Alan Horkan wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, bulia byak wrote:
I take it this document was intended to eventually become a Tutorial and be shipped with Inkscape?
Not a tutorial. I think it's supposed to be a page of the help file. At least I've folded it into the help file draft I'm working on (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/) and will probably be incorporated into the next version. I guess it's up to Cedric to put it in or not. It's a similar sort of document as I've seen in other programs' help files, so I don't see why it shouldn't be there.
- However, Kwixson's approach seems to go further than that. He
apparently wants this document to describe _only_ those things which you can do in Illustrator, and describe them exactly _the same way_ as one would do them in Illustrator, even if Inkscape offers more convenient methods. I think this is wrong.
The audience of this document is *only* AI users (hence the name and purpose of the document). It's appropriate therefore, that the document serve exclusively as an orientation for AI users and cover just those things that relate to AI users, and be just an overview at that. An exhaustive study of Inkscape's features are better documented on other pages than this one page dedicated to AI users being introduced to IS. It's a matter of translation. Of course a translation from AI to IS is going to sound funny to native IS users, but this page is NOT for IS users. It's for AI users, and making sense to them is what's important. So, yes, I intend to explain to AI users how to translate their experience with AI into IS. They can (and I emphatically say they will) learn "the Inkscape way" as they gain more experience with the program. It's not important that they learn all of IS's methodologies before they start to use the program. They'll just need to get up to speed on IS, as people coming from AI. That's what I give them, and in that mission I think some of Bulia's changes detract.
I did feel the article tried too hard to make comparisions and it did seem a little like Inkscape marketing/propoganda. I can understand how immensely proud you are of your work on Inkscape but this is not the best place for it and if anything it is likely to piss of Illustrator users instead of make things easier for them.
Precisely. Inkscape is a great program, and AI users will come to see that once they start using the program. You don't need to sell them on it in this document. They're already interested in the program by the time they read this page. Alan's right, giving the sales speech here is just going to piss off AI users. Sell the program with PR, not in help files. As I said in the notes on the page, I understand how proud you are of the program, Bulia, and rightly so. Nobody's saying you shouldn't sing its praises, only that this particular page isn't the appropriate place to do that.
A lof of the content in that article does not relate directly to teaching Illustrator Users to use Inkscape and could be moved to our section about what we can lear from other software. http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AdobeIllustrator10
Alan, you're right that the goal should not be to "teach" AI users how to use IS. The goal of the writing the document should be limited to helping the user realize the goal they're trying to achieve by reading the document. Describing the in's and out's of the program in detail happens on other pages. The scope of this doc is merely to quickly orient AI users to IS. Anything that goes above and beyond that very preliminary orientation only serves to make it less usable.
The comparisions and descriptions about how great Inkscape is makes the article much longer than it needs to be. We should try and keep the articles technical if not necessary neutral or unbiased.
Some comparison is absolutely necessary. By the time someone who fits the profile of the intended audience reads this document they are asking certain questions of comparison. Can Inkscape do X, like I can do in Illustrator? Can Inkscape do gradient meshes, for example, something that's a big deal in AI but isn't a feature of IS and therefore isn't mentioned elsewhere. Somewhere that question has to be answered, and the best place is this document. And you have to be up front with AI users. You have to say, "Well, no. You can't do gradient meshes," and then let the AI user decide whether or not that's a deal breaker or something they can live without. I agree that in general help files should be 100% technical and have no bias expressed in the tone. In the other documentation I'm working on for Inkscape I follow that rule religiously, and I expressed exactly that sentiment in the style guide I wrote on the Wiki for the other documentors. This document, however, needs to walk a different line that one strictly absent of bias. Certainly it cannot come out in "favor" of one program or another, but some judgments of the stength's and weaknesses of IS from an AI POV might be appropriate, as long as its fair and honest.
I can't abide the use of unnecessary acronyms and abbreviations in technical writing. I so I have changed it from "can't" to "can not" (but a general restucturing of the document will probably soon make this redundant).
Good call. Thanks. I don't think the document should be fundamentally restructured, however, and I don't think Bulia does either. I could go into a lengthy defense of the structure, but I won't bore you with the details until it becomes absolutely necessary.
- With Kwixson's approach, Inkscape would always seem inferior to AI,
because you can't win just by copying.
I don't think IS is inferior to AI and I don't think that is what is written in the document. I think it's clear about what a AI user can and can't expect from IS, but I don't think it puts IS down for it. You're forgetting the value of IS as OSS and a free program has for a potential AI convert.
I think Inkscape is successfully following an "Embrace and Extend" strategy. I think "Copy or Improve" is the way to go do the same or better, not just different for the sake of being different. And inkscape is taking influence from a variety of diffent sources, not just Adobe so I think there is not much risk of being caught in that dead end.
Huzaa! Don't be different just to be different. Take what works, and ditch what doesn't, but don't miss the opportunity to learn from other peoples' (or companies' or programs') successes. I totally agree with Alan.
You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
First, "is much less responsive" isn't my text. Go back to the September draft, authored long before I even heard of IS, and that's where you'll find the genesis of that phrase. I tried to incorporate as much as possible of the original author's text into my rewrite, in the spirit of the Wiki. I wouldn't have written much of the document the way it came out if I were starting from scratch, because my style is more technical. That said...
What's better? Better might be fewer features and less convenience if it also means open source and free. Keeping the dynamic of value in mind, is having a forthright message about IS's features condescending? You, Bulia, are not the intended audience for this piece, because you are not a fluent AI user. The intended audience will not have a defensive reaction to the text because they don't have the personal stake in the program that you do. Since it doesn't misrepresent the program at all, I don't see how being honest with these very minor (albeit admittedly somewhat judgmental) transgressions of an entirely neutral tone detract from the document achieving it's purpose. If it doesn't undermine the purpose of the document, what's the problem?
We probably need to be clearer about the underlying purpose and intent of the document and make it clear that such subjective judgements are entirely inapprorpriate. The document uses strong language and talks about superior or inferior, when a less subjective or neutral terms like "different" would be <strike>better</strike> more appropriate. ;)
As I said in the note, in this particular case it's not entirely subjective to say that the way that IS presently handles node transformation is less responsive *in they eyes of AI users.* That last bit is important. I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated that with http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/ntwf.htm ; and in my discussions with some of the people I talked to on the #inkscape IRC channel last night it seems that IS's developers are willing to admit that IS's implementation of node transformation and editing is incomplete.
I totally agree that in the normal course of documentation "better" is never acceptable in a situation where comparisons cannot be avoided outright. This is not a page that fits into the normal course of documentation, as I've pointed out. It's not out of line, I don't think, for some judgment of the relative strengths of various individual features to be documented, if they are relevant to AI users. And what's relevant to AI users is based not on my opinion, but on a collective and aggregate opinion from my base of user data (from presenting IS to AI users.)
That goes a long way to defend parts of the document I don't particularly care about that much, I guess. So as I said in the notes, if you want me to swap out "more responsive" with "more context sensitive" I'm willing to do that.
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document.
Not true. The audiences I've presented Inkscape to (some pretty hard core AI users) have all expressed a great deal of interest. I don't have the hard data to back this up, but anecdotally the reason an AI user might switch has to do with the cost of Adobe products and the unique capacity of open source for developers to directly interact with users. I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
I don't think it's stupid to target AI users at all. Read the first sentence on your own web site, www.inscape.org. "Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C http://www.w3.org standard scalable vector graphics http://w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ format (SVG)." See, you target AI users already. How is writing an orientation to IS for AI users stupid?
I think there's a lot of demand for an open source vector drawing program with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw. What's wrong with appealing to those users? What open source program is better positioned to meet those demands? There isn't one. Inkscape is the best, isn't it?
In all honesty the notion of "switching" is a total dead end. It sets up unrealistic expectations and only leads to disappointment. Anyone who wants to promote Inkscape should try to promote it as another useful weapon in an arsenal of tools rather than any foolish attempt to replace tools that artists know and are happy using.
I wouldn't say disappointment. Yeah, I wish Inkscape could do object blends, but so what? Maybe that will be a feature some day, but in the mean time I have a program that runs on all three of the OS platforms that I care about instead of just two, and is open source and is free and does a pretty good job for many of the tasks I need it for. Artists (users) are never going to be happy unless you cut down your "user base" to those that are perfectly happy with the program already. And if that's all you're going to work for, why bother adding or improving features at all? Isn't the purpose of adding features to make it "useful" to a broader set of users than it was before? If you're going to make it more useful, and therefore appeal to a broader user base, then why can't some of that broader user base include those that use these other programs?
Any difference this document highlights should be considered carefully as valuable feedback and a potential opportunity to improve our terminology. (I happen to think the world has moved on since Illustrator and the term clones is no longer an obscure technical term and is in fact more approriate than trying to figure out what is meant by 'symbols' in this context.)
I have no opinion about this. But I'll tell you that clones would be a lot more useful to me if I could store them in a library, and stroke a path with a pattern of clones, or paint with them with some sort of clone brush. :-) Singing the praises of Inkscape's implementation of clones, however, is misplaced in this particular document as is best served on the page of documentation that documents clones, wouldn't you think?
I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are looking for something different and better. And therefore we must stress our strengths and differences, explaining them in a way which is easy to understand for AI users.
What you're describing is a PR document, not a piece of program documentation. Do the PR in the spaces that are appropriate for PR, so that by the time an AI users get to this piece of documentation they're already convinced that IS has something to offer them. I cannot say emphatically enough that this piece of documentation is NOT the place to make a case for Inkscape in the marketing sense, which is what you're proposing.
Inkscape is free.
The only significant cost I can think of is that of learning to use Inkscape.
There is very little reason why anyone should be encourage to through out software they have paid for and works for them. Inkscape can work with your other tools not against them.
Let us not talk of replacing other software but providing alternatives and providing useful software.
Don't forget that for a user like me, and I'm pretty typical, the cost of future upgrades is very much in my mind. No professional designer (print) that I know doesn't have the latest version of AI. When they come out with a new one, we pretty much all have to upgrade, otherwise we can't effectively collaborate (trade files) and we have a devil of a time with print houses. Having an alternative that we can afford to keep upgraded all the time without a leash to Adobe is very appealing. Please don't discount it.
Now on to specific examples.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
I would step back and say that it may not be the best idea to have these comparisions on our page about what we want to learn from Adobe Illustrator. A more objective comment might be about Inkscape having a different set of keybindings and that are no real plans to directly copy their keybindings (a task which is made much more difficult by Inkscape having keybindings for almost everything).
It would be better to simply say that Inkscape has more keybindings and let that speak for itself rather than being emphatic about that necessarily being superior.
So, you're saying that you agree with what I said in the comments about some wording at the top of the page to that effect?
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
There might be a way to rephrase this like: "Illustrator users may be more comfortable converting Shapes to Paths but it is worth trying out the Shapes as they sometimes offer different/unique and useful behaviours" or somthing like that.
We should probably ask Kwixson to be a little bit more reserved about removing things and try to mostly add rather than remove.
The problem is that Bulia was missing the point of the original text. I think he thought I was being judgmental about how IS handles shapes, or missing an opportunity to hype IS's superior qualities. As I point out in the notes the original text was written to address a very specific question that AI users have, one that you can't understand the significance of if you're not a proficient AI user, which Bulia has admitted he's not.
As for being reserved, the whole reason we got into the reverting business is because large sections of my original text were whacked outright and it was easier for me just to revert than add back in the large sections that were removed. I'm going to defend the practice of editing, though, as opposed to the "add, don't delete" process, because this isn't a normal Wiki page. It's ultimately going to live in a different venue. I learned in my training as a writer that "Most of good writing is in the editing."
C. In the section on Node tool, Kwixson provided some very cumbersome descriptions of how to convert a segment from curve to straight line and how to continue a path. When I proposed much simpler and more straightforward ways to do the same, he insisted that his descriptions closely match the way AI does this and therefore must stay. Once again, I don't see why one should go through all this when there's a much simpler way. Disclaimer on this point: I cannot even claim to completely understand Kwixson's descriptions, so I may have missed something important in them. Please anyone who knows AI's path editing, review these paragraphs and let us know what you think.
I hope that helps. I drafted this a few times but I'm still not quite sure I really said what I wanted to say but I hope we can put all this information to good use and redirect Kwixons enthusiasm and avoid this kind of conflict.
How shall I be redirected? ;-) I'm already doing Inkscape's documentation. Last week I rewrote/translated/edited the entire Part I, chapters 1-9, of the manual. I could have had Part II done by now if I hadn't had to go through such rigors with this one page. :-) Seriously, though, the process has had some really good outcomes and it wouldn't be as good as it's going to be if it hadn't been for Bulia's input. I think I've shown I can be reasonable when appropriately persuaded. I do have good reasons for my assertions on the outstanding issues, however, and I hope I can express them adequately enough.
Thanks to you Alan, and thanks to Bulia too. I do want to be a help. I hope I can be of some use to you all.
Cheers, -Kevin Wixson