Thanks Christoph,
This was good information and good to see fellow FOSS projects promote Inkscape at this event...
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 23:52 +0200, "Christoph Schäfer" wrote:
What Inkscape needs is colour-managed PDF export and support of some print-specific PDF versions, especially PDF/X-*. It also needs to support CMYK and spot colours in PDFs. (Not my judgement; his!)
What we really need is investment. Companies have a poor understanding of what open Source development practices really involve. And it mostly falls down to "Self Responsibility". Being able to take control of the software and put resources into making it what you need while not ceding any of that control is fundamental.
A trade body is in a good position to be able to gather together multiple companies who alone might not be able to invest, but together might be able to.
Any features available in Inkscape are the product of demand from our investors. If our time investors (developers) or our contract investors aren't able to push end to end PDF export then the project won't develop that feature.
And this is where it gets hard. Trying to convince industry to change the way it looks at software products it uses. Instead of just accepting what ever Adobe deliver to them, we have to convince them to see a future where they have the features they need. Even if the present doesn't contain those features. Because without that future view, they won't invest, and if they don't invest we on't get those features. Catch 22.
Martin,