From: bulia byak Sent: 15 April 2006 02:06
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Doing these things via bitmaps may be acceptable as temporary workarounds (one of which I myself use, see doc/inkscape-shadow.README), but in the long run we should really concentrate on doing things the Right Way, which means the Vector Way. I know that, for example, Xara can use Photoshop plugins to process bitmaps, and it's good for eyecandy, but it never appealed to me because of its lack of genericity and overall clumsiness.
No, Xara does bitmap processing the Right Way, which means all bitmap effects can be applied to vector graphics in a completely transparent way. And that includes Photoshop plug-ins and built-in bitmap effects, and Xara bitmap plug-ins.
You can still fully edit your vector graphics and the system automatically, and transparently re-renders the bitmap effects. What's more the effects that can be resolution independent, so they are more like real vector effects - such as shadow, blur, feather etc. (Some Photoshop effects don't allow this because of their API) .
And you can apply multiple successive bitmap effects, and have full control over the order, and can edit or delete any effect in the effects stack. All these bitmap effect are applied and updated as you edit the underlying vectors. It took us more than a year to implement all this.
Clumsy it is not - it's been described as the best implementation of Live Effects that exists in any vector graphic product out there. As far as I know we're the only package than can apply resolution independent bitmap effects on the fly.
(This whole Live Effects system is new in Xara Xtreme and replaced all the old bitmap processing and all the old Photoshop plug-in interface code of Xara X, which is probably what you know Bulia)
Checkout the Live Effects tool next time you're near a Xara Xtreme (XaraLX doesn't have this ported yet, but now we've seen native Photoshop plug-ins working on Linux (at the Libre event) it looks as if we should be able to port it all. I believe the source code for all this is now public and GPL, just not ported or got working on XaraLX.
Now if you wanted a suggestion for some Google sponsored code that would benefit everyone, it would be a cross-platform open API to allow vector graphics products, such as our two products, to apply bitmap effects transparently to vector graphics. The Photoshop plug-in API is not just closed, it's over-complex, outdated and been superseded by an entirely closed new API from Adobe.
This would then allow us to call GIMP effects or ImageMagick effects or any third party effect plug-ins (the Photoshop plug-in system, although now outdated, was hugely successful. There are said to be more than 3000 different Photoshop plug-ins out there.)
Adobe has gone the closed, proprietary API for their plug-ins now. There is a gaping hole for a simple bitmap effects plug-in system that would work for both bitmap graphics programs and vector graphics ones.
Just my two penny's worth.
Charles