So after watching all of the conversation on this topic, today I decided to bust open Illustrator (v. 10) to see how it handled the freehand tools (pencil & brush, the equivalent of our freehand & calligraphy tools)... it's pretty interesting and of course extremely accurate. I know in this conversation was comparing Sodi & Inkscape initially, but I figured we should also compare to how the "big guy" does it too (even though there's no access to source code to find out how they _really_ do it).
For the pencil it lays down a dotted line as a placeholder and the brush lays down a crude raster line as a placeholder (reflecting brush size, etc), and both then replace that placeholder with the real vector line when you are done drawing (on mouse button release).
I have to say it appears that there are two (perceived) benefits for handling drawing like that:
1) Illustrator remains responsive regardless of length of line or speed of stroke, whereas with Inkscape the longer the line gets (or if you go turbo speed), the less responsive the app/tool is. I love the Calligraphy tool, but it gets painful to work with if you try to write fast or for long.
2) It gives the program additional time to calculate results that are more accurate (since it's not quite working in "real-time" w/ actual vectors).
As I said, those are perceived benefits and may not necessarily be accurate as to how those tools in Illustrator really function (specifically relating to perceived benefit #2). Either way, my guess is that Adobe does it for a good reason.
I just figured that it might be good to see how the closed source apps do it to figure out what else may be done to improve our tools. So maybe a placeholder of sorts, so that there is additional time to more accurately lay down a vector as well as keep inkscape responsive?
Just my .02 (since I don't _really_ know much about this, those are pesos)
Oh and as for the comparison of Inkscape vs Sodi with a signature, prior to changes made yesterday to the freehand tool I have to say that Inkscape had better results for me.
-Josh
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:inkscape-devel-
admin@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Bryce Harrington Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 9:14 PM To: inkscape-devel@...6... Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Freehand drawing tool
There'd been some comments about the quality of the Inkscape drawing tool compared with Sodipodi. I experimented around a bit with both.
I
see what they mean, but it's difficult to quantify the issue. Inkscape's drawing tool "feels" snappier, it doesn't lag like
Sodipodi,
and it produces lines smoothly, but it just doesn't "feel" right.
I can't draw worth beansy, but I could see the difference when I tried writing my name:
http://bryceharrington.com/freehand_drawing.png
Try signing your name with the two apps and see if you notice a difference.
Bryce
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