Bob Jamison wrote:
But one thing should be remembered. Inkscape, in the end, will be its own individual project, and will work in the way it needs for users to be able to produce quality -SVG- output. There is no interest in producing an exact clone of Illustrator or Photoshop. There is no innovation involved in merely copying someone else's work. Nor is there any incentive for people writing code in their free time on nights or weekends to provide such a beast.
I personally think that Inkscape already *is* an individual project, and a very successful one. I do not wish to see merely an open-source clone of a popular application and Inkscape has features that other million-budget vector applications lack.
However, being able to customize the UI (like MS Office & OpenOffice do, with the ability to change menus, toolbars and shortcuts) is certainly a powerful feature and greatly increases productivity and user satisfaction (why bother finding this specific option in the menu, when you can add a button on your custom toolbar?).
If such functionality existed, it would be trivial (in programming effort) to allow for different 'profiles' to be selected. And then users could easily create Illustrator-like profiles (or anything else they wanted). This way, users have an active role in UI design and can even contribute their own designs!
This way we leave room for both innovation (in Inkscape-specific features) and familiarity (user-selectable UI).
- Spyros Blanas