Inkscaper Alexandre Prokoudine provides a nicely visual article about the release, including a video to demonstrate some of the new things you can do with it:
http://libregraphicsworld.org/...
I don't think you need to fuss with region codes or any such. You'll need to change the timezone and that's about it.
Since you've posted to slashdot asking whether you should bring your laptop, and used the word 'geek' 3-4 times, er yeah you probably are the type that would go into withdrawl without your laptop. It's a bit of a hassle to drag it around but you'll probably want it. If you have something lightweight like a netbook you'll definitely want it. Get a UK power adapter (AAA or pretty much any electronics store).
A laptop is useful for three things while you're traveling: a) planning/researching/arranging tourist stuff, b) uploading photos, c) satisfying your internet/email/gamer addictions.
Most hotels will have internet service for some fee. Your call on whether it is worth the money. You might be able to get free wifi from cafe/pub places but don't count on it.
The British museum will hold your interest for a day. If you're in London for two weeks, you can probably hit all the major tourist attractions. Get any tourist guide and work your way through it. Once you learn the Tube you can pretty much get anywhere you want. Make sure to go to a play or musical or two even if that's not normally what you're into. Go to at least one castle and one cathedral too. For geek cred, go to the Eye of London and try to think of as many movies as you can that had a scene showing that in it.
"Breaking" everyone's analog TV is going to be controversial enough. But to time it to happen right after a new president is inaugurated?
Forget that this changeover has been in the works forever, who is Joe Blow going to blame? I don't blame the Obama administration for wanting to postpone it a bit.
For FSM's sake, though, take a moment to "accidentally" delete his porn and such while you are going about this. That's just basic courtesy.
Not to mention a good way to put yourself on any suspect lists that might come up.
I've been pretty excited about having this as an option, for one reason: I can be fairly certain this system is well tested and all the random stuff I usually have to hassle with (wireless card incompatibilities, suspend/resume, non-functional buttons, xorg.conf fiddling, etc. etc.) will either "just work" or will have well documented fixes pretty soon. $600 is a nice price point; I feel like I could recommend this to a lot more friends/family than I've been able to do in the past.
The $100 discount vs. a windows variant is a nice plus; it'd be nice if it was an even larger discount, but at least I'm given the feeling that Microsoft ain't getting the MS tax this time. I wish they'd offered the 1405 with Ubuntu, it'd be nice to have a lower weight option, but I'm sure once they see overwhelming interest in this, they'll expand to more products.
I don't actually work on this particular project, but I did contribute some of the verbage for the project's main page. Not because I particularly believe in the project, but because my best friend asked it as a favor.
Like generally EVERYONE, I believe software patents should be abolished. Like RMS, I worry this project might be a crutch for the software patent system. Part of me wants to just see the patent office fall smack on its face and be forced to drop the whole idea of software patents entirely.
But realistically, come on, that is head-in-the-sand thinking. Software patents aren't going to simply go away because we wish it so. The U.S. Patent Office itself doesn't have the authority to stop granting software patents. Getting rid of them is going to take a concerted effort by a LOT of people, and ultimately may simply come down to the whims of whomever is in control of the U.S. government. From what I've seen, most people don't care enough about software patents to put time into fighting to eliminate them. (Speaking for myself, I'd rather be fighting the U.S. government about global warming or international relations, before I'd fight about software patents.)
Despite my reservations, I'm actually glad to see OSDL taking action against bad software patents. It actually has the USPTO in good solid dialog with the community, and has engaged a wide variety of FOSS organisations like SourceForge and OSU-OSL on issues geared towards realistic, feasible approaches to mitigation of the problem. Last week OSDL held an on-site meeting with several representatives from the USPTO and various FOSS organizations to start towards some really cool solutions. While I philosophically am of the same mind as RMS about eliminating software patents entirely, I am seeing this OSDL effort making actual, tangible progress towards at least eliminating the absurd patent stories that keep appearing here on Slashdot.
That said, I wish things were this simple. My friend that was organizing this project has left OSDL to go work for Canonical on Ubuntu. While he says it's mainly because he *really* wants to contribute his efforts towards improving Ubuntu's security, I suspect secretly a part is because of his true feelings about software patents. Whatever the case, in practice this prior art effort has suffered a major setback by the loss of its primary technical person.
In the end, like always, it comes down to the rest of us. What do you think about software patents? Do you care enough to put your own time into solving the issues? Do you choose to do nothing and allow any form of software patents at all? Would you prefer to at least eliminate the bad ones? Or do you wish to devote time to getting rid of all software patents entirely? The easiest thing to do is what my friend, myself, and RMS are doing, and simply ignore it with the wish that software patents should just magically go away. The harder but probably more effective thing would be to put time into some sort of project aimed at pushing back and achieving some progress. I really respect those who have chosen this more difficult course, and suspect in the end they will be the ones that define our future situation in regards to software patents.
"Anyway, I'm sure that the Inkscape folks would be interested in bug reports if there's something wrong with their EPS export."
Actually, for these issues we have sufficient bug reports; next we could really use some patches to fix them... Anyone want to become the resident EPS expert for Inkscape?:-)
The three things that have historically bugged me most about Inkscape have been the huge difficulty of locking/unlocking objects, the poor import/export of EPS and PDF, and the inability to add custom colors and gradients onto the swatch palette.
One of our top development priorities for 0.44 was a layer dialog; hopefully this will make doing things like locking/unlocking objects somewhat easier.
According to beta testers, due to a few fixes that were submitted by users, EPS and PDF are working more reliably, at least for common cases. Please submit bugs for any remaining issues - we have a summer of code student that will be focusing on improvements in this area for Inkscape.
The color palette is now dockable (one of the more noticeable changes), and it is also possible to bring in palettes from the GIMP (*.gpl files - place in your/usr/share/inkscape/palettes/ directory). More work is planned along these lines for the next release.
That screenshot was made right after the word wrapping feature was implemented, and at the time it did have a tendancy to "lose" words around tight bends and such. There may still be a few glitches like this one in the word wrapping code, so please keep an eye out and report it (with sample file) where you find it.
However if only a few functionalities were added, Inkscape could be used for 95% of generic technical/business drawings as well:
- Global Grid / grid snap
This is in there and has been there for a long time, but it takes some fiddling to get it to work right. Go to Document Properties > Grid, and then adjust the Spacing X/Y and the Snap distance until the snapping "feels right". This is sort of a pain in the ass to have to do, but at least the document remembers its settings, and it's actually sort of nice to have such fine grained control over the grid/snap behavior. However, I do think that this feature needs some tuning and usability work. No one is working on this presently, though; I don't think the coding is too hard, it's just a matter of fiddling with it to get the settings to work well.
Oh, and the shortcut key to turn grid/snapping on/off is '#'.;-)
- Object connection / snap points
Yeah, this is definitely needed. There is actually some backend code for this, but it's not an advertised feature yet, because it's not usable and has no UI to interact with it. However, while there's some code there, it's not being actively worked on at present. I think this will be a revolutionary feature that will open Inkscape up to whole new audiences. If any developers think this'd be a fun thing to work on, you'd be quite welcome.
- Auto routing connector lines
This one is being actively worked on by one of our Google Summer of Code students, who is getting a doctorate in a closely related topic. He has some working prototype code in Java, and is planning to port it to Inkscape. So I think not only will we get this feature, but it will be very, very powerful compared with other drawing apps.
- Configurable line ends (arrow heads)
This is actually a pretty easy feature to add. The line markers are just loaded from an SVG file located in/usr/share/inkscape, and all the underlying code to allow for custom document-specific markers is there and works fine. The only reason it hasn't been done has been procrastination - the stock markers work "good enough" for most things, so it hasn't been a high priority. This is on my todo list, so unless someone gets it done before me I'll be working on improving this eventually.
There's one other issue with arrow heads, in that it's not easy to customize the arrowhead color. By default they're all black, but if you want to make lines a different color, having black arrowheads is less than desireable. Fortunately, the newest version of the SVG spec has a solution to this problem, so now it's just a matter of implementing it. Also on the todo list, but also not being worked on presently.
since it assumes I want the interface to be in incomplete/poorly translated Japanese language, and doesn't seem to give me any way to change it to English.
Sounds like you want this page. First scroll down to the bottom and read "Locale Testing" to see how to set the language. Then scroll up and learn the process of making improvements to an Open Source application's translations. Remember that translations only improve when someone (such as yourself) contributes a few hours to help improve them.;-)
Something I have wondered about as well. Can Inkscape (maybe in the future) include support for say printed circuit board (PCB) design or more importantly, electronics schematics or digital logic diagrams (with the gates etc)
We do intend to improve some of the technical drawing capabilities, such as line auto-routing, over the next couple releases.
Beyond that, well... we're quite open to patches. (I personally would love to see more technical/engineering drawing enhancements added to Inkscape.)
It's sad to me that people do not seem to know what Inkscape is yet. It's a wonderful tool. I would point out, though, that despite my preference of Photoshop over Gimp, Inkscape is far, far easier to use than Illustrator and yet still covers all of the basic vector graphics bases.
No need to be sad! This is easily fixable, but your help is required. Find people who don't know about Inkscape and educate them about it (and about Open Source in general, if needed.) Or write up articles about your experience with it and send them to online or print magazines, blogs, news sites, etc. Or demo it at a LUG or a convention.
Each release, we try to push to reach a slightly larger audience, and we rely on the Inkscape users to help us spread the word.
Despite all the features added to Inkscape, we still are not 100% conformant with even the most minimal SVG specs. We figure that it makes sense to keep the version number
Thus consider achieving compliance against one of the specs to be a BIG change worthy of a full point rev. We also have x.x.[x] releases for emergency bug fixes, but thankfully these have been rare, thanks to the meticulous testing that users contribute in the run-ups to our releases.
So, be patient, and expect to see a few more 0.xx releases before we hit 1.0. Meanwhile, enjoy the program.:-)
But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?
Not really. First off, I think people are going to judge Inkscape's value not by its website but by how good the application itself is.
Second, our "audience" is not just any random user, but rather those good users that are likely to also contribute to Inkscape in some way - testing, bug reports, PR, patches -- or even just helping us improve the website. People who are unable or unwilling to install a proper Open Source web browser are probably also not the type of good people that would be contributing Inkscape. Thus, IE users are probably not our target audience anyway.
Third, building a huge userbase is not really among Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great application that helps make Open Source successful, and we want to promote Open Standards and do what we can to help other Open Source projects. Thus, while we'd like to look good in all browsers, it's most important that we look good in the Open Source browsers, even if (especially if!) they represent only 15% of the marketshare.
I bet other newspapers eventually start following their lead, which would be unfortunate.
Luckily there are some efforts to create community-based news sites like www.wikinews.org.
Boy I'm glad to see this day come. Ever since we started inkscape, I keep running across little ways SVG would improve on the web experience...
For displaying data in a table, this could allow vertical or angled titles in the table header, like you'd do in a spreadsheet to fit more columns in.
You know all those spiffy graphically laid out GUI's you always see in SciFi shows? You could *totally* do that sort of thing in SVG. You'd need some sort of animation support (which Inkscape lacks currently), and clipping regions to do it right.
A while back I wrote a tool called rackview for browsing the machines in a data center, starting with a top view, then 'zooming' in on a rack, then down to the individual machine. The problem is that rendering the screens using HTML tables looks like ass. Being able to have the database tool generate SVG directly (rather than some hacky svg->png->imagemaps) would simplify the tool greatly. I can imagine there are probably other MANY other such needs for graphical, web-driven interfaces out there.
Depending on how good the SVG support in the browsers is, this opens up fertile ground for game developers. True, they're doing this with flash already, but being able to mix SVG and HTML together opens up possibilities that aren't feasible with Flash alone.
Downsides? I phear what advertisers figure out to do with this... We're going to have to go through another round of figuring out techniques for ad blocking pretty soon.;-)
GOPchop for removing commercials?
on
Build Your Own DVR
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Since this uses the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR, I wonder if GOPchop can be used to delete out the commercials?
GOPchop 1.1.6 just came out, adding a bunch of patches, and it sounds like the 1.2.0 release is around the corner. Also planned is adding some commandline operation mode, so in theory if you had a way to detect commercial breaks, maybe it could be set up to auto-skip? That'd be a neat trick.
Now - please look at the stories submitted here. There is one about a fucking snail being faster than an aDSL line. Then there is a 12 year old story about a 127.0.0.1 hacker. I realise that you guys are now owned by the OSDL...
I'd suggest looking into using SVG for game map creation, because there's getting to be a lot of Open Source tools out there (like Inkscape, that I help develop) that can edit, convert, etc. them. I've done some map making with it and while it lacks many of the advanced features that commercial map tools have, it's got the basics, plus if you can code, you gain the option of adding the feature in yourself.;-)
Making maps with Inkscape / SVG is different than using CAD-style software like Campaign Cartographer, but you can achieve pretty much the same things. With features like alpha blending, text-to-shape, layers, grouping, shape fills, tiling, and infinite zoom, you can make much "prettier" maps in much less time than it'd take to do in a CAD-like program. See the screenshots to get some ideas of what can be done with these features. It has a fancy calligraphy mode that could be quite handy if you need to hand-write calligraphic text on a map. There's also a nifty bitmap-to-vector tracing tool that might help in converting hand-drawn maps to vectors. Also comes with several useful tutorials (in the Help menu).
There's also a site for sharing SVG clipart (like map symbols), the Open Clip Art Library. Not a lot of RPG art yet, but there's some and it's likely going to grow a lot. Plus, since all of its content is Public Domain, there's no restrictions at all placed on your maps if you use it. I could *easily* imagine this being a way for RPG mappers to collectively build an open library of RPG map symbols and artwork.
At my company the critical enterprise desktop hole is in shared calendaring. Does the book address this at all? Several companies I've spoken to with regard to desktop linux have remarked that this has been the major missing piece, and has kept them stuck to Exchange/Outlook.
In the Inkscape project, a lot of attention is placed on usability. As just one example, there are a HUGE number of keybindings for every important command. More importantly, but harder to quantify, is that the 'workflow' has a nice feel to it; as one user put it, "when you need some capability, it's just there where you expect it to be; someone else has obviously been there before me."
There's several reasons that I think we've had some successes on this count. First, one of the core developers puts a *great* deal of thought into usability and how he can make it easier for him to use; he is a professional artist as well, and uses Inkscape on a daily basis, so he's definitely scratching his own itch here.
Second, we place a lot of importance on what users suggest. We treat usability issues as no different than any other bug, and when a user has an issue trying to get the app to work smoothly and intuitively, we try to address that. This let's us take advantage of the adage "with enough eyes, all (usability) bugs are shallow".
Third, we avoid pre-judging suggestions and instead encourage trying out ideas in the codebase. Instead of debating whether a feature would or wouldn't improve usability, we simply apply the patch into the development tree and let everyone try it out.
Fourth, we include detailed tutorials with the application, and I think that's helped a lot at explaining how to use the program and what some of the obscure terminology means. Tutorials are a lot more palatable than a dry reference manual, especially when nicely illustrated with SVG drawings.:-)
Bryce
Slashdot Mirror
Inkscaper Alexandre Prokoudine provides a nicely visual article about the release, including a video to demonstrate some of the new things you can do with it: http://libregraphicsworld.org/...
Microsoft is the perfect organization to back this. They've been foisting bugs on humans for years.
I don't think you need to fuss with region codes or any such. You'll need to change the timezone and that's about it. Since you've posted to slashdot asking whether you should bring your laptop, and used the word 'geek' 3-4 times, er yeah you probably are the type that would go into withdrawl without your laptop. It's a bit of a hassle to drag it around but you'll probably want it. If you have something lightweight like a netbook you'll definitely want it. Get a UK power adapter (AAA or pretty much any electronics store). A laptop is useful for three things while you're traveling: a) planning/researching/arranging tourist stuff, b) uploading photos, c) satisfying your internet/email/gamer addictions. Most hotels will have internet service for some fee. Your call on whether it is worth the money. You might be able to get free wifi from cafe/pub places but don't count on it. The British museum will hold your interest for a day. If you're in London for two weeks, you can probably hit all the major tourist attractions. Get any tourist guide and work your way through it. Once you learn the Tube you can pretty much get anywhere you want. Make sure to go to a play or musical or two even if that's not normally what you're into. Go to at least one castle and one cathedral too. For geek cred, go to the Eye of London and try to think of as many movies as you can that had a scene showing that in it.
"Breaking" everyone's analog TV is going to be controversial enough. But to time it to happen right after a new president is inaugurated? Forget that this changeover has been in the works forever, who is Joe Blow going to blame? I don't blame the Obama administration for wanting to postpone it a bit.
For FSM's sake, though, take a moment to "accidentally" delete his porn and such while you are going about this. That's just basic courtesy. Not to mention a good way to put yourself on any suspect lists that might come up.
I've been pretty excited about having this as an option, for one reason: I can be fairly certain this system is well tested and all the random stuff I usually have to hassle with (wireless card incompatibilities, suspend/resume, non-functional buttons, xorg.conf fiddling, etc. etc.) will either "just work" or will have well documented fixes pretty soon. $600 is a nice price point; I feel like I could recommend this to a lot more friends/family than I've been able to do in the past. The $100 discount vs. a windows variant is a nice plus; it'd be nice if it was an even larger discount, but at least I'm given the feeling that Microsoft ain't getting the MS tax this time. I wish they'd offered the 1405 with Ubuntu, it'd be nice to have a lower weight option, but I'm sure once they see overwhelming interest in this, they'll expand to more products.
I don't actually work on this particular project, but I did contribute some of the verbage for the project's main page. Not because I particularly believe in the project, but because my best friend asked it as a favor.
Like generally EVERYONE, I believe software patents should be abolished. Like RMS, I worry this project might be a crutch for the software patent system. Part of me wants to just see the patent office fall smack on its face and be forced to drop the whole idea of software patents entirely.
But realistically, come on, that is head-in-the-sand thinking. Software patents aren't going to simply go away because we wish it so. The U.S. Patent Office itself doesn't have the authority to stop granting software patents. Getting rid of them is going to take a concerted effort by a LOT of people, and ultimately may simply come down to the whims of whomever is in control of the U.S. government. From what I've seen, most people don't care enough about software patents to put time into fighting to eliminate them. (Speaking for myself, I'd rather be fighting the U.S. government about global warming or international relations, before I'd fight about software patents.)
Despite my reservations, I'm actually glad to see OSDL taking action against bad software patents. It actually has the USPTO in good solid dialog with the community, and has engaged a wide variety of FOSS organisations like SourceForge and OSU-OSL on issues geared towards realistic, feasible approaches to mitigation of the problem. Last week OSDL held an on-site meeting with several representatives from the USPTO and various FOSS organizations to start towards some really cool solutions. While I philosophically am of the same mind as RMS about eliminating software patents entirely, I am seeing this OSDL effort making actual, tangible progress towards at least eliminating the absurd patent stories that keep appearing here on Slashdot.
That said, I wish things were this simple. My friend that was organizing this project has left OSDL to go work for Canonical on Ubuntu. While he says it's mainly because he *really* wants to contribute his efforts towards improving Ubuntu's security, I suspect secretly a part is because of his true feelings about software patents. Whatever the case, in practice this prior art effort has suffered a major setback by the loss of its primary technical person.
In the end, like always, it comes down to the rest of us. What do you think about software patents? Do you care enough to put your own time into solving the issues? Do you choose to do nothing and allow any form of software patents at all? Would you prefer to at least eliminate the bad ones? Or do you wish to devote time to getting rid of all software patents entirely? The easiest thing to do is what my friend, myself, and RMS are doing, and simply ignore it with the wish that software patents should just magically go away. The harder but probably more effective thing would be to put time into some sort of project aimed at pushing back and achieving some progress. I really respect those who have chosen this more difficult course, and suspect in the end they will be the ones that define our future situation in regards to software patents.
"Anyway, I'm sure that the Inkscape folks would be interested in bug reports if there's something wrong with their EPS export."
Actually, for these issues we have sufficient bug reports; next we could really use some patches to fix them... Anyone want to become the resident EPS expert for Inkscape? :-)
One of our top development priorities for 0.44 was a layer dialog; hopefully this will make doing things like locking/unlocking objects somewhat easier.
According to beta testers, due to a few fixes that were submitted by users, EPS and PDF are working more reliably, at least for common cases. Please submit bugs for any remaining issues - we have a summer of code student that will be focusing on improvements in this area for Inkscape.
The color palette is now dockable (one of the more noticeable changes), and it is also possible to bring in palettes from the GIMP (*.gpl files - place in your /usr/share/inkscape/palettes/ directory). More work is planned along these lines for the next release.
That screenshot was made right after the word wrapping feature was implemented, and at the time it did have a tendancy to "lose" words around tight bends and such. There may still be a few glitches like this one in the word wrapping code, so please keep an eye out and report it (with sample file) where you find it.
'Tis updated now. We're still waiting on RPM and DEB packages. Gentoo users can get an ebuild here (if our wiki survives slashdot): http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/CompilingG entoo
However if only a few functionalities were added, Inkscape could be used for 95% of generic technical/business drawings as well:
- Global Grid / grid snap
This is in there and has been there for a long time, but it takes some fiddling to get it to work right. Go to Document Properties > Grid, and then adjust the Spacing X/Y and the Snap distance until the snapping "feels right". This is sort of a pain in the ass to have to do, but at least the document remembers its settings, and it's actually sort of nice to have such fine grained control over the grid/snap behavior. However, I do think that this feature needs some tuning and usability work. No one is working on this presently, though; I don't think the coding is too hard, it's just a matter of fiddling with it to get the settings to work well.
Oh, and the shortcut key to turn grid/snapping on/off is '#'. ;-)
- Object connection / snap points
Yeah, this is definitely needed. There is actually some backend code for this, but it's not an advertised feature yet, because it's not usable and has no UI to interact with it. However, while there's some code there, it's not being actively worked on at present. I think this will be a revolutionary feature that will open Inkscape up to whole new audiences. If any developers think this'd be a fun thing to work on, you'd be quite welcome.
- Auto routing connector lines
This one is being actively worked on by one of our Google Summer of Code students, who is getting a doctorate in a closely related topic. He has some working prototype code in Java, and is planning to port it to Inkscape. So I think not only will we get this feature, but it will be very, very powerful compared with other drawing apps.
- Configurable line ends (arrow heads)
This is actually a pretty easy feature to add. The line markers are just loaded from an SVG file located in /usr/share/inkscape, and all the underlying code to allow for custom document-specific markers is there and works fine. The only reason it hasn't been done has been procrastination - the stock markers work "good enough" for most things, so it hasn't been a high priority. This is on my todo list, so unless someone gets it done before me I'll be working on improving this eventually.
There's one other issue with arrow heads, in that it's not easy to customize the arrowhead color. By default they're all black, but if you want to make lines a different color, having black arrowheads is less than desireable. Fortunately, the newest version of the SVG spec has a solution to this problem, so now it's just a matter of implementing it. Also on the todo list, but also not being worked on presently.
since it assumes I want the interface to be in incomplete/poorly translated Japanese language, and doesn't seem to give me any way to change it to English.
Sounds like you want this page. First scroll down to the bottom and read "Locale Testing" to see how to set the language. Then scroll up and learn the process of making improvements to an Open Source application's translations. Remember that translations only improve when someone (such as yourself) contributes a few hours to help improve them. ;-)
Something I have wondered about as well. Can Inkscape (maybe in the future) include support for say printed circuit board (PCB) design or more importantly, electronics schematics or digital logic diagrams (with the gates etc)
We do intend to improve some of the technical drawing capabilities, such as line auto-routing, over the next couple releases.
Beyond that, well... we're quite open to patches. (I personally would love to see more technical/engineering drawing enhancements added to Inkscape.)
It's sad to me that people do not seem to know what Inkscape is yet. It's a wonderful tool. I would point out, though, that despite my preference of Photoshop over Gimp, Inkscape is far, far easier to use than Illustrator and yet still covers all of the basic vector graphics bases.
No need to be sad! This is easily fixable, but your help is required. Find people who don't know about Inkscape and educate them about it (and about Open Source in general, if needed.) Or write up articles about your experience with it and send them to online or print magazines, blogs, news sites, etc. Or demo it at a LUG or a convention.
Each release, we try to push to reach a slightly larger audience, and we rely on the Inkscape users to help us spread the word.
Despite all the features added to Inkscape, we still are not 100% conformant with even the most minimal SVG specs. We figure that it makes sense to keep the version number
Thus consider achieving compliance against one of the specs to be a BIG change worthy of a full point rev. We also have x.x.[x] releases for emergency bug fixes, but thankfully these have been rare, thanks to the meticulous testing that users contribute in the run-ups to our releases.
So, be patient, and expect to see a few more 0.xx releases before we hit 1.0. Meanwhile, enjoy the program. :-)
But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?
Not really. First off, I think people are going to judge Inkscape's value not by its website but by how good the application itself is.
Second, our "audience" is not just any random user, but rather those good users that are likely to also contribute to Inkscape in some way - testing, bug reports, PR, patches -- or even just helping us improve the website. People who are unable or unwilling to install a proper Open Source web browser are probably also not the type of good people that would be contributing Inkscape. Thus, IE users are probably not our target audience anyway.
Third, building a huge userbase is not really among Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great application that helps make Open Source successful, and we want to promote Open Standards and do what we can to help other Open Source projects. Thus, while we'd like to look good in all browsers, it's most important that we look good in the Open Source browsers, even if (especially if!) they represent only 15% of the marketshare.
I bet other newspapers eventually start following their lead, which would be unfortunate. Luckily there are some efforts to create community-based news sites like www.wikinews.org.
Boy I'm glad to see this day come. Ever since we started inkscape, I keep running across little ways SVG would improve on the web experience...
For displaying data in a table, this could allow vertical or angled titles in the table header, like you'd do in a spreadsheet to fit more columns in.
You know all those spiffy graphically laid out GUI's you always see in SciFi shows? You could *totally* do that sort of thing in SVG. You'd need some sort of animation support (which Inkscape lacks currently), and clipping regions to do it right.
A while back I wrote a tool called rackview for browsing the machines in a data center, starting with a top view, then 'zooming' in on a rack, then down to the individual machine. The problem is that rendering the screens using HTML tables looks like ass. Being able to have the database tool generate SVG directly (rather than some hacky svg->png->imagemaps) would simplify the tool greatly. I can imagine there are probably other MANY other such needs for graphical, web-driven interfaces out there.
Depending on how good the SVG support in the browsers is, this opens up fertile ground for game developers. True, they're doing this with flash already, but being able to mix SVG and HTML together opens up possibilities that aren't feasible with Flash alone.
Downsides? I phear what advertisers figure out to do with this... We're going to have to go through another round of figuring out techniques for ad blocking pretty soon. ;-)
Since this uses the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR, I wonder if GOPchop can be used to delete out the commercials? GOPchop 1.1.6 just came out, adding a bunch of patches, and it sounds like the 1.2.0 release is around the corner. Also planned is adding some commandline operation mode, so in theory if you had a way to detect commercial breaks, maybe it could be set up to auto-skip? That'd be a neat trick.
Now - please look at the stories submitted here. There is one about a fucking snail being faster than an aDSL line. Then there is a 12 year old story about a 127.0.0.1 hacker. I realise that you guys are now owned by the OSDL...
They're owned by osd*N*, not OSDL.
I'd suggest looking into using SVG for game map creation, because there's getting to be a lot of Open Source tools out there (like Inkscape, that I help develop) that can edit, convert, etc. them. I've done some map making with it and while it lacks many of the advanced features that commercial map tools have, it's got the basics, plus if you can code, you gain the option of adding the feature in yourself. ;-)
Making maps with Inkscape / SVG is different than using CAD-style software like Campaign Cartographer, but you can achieve pretty much the same things. With features like alpha blending, text-to-shape, layers, grouping, shape fills, tiling, and infinite zoom, you can make much "prettier" maps in much less time than it'd take to do in a CAD-like program. See the screenshots to get some ideas of what can be done with these features. It has a fancy calligraphy mode that could be quite handy if you need to hand-write calligraphic text on a map. There's also a nifty bitmap-to-vector tracing tool that might help in converting hand-drawn maps to vectors. Also comes with several useful tutorials (in the Help menu).
There's also a site for sharing SVG clipart (like map symbols), the Open Clip Art Library. Not a lot of RPG art yet, but there's some and it's likely going to grow a lot. Plus, since all of its content is Public Domain, there's no restrictions at all placed on your maps if you use it. I could *easily* imagine this being a way for RPG mappers to collectively build an open library of RPG map symbols and artwork.
At my company the critical enterprise desktop hole is in shared calendaring. Does the book address this at all? Several companies I've spoken to with regard to desktop linux have remarked that this has been the major missing piece, and has kept them stuck to Exchange/Outlook.
In the Inkscape project, a lot of attention is placed on usability. As just one example, there are a HUGE number of keybindings for every important command. More importantly, but harder to quantify, is that the 'workflow' has a nice feel to it; as one user put it, "when you need some capability, it's just there where you expect it to be; someone else has obviously been there before me." There's several reasons that I think we've had some successes on this count. First, one of the core developers puts a *great* deal of thought into usability and how he can make it easier for him to use; he is a professional artist as well, and uses Inkscape on a daily basis, so he's definitely scratching his own itch here. Second, we place a lot of importance on what users suggest. We treat usability issues as no different than any other bug, and when a user has an issue trying to get the app to work smoothly and intuitively, we try to address that. This let's us take advantage of the adage "with enough eyes, all (usability) bugs are shallow". Third, we avoid pre-judging suggestions and instead encourage trying out ideas in the codebase. Instead of debating whether a feature would or wouldn't improve usability, we simply apply the patch into the development tree and let everyone try it out. Fourth, we include detailed tutorials with the application, and I think that's helped a lot at explaining how to use the program and what some of the obscure terminology means. Tutorials are a lot more palatable than a dry reference manual, especially when nicely illustrated with SVG drawings. :-)
Bryce