Thanks Martin and Philip.

I should have said more about the project - I see why you are responding with these thoughts.

Our students must do their homework with paper and pencil - one of our goals is to keep kids doing schoolwork the traditional way, avoiding distractions, etc.   So I would be using Inkscape to add marks onto images scanned by the parents, of schoolwork the kids did with paper and pencil.  (We will however also offer a website way to submit answers, with the student simply typing the answer.)

The main reason I am interested in Inkscape is not so much because of the SVG aspect, but rather because it is a clean and customizable interface, the code is open source, and it compiles beautifully on WIndows under msys64 - unlike Gimp (which after many hours I had to give up trying to compile for Windows). 

But, if the customizations will be very expensive, then yes - I will have to do most of the work, as I have no customers right now.   Short of someone doing the coding, could I hire someone for a few hours to give me a little tour of the code and answer some questions, get me started, etc?   Especially since the Inkscape Jenkins is apparently down (?), I am having a tough time seeing the big picture of the code structure.   Right now I am lacing the code with "printfs()" to try to trace through it, as I cannot figure out how to use the gbd debugger with Inkscape's multiple threads.   

Thank you!
Dean

On Sat, Nov 25, 2017 at 2:56 AM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
Dear Dean Loew,

The kind of project you have here isn't quite an Inkscape project, but
it could make a very good website project.

Students can use inkscape to write/draw, and the files can be submitted
for marking to a website. It's even possible to have an extension
written in python that would submit the work quickly to such a website
from the student's computers.

SVG is Inkscape internal format. SVG is also a first class web
standard, you can view SVGs created in Inkscape directly in a web
browser. Embedding SVGs in this way is something I've done for my
clients a number of times.

There's no need to customise Inkscape, mostly because the cost of it
would be VERY expensive and also because it's not necessary.

Good luck!

Best Regards, Martin Owens
Inkscape Developer and Contractor

On Fri, 2017-11-24 at 19:13 -0600, Dean Loew wrote:
> Hello all.
>
> I need a much-simplified, bare-bones version of inkscape for a small
> home school project I am starting.   
>
> Our students will write handwritten essays / short answers, and
> submit those homework images (they are jpgs, gifs, etc).   I need a
> program to help "mark up" those images, and then save the image, and
> store the grades in a MySQL database.
>
> "Marking up" the image:
> I need to quickly be able to add grading marks to the image, such as
> "SP" (spelling error), "GR" (grammar error).  I can easily add these
> marks now by adding custom symbols to inkscape and then dragging them
> onto the image.  But, I would prefer instead to be able to this via
> custom tools in the toolbar.   
> Whenever I add one of these marks, I want to subtract the appropriate
> number of points from the "perfect score"  (e.g.  every time I add an
> "SP" for a spelling error, the grade goes down by 1 point, etc). 
>  So, there needs to be shown a little box with the current score.
> If I make a mistake and add one of those marks by accident, and
> delete it, the score goes back up.
> I need to have the screen split into two parts (with two images
> showing): the top image is the student image being graded; the bottom
> image is the "official answer" (also an image).
> I need to have a little list of images to correct - that is, a list
> of all images that need to be corrected.  As I click on the list, it
> will load that student image.
> When an image is done being graded, there will be some simple button
> to "Save"
> All unnecessary options and features will be disabled (or at least
> hidden) - unnecessary tools, the main menu, toolbars, etc.   I want a
> very simple interface.
> MySQL:
> The list of images needs to be loaded from the database.
> When each image is done being graded, the score needs to be stored in
> the database; the next student image in line needs to be auto-loaded,
> etc.
> Thanks!
> Dean
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