On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Kevin Wixson wrote:
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 02:39:48 -0500 From: Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape for AI users: a revert war :)
*** I am going to respond out of order as some comments are much more important to respond to than others. ***
I'm sorry that this message is so very long. It took ages to write and even longer to try and cut it back a bit.
You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
First, "is much less responsive" isn't my text. Go back to the September draft, authored long before I even heard of IS [2], and that's where
you'll
find the genesis of that phrase. I tried to incorporate as much as possible of the original author's text into my rewrite, in the spirit of the Wiki. I wouldn't have written much of the document the way it came out if I were starting from scratch, because my style is more technical. That said...
It seems as if a large part of this misunderstanding doesn't have much to do with Kevin Wixson and now that this has been brough up publically I'm sure fast progress will be made and conversations on IRC might help clear things up. (This seems to already be happening, great!)
are of the program, Bulia, and rightly so. Nobody's saying you shouldn't sing its [Inkscapes] praises, only that this particular page isn't the appropriate place to do that.
"Neutral language preferable"
I take it this document was intended to eventually become a Tutorial and be shipped with Inkscape?
Not a tutorial. I think it's supposed to be a page of the help file.
I'm referring to the documentation that currently ships wiht Inkscape in SVG format. I think were are more or less talking about the same thing.
The audience of this document is *only* AI users (hence the name and purpose of the document).
I'm sure it will be Primarily Adobe Illustrator users (like >95%) but I have an interest in learning transferable skills and not being locked into any one product and learning more about Adobe Illustrator as I better understand Inkscape will be interesting. I really doubt Adobe will be in any hurry to produce a document helping Inkscape users understand Adobe Illustrator better.
Even with open source I still worry about unreliable suppliers and it doesn't matter that the code is available if I will never be able to afford to manage a large project on my own. You might not think it is likely for open source projects to really die off but I think it will happen sooner or later. The loose grouping of applications described as Gnome Office has survived the major change of attention to OpenOffice.org but other projects might not be so resilient. Ever since Firefox became a fork rather than an experimental branch I have feared a day will come when they try to announce the "End of Life" for Mozilla Seamonkey. I expect some Sodipoid users feel similarly but perhaps eventually Inkscape will meet all their needs (better chance of that happening than Firefox satisfying me).
(Sorry for going a bit offtopic as usual.)
An exhaustive study of Inkscape's features are better documented on other pages than this one page dedicated to AI users being introduced to IS [2].
I mostly agree with you but there will still necessary to introduce Adobe Illustrator users to new ideas and potentially better ways of working with tools (like the already dicussed case of working with shapes rather than only paths).
to explain to AI users how to translate their experience with AI into IS [2]. They can (and I emphatically say they will) learn "the Inkscape way" as they gain more experience with the program. It's not important that they learn all of IS's methodologies before they start to use the program. They'll just need to get up to speed on IS, as people coming from AI. That's what I give them, and in that mission I think some of Bulia's changes detract.
I think this can be sorted out but I think we should err a little on the side of praising Inkscape and encouraging users to learn the Inkscape way of doing things. The workarounds should definately also be explained but I dont think they should be given the primary emphasis (but that is just my opinion). We should be encouraging users to adapt to Inkscape not just workaround behaviours they haven't gotten accustomed to yet.
A lof of the content in that article does not relate directly to teaching Illustrator Users to use Inkscape and could be moved to our section about what we can lear from other software. http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AdobeIllustrator10
Alan, you're right that the goal should not be to "teach" AI users how to use IS. The goal of the writing the document should be limited to helping the user realize the goal they're trying to achieve by reading the document. Describing the in's and out's of the program in detail happens on other pages. The scope of this doc is merely to quickly orient AI users to IS. Anything that goes above and beyond that very preliminary orientation only serves to make it less usable.
Hrrm. I'm torn.
I know users dont want to change and would prefer the mountain move to them rather than them being forced to learn the software (and in principle I agree with that because software is supposedly about making our lives easier). On the other hand we dont want to recommend cumbersome workarounds for users unwilling to adapt a little.
The fundemntal thing is to keep the underlying slant in favour of Inkscape where necessary as this is not a completely unbiased tutorial (like one intended for publication in a magazine might try to be).
Illustrator? Can Inkscape do gradient meshes, for example, something that's a big deal in AI but isn't a feature of IS and therefore isn't mentioned elsewhere.
Gradient meshes? Not yet.
Somewhere that question has to be answered, and the best place is this document.
I'd put this in an FAQ rather than in the tutorial which should show users what they can do not what they cannot do (at least not yet, ).
Certainly it cannot come out in "favor" of one program or another, but some judgments of the stength's and weaknesses of IS from an AI POV might be appropriate, as long as its fair and honest.
No need to give the critics ammunition but of course it is certainly fair to indicate things that the developers hope to improve in future.
The intended audience will not have a defensive reaction to the text because they don't have the personal stake in the program that you do. Since it doesn't misrepresent the program at all, I don't see how being honest with these very minor (albeit admittedly somewhat judgmental) transgressions of an entirely neutral tone detract from the document achieving it's purpose. If it doesn't undermine the purpose of the document, what's the problem?
Do you think you can adjust things and maybe slant it a little bit more in favour of Inkscape?
I suppose I could take this opportunity to bash Wiki and remind people that it is not the be all and end all in collaborative document management. It is very much linear, only allowing one author at a time to make changes and it makes it difficult sometimes to compromise and get an overall view like we are seeing here.
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document.
With greater clarity about what exactly the document is for hopefully some of this confusion will go away.
Not true. The audiences I've presented Inkscape to (some pretty hard core AI users) have all expressed a great deal of interest. I don't have the hard data to back this up, but anecdotally the reason an AI user might switch has to do with the cost of Adobe products and the unique capacity of open source for developers to directly interact with users. I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
That is great to hear. If you are not already included on the quotes page you probably should be. Technically though you still use Adobe Illustrator which is why I prefer to avoid the whole "switch" arguement altogether.
I have no opinion about this. But I'll tell you that clones would be a lot more useful to me if I could store them in a library, and stroke a
This kind of thing has been mentioned previously and there is definately some interest in making it easier to manage all of these kinds of things.
As I point out in the notes the original text was written to address a very specific question that AI users have, one that you can't understand the significance of if you're not a proficient AI user, which Bulia has admitted he's not.
I see what you mean. Can you find a way to change this that takes into account Bulias view a bit more and change the emphasis so it is a little bit less about just how to workaround/ignore how Inkscape behaves?
I hope that helps. I drafted this a few times but I'm still not quite sure I really said what I wanted to say but I hope we can put all this information to good use and redirect Kwixons enthusiasm and avoid this kind of conflict.
How shall I be redirected? ;-) I'm already doing Inkscape's
the inkscape developers tend to be very good about being positive and telling people how they would like things to be done and not complaining about people doing useful things so this comment isn't about you so much as it is about making it clearer what is really wanted.
Seriously, though, the process has had some really good outcomes and it wouldn't be as good as it's going to be if it hadn't been for Bulia's input. I think I've shown I can be reasonable when appropriately persuaded. I do have good reasons for my assertions on the outstanding issues, however, and I hope I can express them adequately enough.
I think you have shown this again by having convinced bulia (on the developer mailing list) to improve that node behaviour that was bothering you (Jimmac is praising your request as model behaviour in his journal). It is remarkable how much valuable feedback documentation writers can provide because they are essentially forced to to become expert users before they can write the documentation. I doubt this would be anywhere near as effective if Inkscape didn't provide nightly builds.
Thanks to you Alan, and thanks to Bulia too. I do want to be a help. I hope I can be of some use to you all.
I feel like I might be adding more signal than noise and the two of you are well able to negotiate this but that Wiki didn't lend itself to clear commmunication which Email and IRC do a better job of.
Please do cull as much text as possible from any responses to keep things somewhat readable.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Alan's Journal http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com
[1] I try to always use the full term "Adobe Illustrator" TM (or AI) but never "Illustrator" due to past ridiculous claims of ownership of the word illustrator.
[2] Please please please if the word Inkscape is too long for you to type perhaps try shorting it to something a bit more meaningful like Ink.