Thanks for your comments. I've incorporated them into the final draft and sent the answers to Paul Krill.
On Mon, 2013-11-25 at 03:28 +0100, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
2013/11/24 Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...8...>:
What does Inkscape do that other SVG tools do not?
Inkscape uses SVG as its native file format making it easy to publish
documents on-line.
That's contained in the definition of "SVG tool" so I'm not sure it's relevant to the question.
Inkscape has the widest support for creating documents targeting the SVG 1.1 standard.
Inkscape allows direct editing of the drawing source code through the XML editor.
Inkscape allows you to add scripts to the SVG code, both inside and outside of the program. The scripts are preserved during opening and saving files when editing the drawing.
Is this accurate? This can be done via the "object properties" dialog, but it's not very sophisticated, and the "Scripts" dialog was recently removed (but AFAIK it was about scripting within Inkscape rather that Javascript in the document).
Inkscape can edit SVG files created by other editors or by hand with minimum disturbance of the existing SVG file structure.
Inkscape can directly create complex filter effects. (It also includes a couple hundred canned effects.)
Inkscape has a well developed plug-in system that allows users to extend Inkscape's functionality in many unique ways. One area that has been particularly popular is directly driving plotters and engravers including the "Egg-Bot". See:
http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/171-egg-bot
Let's use the words "extension system" (the extensions are not plugins in the sense of dynamically loaded binary modules) and I'd say it's not actually that well-developed. It's just a way to feed the document to an external command + some GUI on top of it. I think a better word would be "simple to use".
I think it's worth mentioning that there is a focus on on-canvas editing. For instance, Corel Draw X3 didn't have the ability to edit gradients by dragging their control points, you had to key in percentages in a dialog. The set of operations available in the node tool is also larger than in some commercial editors. For instance, I'm not sure whether any of them has transformations on node selections.
Regards, Krzysztof