## Sorry for the earlier stub of an email, here is the full thing:
Dear everyone,
I have not been very active for the last few months regarding Inkscape matters, less than I would have wanted to anyway. The reason why is posted there: http://jo.irisson.free.fr/work/#publications Low resolution version - 3.8Mb : http://jo.irisson.free.fr/work/papers/these_irisson-web.pdf High quality version - 24Mb : http://jo.irisson.free.fr/work/papers/these_irisson.pdf I was preparing, defending, and correcting my PhD dissertation.
While of little interest to most of you (I guess no one here is currently dying to know where fish larvae go after they are spawned), I wanted to take advantage of this occasion to thank everyone who was ever involved in the development of Inkscape. Every single graphic (scientific or not for that matter!) that I have dealt with in the last 4-5 years have gone through Inkscape and the experience has been delightful (most of the time ;) ). For all of the 60+ graphics of my manuscript, the excellent PDF import and export of the current version, as well as the notorious ease of use of Inkscape's GUI, on canvas tools, and shortcuts were invaluable. The illustrations in my dissertation are probably not very impressive for full-fledged graphic designers; by scientific standards however, they are (hopefully) not too bad, even quite good for some (most of you would be horrified to see what ends up on presentations slides in the average life sciences conference!). I really think that the quality of the tools I used made me upgrade my personal quality standards and, at the same time, allowed me to meet these standards.
I am recommending Inkscape often in the scientific community, especially now that it integrates so well file-format wise with the rest of the workflow. Except for X11 issues on Mac OS X (which are mine to fix) people are usually very happy with it, and sometimes surprised that such quality software could be free. I encourage them to think about what they could bring to the software and the community in return, in terms of quality bug reports, well thought suggestions and the like. Hopefully this will pay in the long term.
Anyhow, I really wanted to thank you all for such a fine piece of software and for the great community that revolves around it. Working with (and, on too rare occasions, for) Inkscape is an enjoyable and gratifying experience.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/