Kevin Cannon wrote:
And I am quite confident that if I learn Inkscape I would get around those problems. However, I didn't mail you because of me. I mailed you because of all the other people out there who won't take the time to learn it. Now if you're goal is to become quite popular, you have to cater for everyday users. I'd say that out of every users who downloads Inkscape, you have about 5-10 minutes of them using it before they decide if they'll ever use it again.
A significant portion of people will never use it if they can't find out how to pan, zoom and rotate effectively in that time period. And it's really those people I'm speaking for. If someone is really motivated to learn Inkscape they will of course, but most people will be trying it out for a few minutes to see if they like it.
As a new Inkscape user, I have to admit that Kevin has -IMHO- quite a point. I can recall that in the very first five minutes I almost stopped using Inkscape (yes, forever) because I couldn't find out how to fill my juct-created rectangle with a green color, being used to these nice docking swatch toolbars Corel/Xara programs had. And I am not talking about rocket science, just about painting a box! No one should need to read the manual to do this! (Needless to say, patience paid out well in the end.)
In this regard, I think that creating Macromedia, Illustrator and Corel-like environments (shortcuts, menus, toolbars) would have a great impact on new users. I don't know to what extent this is possible, though.
Personally, the best thing about Inkscape is that it is actually being developed by a community and is open-source. After all, in one month after first using Inkscape, here I am, tracking the inkscape-devel list!
Thanks to everyone here for making such a good program, - Spyros Blanas