Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
And when it is rendered, which it must be at some point to be human-usable, it is rendered into a pixel-per-unit raster image of some sort. So, yes, it is relative to ppu.
Yes, Joshua. That's true. But that doesn't matter for the user. That pixel-per-unit raster has presentation purposes only and user shouldn't care about it. If somebody tells you "use a 12 pt text for that brochure" you'll think inmediately in a real world size, not in pixels. When you work for print you think in the output phisical dimensions, no matter what size your screen shows.
Yes, and it is also made obvious that it uses SVG as its standard document format. The roadmap points out the way to achieving compliance with the SVG spec, which is a web standard. And, like Illustrator and Corel, many people use it for web graphics design.
And there's nothing wrong with it. I use inkscape both for print and web mockups. So pixels and real world units are useful. But when you need one type of units in particular you want to set the whole program to work with it. Changing every time every dialog to the needed units is painfully tedious.
Well, you can use any tool any way you like, but a tool designer has to design a tool for a specific job/jobset, or he ends up with no tool at all. If you don't see the point of using Inkscape for the web, I don't know what to tell you.
Again, there's nothing wrong with using Inkscape as a tool for the web. But since it's not the only use you can give it, there's no point in restricting it ONLY for web use. It is quite obvious that many people will use it for print or signs, so the tool should fit in every case of use nicely.
Using your own logic, how many printers do you know take SVG files for printing? Not many, since it's a web graphics spec. So you should also not see it as a tool for print graphic design, either. I don't think your reasons are so obvious. Part of the usefulness of vector in web usage is size, part is scalability...sounds like the same reasons it's used for print.
It's not about the SVG format at all. Following your logic you shouldn't be using inkscape for bitmap images, because SVG format a vectorial format. An SVG file can be exported to bitmap, converted to other formats or imported in other programs. When I worked with Illustrator, I used to rasterize my work and send it to the print shop as 300 dpi CMYK tiffs. I can do almost the same with inkscape (actually, I've just finished a brochure using inkscape and I'll separate it into CMYK using the separate+ Gimp plugin).
So imo, the XML editor should be used for advanced operations, not for everyday stuff like setting the size of a typeface.
Sure. But the issue of default units should be determined by what the tool is primarily designed for. And nobody can deny that SVG, which is the standard format, is a web spec, for which pixels are the de facto non-relative standard unit.
Nobody is denying anything. SVG format is the format choosen for Inkscape and that's great. It's a very good format, it's a standard. We all love it. But you can't force the 80-90% of the users to learn the SVG internals if they want to design a business card with inkscape. Vector illustration packages use real units because vectors are a scalable alternative for pixel based design. And scalable means size. And size is a real world measure. You can't tell how many pixels fit in an A4 without specifying the resolution. And resolution is a value for translating something that only exists in a computer screen into real world units. That's already implemented, you can choose the units you want. I don't understand why would be so wrong allowing the user to choose the default units.