On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Alan Horkan wrote:
Jakub "Jimmac" Steiner has reviewed Inkscape 0.40 on Ubuntu Linux. http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Inkscape
This is great, I'm glad to see this high level critique. I was pleased with the feedback. It's true there's still much to work on but Jimmac seemed to appreciate the progress we've made so far.
I've CC'ed this message to Jimmac and I'll try to quickly answer some of his questions and address the ones which are known issues. I encourage you all to read his comments which I found very interesting. I didn't want to crosspost to the user list, I'll try and remember to post the link there later when this thread is done.
Alan, if you'd be interested, I'd like to co-author an official response with you. If you have time, it would be great to post a response in the Feb timeframe.
Jimmac mentions things not being consistant with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Hopefully as things get more configurable and more standard widgets are used (part of the plan) users will be able to resolve much of that for themselves. Some of the inconsistancies will need careful work to figure out what is really the best solution (and I'm trying not to be contraversial so I'll move on).
This is true. It is worth noting that when we started, there was a feeling that blind adherance to Gimp's interface approach was holding us back, so for Inkscape we were especially open to non-Gimp ideas. But the current Gimp is much different than had gone before.
Layer support is ... unfinished
Work in progress
Yes, we needed to get _something_ out for layer usage in that release. Hopefully for 0.42 we can give more. I think there's still some uncertainty over exactly how this should function, but hopefully we can get some good ideas incorporated.
Vector icons ... good idea [but] it doesn't work in my opinion
there is workin in progress (already in CVS I believe) that allows Inkscape to use different icon themes (but it is not complete, I can elaborate more later as needed).
I'm really glad he brought this up - this is something I too have felt similarly about.
I have felt that the best approach for us would be to use SVG as the originating syntax, but render to png or bmp, and load those. From my perspective the benefit would be in load times; I think they'd have other benefits as well.
two rows of tabs in the tool options
mockups for a new preferences dialog were done, no tabs a bit more like the gimp. implementation seems inevitable, others may know but I wont guess when.
I wouldn't bet money on the dual-row tab approach surviving the gtkmm redesign work.
some sort of library [for] brushes, gradients
thats a known issue but not specifically on the roadmap http://inkscape.org/roadmap.php i think there are a few requests already filed
It's in the roadmap but not for a while. This is definitely an area we could use a highly motivated developer to take charge. We have a lot of rough ideas but what we need is someone with a strong vision and good coding chops to put it into practice.
Deleting objects with Backspace. While Del works, my powerbook doesn't
have the del key ;).
dont think anyone has mentioned that before.
Nope, but Bulia's already implemented it. ;-)
Object blending. Select two objects and pick how many inbetween states
you want or optionally a path along which to do the morph. Essential time saviour when duplicating objects
Sounds like Tweening to me. Complicated but again I'm reasonably sure there are requests for it already. Knowing the Inkscape developers someone will come along and surprise us with this feature out of nowhere.
Agreed. Very cool idea, certainly not on the roadmap, but definitely the sort of thing to suddenly pop into being. ;-)
Converting stroke into objects. Sometimes you want to have more control
about the dotted outline.
I get the feeling this might be already be possible. Anyone?
I'm not sure what he meant by this one. You may be right that it's already possible.
Bryce