Hi,
I'd also like to return the favor. I think with this general "What's Inkscape" piece out of the way, there is an audience for more focused articles, and if anyone is interested in writing one I would be more than happy to lend a hand. For example, I'd bet an article giving advice about usability would be well received. An article about Inkscape internals as they relate to SVG rendering would as well. I also think a usage-oriented "secrets of Inkscape" article would be appropriate. So if anyone is interested in authoring an article on any of those subjects, I would be happy to help in any capacity.
I was thinking of writing a few articles about Inkscape usability; there have been a lot of good improvements since the fork. I've been using Inkscape to develop an online comic and a few sets of icons, and have found very few frustrations. I was also planning to develop some more tutorials, contribute some code, but that's a topic for another day.
Here's a list of usability bits (good and bad) I've found while using Inkscape. As I'm using the latest stable version, these items may be fixed in the bleeding edge. And while I've read most of the wiki, and browsed the changelogs, I may have missed something that is known or planned for the future ...
Good stuff:
* Boolean operations :) * Keybindings/menus. I found Inkscape's organization better than the pre-forked project (even though I liked, in concept, the pre-fork's tool window). * Speed. It renders well on all of my machines (some older ones too). * Output quality. This is the biggest issue for me, and Inkscape has really nice (UI and rendering) export facilities. * It doesn't crash. Some of the non-free vector drawing tools I've been forced to use in the past crashed regularly (*cough*, Visio).
Stuff to improve:
* Resizing objects resizes their line width. For the online comic, I'm aiming to use a constant style, which includes a fixed line-width for all of the shapes. Adjusting line-widths on every resize is very frustrating - if this were modal (modified with a keypress, or via a setting), it would be a great improvement. * Copy/paste between Inkscape instances seems broken. I had planned to use one Inkscape document like a clipboard of comic bits (similar to Visio's stencils), but I couldn't get cut/paste to work. * There is no 'application' toobar. I have a habit of clicking on save from time to time (even though I also use ctrl-s). I haven't found a standard toolbar. * Snap-to is a bit too snappy. Some applications have a snap-to that allows both fine-positioning /and/ snap-to at the same time. One such application uses a modifier key while dragging objects (shift iirc), and another is just nice about its snappyness. * The text properties are not applied in real-time. Nearly every time I modify the text properties of a chunk of text, I forget to click apply. Other similar applications apply these changes in real-time. I'm sure there's a performance (or other) reason why this isn't the case, but it results in many "D'Oh!"s.
Wishes:
* A user-defined palette. The colour wheels and sliders are great for picking colours, but I'm usually working with a very particular set of colours (and I'll work with those colours for many weeks). I've worked around this by drawing my own palette on the diagram, which I use instead. * Persisted document properties. For every document I create, I find I have to make the same set of tweaks to the document settings. It would be really handy if this were persisted by Inkscape, and applied to each document created. * A stencil-mechanism. I'd like to be able to save bits of drawings that I could reuse later (cartoon bubbles/balloons, strip outlines, etc.) * A way to import bitmaps easily. One useful tool for an illustrator is to be able to trace over a sketch loaded in the background (or in a box). I've never really liked auto-trace tools, so just the ability to load a bitmap into a box would be incredibly useful.
Thanks to all of the Inkscape developers -- this is a great tool!