _everyone_. Even single-platform commercial software with years-long release cycles does crash and misbehave all the time. People put up with it because it "basically" works for them and the good they get from it is bigger than the bad.
Every crash scares people away, but every cool feature or smooth usability trick lures them in. Our release policy is a matter of finding an optimal balance between these two, unfortunately inseparable, trends. Obviously, over time we'll be shifting this balance towards more stability and conservatism, as all apps do in their lifetimes. But at this point in time I see it as more important to register our claim to fame and get more people excited about us.
And finally, note that at this stage, a majority of bugs (and nearly 100% of crash bugs) are caused by platforms and configurations that are different from those of the developers. For example on my system Inkscape is ABSOLUTELY stable, I can run it for days and days and do absolutely anything to it. Problems only start when other people run it on their own wildly different systems. And so the ONLY way to fix these problems is to get it out there for as much people as possible to test and abuse - even at the risk of "alienating" some users by crashes. That's why we make releases with known bugs.
> How hard would it be to adapt the product to deal with Visio style drawings?
If by that you mean connectors that follow object around, then yes, we have a Google-funded student working on this right now. Hopefully the results will go into the next release.
Slashdot Mirror
> Have you ever tried making realistic looking dirt in a vector graphic program?
Yes! Just play with filters, new in 0.46. For example, using two turbulence inputs, displacement map, and blur, I was able to get an extremely realistic "watercolor on rough paper" effect.
True, filters are slow, and take a lot of memory. But that is a problem that constantly solves itself thanks to Moore's Law. Besides, very few people really need complex or realistic textures. For most people, a simple blur is all they will ever need. And for them, the advantages of much smaller, human-readable source, scalability, easy editability and maintainability of vector art are paramount.
> the last thing I want is to have the drawing surface compete for space with tool dialogs.
Sure, and with every version, more and more things are possible to do right on canvas, without opening any dialogs at all. For example 0.46 does away with the gradient dialog, now gradients are completely editable on canvas including intermediate stops - this is a lot more convenient, precise, and flexible, and no need to ever open any dialog. Color gestures help, too.
> For instance, you can map a network drive in the Windows standard one. Or drag a file into it.
:)
"For instance," you can one-click add a favorite folder in the GTK file dialog. Or use the very convenient folder hierarchy buttons to jump to any ancestor folder.
See? It works both ways.
I couldn't care less about Windows network drives, but I do use the favorites pane all the time. For this reason, me and others weren't thrilled about the change. But I don't use Windows all that often, so I went with the majority opinion on that.
As for you, I think you are a textbook example of familiarity bias. A really bad case. I'm not sure it's curable
> but when a software program can't even alphabetize a freakin' list correctly, I have no confidence that it can do any other operation correctly, either.
That sounds ridiculous, yes, but not for the reasons you intended. Guess how many pages I can fill with things that Illustrator "can't even do correctly"? Guess how many bugs big and small remain unfixed for years in any sizeable piece of software, open source or no open source?
The facts of your case are simple: (1) You submitted a bug, it was noted, taken care of, and routed to the correct party. (2) It is, with all due respect, a cosmetic problem that only manifests itself on a minor proprietary platform that few developers use. For example, on Windows, there were also endless complaints about GTK file dialogs (not that they were particularly bad, they were just unfamiliar - remember, familiarity trumps usability), but due to the popularity of the platform, a volunteer eventually came and switched Inkscape's Windows port to using native Windows file dialogs. Voila, problem solved. (3) It's not an Inkscape problem and bears no relation to the quality of Inkscape as a vector editor.
Anything else?
> That's their problem, not mine.
:)
If you miss out on one of the best open source applications, and one of the best vector editors in existence, just because of its version number, then it's definitely YOUR problem.
> Photoshop also has enough vector features to do most, if not all, of the other items on your list-- perhaps a bit more awkwardly, but they can be done.
"Awkwardly" is a very mild way to put that. Actually it's an absolutely braindead approach. Vectors are a higher level of abstraction than bitmaps. Forcing vectors into a bitmap editor is exactly like putting a carriage in front of the horse. It is bound to be clumsy and ugly, even if somehow workable - and yes, I did use it in Photoshop so I know what I'm speaking about. Even Illustrator is, although capable, incredibly clumsy and inconvenient; vector stuff in Photoshop is orders of magniture worse than even that simply because it's misplaced. Yet, people demand it because their brains are molded by years of Photoshop quirks, and Adobe complies. Familiarity utterly trumps usability, good design, and plain common sense.
> From the email, I gather the buck was passed to the "GTK layer" and not by Inkscape itself.
Which is exactly the right way of dealing with situations like this.
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391461 "Unconfirmed!"
So it's not deleted after all. It's an active bug. Its being unconfirmed may mean any number of things - that it was quickly fixed (and therefore not reported or searched for by other bug reporters), or that it was something specific to your system and not reproducible on others, or that simply not enough noise is made about it to motivate someone to fix it. If you care about it, load up latest version on your Mac, test it, and add your comment to that bug report. Or write to GTK list. Or even to Inkscape list - we have some very dedicated OSX maintainers who may at least confirm the bug, and maybe even fix it for you. In short, do something if you care! If you don't, why waste time trying to use your bug as a weapon in a Slashdot discussion? It may fire upon yourself
> If Inkscape is so good, it's version number should at least be 1.0
Aren't you aware of the fact that open source is very version-shy, in general? And that a quality of an open source application is not correlated with its version number? I thought this was Slashdot where such things need not be explained.
> Inkscape is a better choice for graphic tasks that involve vectors.
Which is the clear majority of all graphic tasks, overall. Draw something? Best done in vector, with full freedom and editability. Compose something out of existing stock art? Pure vector. Anything involving text? Of course vector, using GIMP/Photoshop for text is self-inflicted torture. Banners, diagrams, cartoons, maps, buttons? Vector, vector, vector...
What remains to bitmap editors? Well, editing photos, naturally. Retouching, color correction, RAW work. Also, naturalistic drawing emulating watercolor, oil etc (but this is not the domain of GIMP or Photoshop either, try ArtRage). That's about all. Even things like shadows, bevels, and texturizing can now be done in Inkscape using filters.
> It's more likely they just use bitmap tools more than they use vector tools.
And this is sad. I know Photoshop came first and deeply entrenched itself into the brains of users. But come on people, it's time to give it a second thought. It's 21st century and vector editors have progressed far, far beyond what was available in the 90s.
> Last time I used Inkscape, on X11 on Macintosh, it wasn't even capable of sorting the File->Open dialog in alphabetical order.
It's curious that for your pick, you chose one of the things that is actually common to both Inkscape and GIMP - the file dialog provided by the GTK library! Of course Inkscape does not maliciously missort your files, it's just the default with the GTK version you were using. And I have just searched even deleted and closed bug reports and could not find yours. So, if it's still not fixed in 0.46, please go to https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape and report it.
Inkscape has just had a major new release, 0.46. (Yeah, its number does not look like it's a major release, but it is. It's the biggest one so far).
Inkscape's UI is a lot better than GIMP's. Everyone admits that. And it's much improved in 0.46 anyway.
Inkscape, as a vector application, is simply a better choice for a lot of graphic tasks for which clueless people still try to use GIMP or Photoshop. Just look at the "can it draw circles" thread in this discussion!
AND YET, despite all this, new version of GIMP gets front page news on Slashdot, but any submissions about Inkscape 0.46 are rejected.
This is simply ridiculous.
This kind of arrogant attitude is not a solution. It's the easiest thing in the world to blame everything on stupid users who just won't learn. My experience tells me that when you really make an effort to explain something to people, they do listen and do understand. You just need to think out of your box. The URL line is a perfect example. We techies have many years of parsing URLs and take it for granted that it should be obvious to everyone where the domain name is. But it is not. We have to realize that it's not because of laziness or stupidity - people see a long string of meaningless characters and assume it's just NOT WORTH making any sense of. "Something technical, not for me." If we make one little step and add the bold domain, we will signal them that it's actually not entirely meaningless, that some part of it is important even for them. I'm sure this will prompt many non-technical users to pay more attention to the URL line and understand URLs better.
Make the browser highlight the domain part of the url in bold. Even if this helps just a few users recognize the scam easier it's worth it. Besides, it will somewhat improve usability for regular use as well. I often scan the URL line for to get an idea of what a tab displays, and this will save a few milliseconds of my brain time each time I do it.
1. But I actually need autocompletion. It's handy for long words and names. I just don't need it to get into my way. My text editor completes a word on pressing Tab - perfect. Can Word do that?
2. Sorry, I don't like it white on blue. I prefer green on black. Can Word do that? Too bad.
3. Oh, and I absolutely need a proper search feature. Word's is a laugh. It jumps on me and insists that I type my query completely before even starting to search. And then it starts jumping around the screen like crazy as I keep searching. Are you serious? It's the craziest and most distracting UI _ever_. Sorry but no go.
For comparison, my text editor searches _incrementally_, query is typed in the statusbar at bottom, it highlights ALL the matches on page (this alone is a life saver), and autocompleting by Tab works in the query too. Overall it's several orders of magnitude faster and easier to use than in Word.
Word users are masochists.
They're masochists. It's hard to imagine a clunkier, fussier, more limiting and more annoying UI than a typical word processor (ms word or OOo, makes little difference). It's a torture. Now, the reviewed software appears to be better than nothing (I can't try it since both are mac-only). Perhaps they will fit the bill for those who prefer prepackaged solutions. For myself, however, I built a custom system based on XEmacs. It has all these conveniences - full screen, collapsible outlines, plus many more: one-key access to dict.org and to internet-wide concordance (actually just phrase search on google with results in a new buffer, very convenient to see how often and in what contexts a word or phrase are typically used). My analog of Scrivener's "snapshots" is much more powerful - it just commits the document to its svn repository on each save. And since my local svn server is always on, I can work on the same document from any desktop or laptop in my home easily. Plus, of course, one-key access to scripts for export to XML, PDF, HTML, etc. And many, many other small conveniences I have been adding for years. Perhaps the cruelest thing about Word is its search. I can't believe - even in office 2007 it's still a pop-up window that jumps on you, obscuring your text, and then jumps around like crazy when you try to search forward. It's absolutely insane. XEmacs's incremental search with highlighting matches, from statusbar at bottom, with autocomplete working, is a godsend by comparison, though in fact it's just the natural thing to do. And yes, you do need to search your text all the time when you are just writing prose, not only when coding programs. Here's a chance for OOo to differentiate itself on usability, if it cares about this kind of thing.
The main reason this is not fixed is because to PROPERLY (automatically) fix it, you need to use some SVG 1.2 features. So if we do it now, it will work in Inkscape but not in most other SVG viewers. Do you really need that? So for now, use the workaround: Effects > Modify path > Color markers to match stroke. That works everywhere.
...in all its glory.
Dozens of others play music just as well (or better). Why this insane fixation of Apple? Why do you all have to have iPods, and hack them, and curse with them, and endlessly whine about their lousiness and proprietariness? It's just crazy. If it gives you problems, just throw it away and buy something decent instead.
You forget that the vast majority of Linux users don't need to hunt down websites and download software from Internet, ever. They get all software worth having nicely packaged by their distribution. So the number of Linux downloads on SF is greatly underestimated compared to the number of actual users.
One possibility is to wait for newer versions of SVG. Many good things are being added.
Another possibility is to implement something on top of SVG but in SVG-compatible way. For example, this is how we implement star shapes missing in SVG. This is not always possible, and even when it is, we do this only if it's something simple and limited (i.e. would not require pervasive changes across all of our codebase) or when the need for the feature is really very urgent. I may be wrong but to me, non-destructive unions or intersections do not seem to fall into any of these categories.
On the other hand, we have plans to implement "path effects" (non-destructive effects on shapes and paths) on top of SVG. This is relatively easy to do. Plus, in 0.45 we should have support for SVG filters, thanks to Google SoC.
We have export to "Latex with PStricks" which works for many people.
> I major feature that was missing is non-destructive shape unions, intersections and differences.
Non-destructive intersection is now possible, it's called clipping. Other types are not supported by SVG.
> Next major feature is an effects stack
We're working on that. Hopefully 0.45 will have this.
> No way to stroke outside or inside a path instead of centered on a path?
SVG limitation, comments to W3C please
> No way to turn off the visibility of the guff that indicates the current selection so that I can tweak layout easily?
Preferences, Tools, Selector, Per-object selection cue: None
Anything else?
If you read their FAQ, they are more than aware of the existence of Inkscape. They give credit to Inkscape for "features that Xara does not have" and a higher rate of development. In fact, they say that the ultimate goal is a single merged vector editor combining the best in Xara and Inkscape. And as an Inkscape developer, this is something I'd like to see as well.
It remains to be seen how exactly this merger will proceed, who will be on the giving side and who on the receiving side. Whichever way it goes, however, their goal is the same as mine: to create the best vector editor in the world. So I guess this means Xara and Inkscape are bound to be friends overall, even though an element of competition will be present as well.
For an overview of how Inkscape and Xara compare, read this:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Xara_X
> I thought it had a rocker switch like the ArtZ Yes, it's a rocker switch. The front part is mapped to the left mouse button, the rear to the middle mouse button. I think this is the default. > "newcomers" are turned away by their inability to work comfortably with the software Sure that happens too. But it's inevitable that some percentage of those who leave will send us a rant. So, by intensity of such rants we can estimate the number of people who tried it but quit. We also monitor blogs and forums for any Inkscape feedback; notable postings usually get reported by someone on our jabber channel. Also, we can gauge our performance by the amount of people who, having tried both, say that they like Inkscape's UI better than Illustrator; such opinions are becoming quite regular of late. Finally, we just listen. For example since I saw at least two people in this discussion who claim that space-mouse dragging is critical for them, I'm now thinking about implementing it as a separate option, even before we make all keys reconfigurable.
Judging by user comments, we have at least that much, if not more, people coming from Corel Draw/Xara as from Illustrator (although this proportion may change in the future, of course). And the Corel/Xara people have been always using Space to switch to Selector and back, just as we do.
> I'm proposing you don't proclaim this as a stable release unless it's rock solid so you don't lose your users.
:)
Heh. Some people complain that we use a less than 1 version number. Others complain that we "proclaim it as stable." Will you please argue it out between you, first?
In any case, this is in all probability the MOST stable of all releases we've ever had. And I see no reasons for us not to say so.
> If it doesn't work and they do bother to complain and you treat them with suspiscion until its repeatable (which is what you implied in an earlier post)
You may try to read into my posts what you like, but what I really said was that we go to great lengths to extract useful information from each and every bug report. Which is often difficult because a good share of them is anonymous and provides almost no details, sometimes even no platform. Only when an anonymous bug report with developers' questions remains unanswered and unconfirmed for a long time, we close it. Where you found "suspicion" in this process is a mystery to me.
> Be very careful what you say and how you say it and you and your product have a healthy future.
I don't think I said anything which is untrue or insults anyone, which is what matters to me. As to the rest, I'm indeed not the right person to discuss "marketing strategies" - I'm not interested in this sort of stuff. I'm convinced that being honest and open is the best marketing strategy anyway. Future will tell if I'm right or not.
> I think that there are more of us than there are Xara X users
:) I don't know of any Illustrator user who would say that Xara interface is horrible, while the reverse happens all the time. Also historically (since Sodipodi), we're closer to Corel Draw and thus to Xara than to Illustrator in many aspects, so often it's much easier to borrow Xara or Corel ideas than Adobe's.
Sure, but Xara X users are more passionate
> nobody should ever strive to borrow from the Gimp's interface.
We certainly don't borrow Gimp's most notirious UI quirks, but for small things (such as, which modifier to use with scrollwheel for zooming) we take it into account.
As for space toggling panning, as I wrote in another thread: 1) we already use space for switching to Selector and back; 2) if you like space+left drag for panning, why not use our shift+right drag for it. Keys are different but the key+mouse principle is the same.
> See you've lost the average end user right there.
So? Are you proposing to hold off releases until all bugs are fixed? And not only our bugs but also bugs in the libs we use (and these bugs are a very significant share of the total)? This will never happen.
> At that point it's too late. If you've fobbed off a few people, they'll tell their friends, put it up in message boards etc. and you'll lose more than just those few people.
I doubt that. People rarely bother to complain. If something does not work, they shrug and forget it. If it does work, and works better than expected, then they will remember it and tell everyone. We just need to get the critical mass of people for whom it works better than they expected, and then it will be a snowball.
I hate to say it but it will never work perfectly for _everyone_. Even single-platform commercial software with years-long release cycles does crash and misbehave all the time. People put up with it because it "basically" works for them and the good they get from it is bigger than the bad.
Every crash scares people away, but every cool feature or smooth usability trick lures them in. Our release policy is a matter of finding an optimal balance between these two, unfortunately inseparable, trends. Obviously, over time we'll be shifting this balance towards more stability and conservatism, as all apps do in their lifetimes. But at this point in time I see it as more important to register our claim to fame and get more people excited about us.
And finally, note that at this stage, a majority of bugs (and nearly 100% of crash bugs) are caused by platforms and configurations that are different from those of the developers. For example on my system Inkscape is ABSOLUTELY stable, I can run it for days and days and do absolutely anything to it. Problems only start when other people run it on their own wildly different systems. And so the ONLY way to fix these problems is to get it out there for as much people as possible to test and abuse - even at the risk of "alienating" some users by crashes. That's why we make releases with known bugs.
> How hard would it be to adapt the product to deal with Visio style drawings?
If by that you mean connectors that follow object around, then yes, we have a Google-funded student working on this right now. Hopefully the results will go into the next release.