Sorry for a belated reply...
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.
I still think this is wrong. Imagine you're learning some foreign language, say French. Would you want your French teacher to teach you phrases that sound funny to native French speakers? Of course not. On the contrary, you want to learn phrases and constructions that are idiomatic and natural for the target language.
time they read this page. Alan's right, giving the sales speech here is just going to piss off AI users.
I'm not arguing for a "sales speech", just for a concise and practical introduction which mentions the most important capabilities, _especially_ if they are different from those of AI.
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.
No it cannot, and of course it must be mentioned. I never said it must not.
Good call. Thanks. I don't think the document should be fundamentally restructured, however, and I don't think Bulia does either.
Currently it's just an embryo of a document. It needs to be much longer to be of any use. But we need to agree on the approaches before growing it further.
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.
Maybe you didn't author it, but you restored it when I deleted it.
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?
I would not mind the tone transgressions if they would not be accompanied by some factual inaccuracies and approaches which I consider wrong.
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.*
"Less responsive" says nothing useful. It may mean anything. Please be specific: what exactly it can and cannot do. If you want an overall statement, you can add it, but please make it more to the point (e.g. "misses some important features", or "uses a one-tool approach", or "is less convenint in working with such-and-such use cases").
if you want me to swap out "more responsive" with "more context sensitive" I'm willing to do that.
"More context sensitive" makes more sense, but please explain exactly what type of context is missing in Inkscape.
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.
Fine, then why won't you mention "the ability to talk to a developer" among Inkscape's advantages in the document :)
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 have only AI 9 and it has nothing in the way of clones at all, which is why I added a mention of it. By the way AI 9 isn't all that old. As for the features you mention, they will all be addressed eventually, some of them hopefully very soon.
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.
Looks like the majority of replies here, including those from AI users, supports this point. So I think we need to restore this. It is important.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the
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.
OK, I agree to put the "convert to path _if you need path_" advice first in that section. But my paragraph on shapes must remain, even if it comes second. Again, the consensus on the list seems to be in favor of explaining shapes.
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 really appreciate that.
I could have had Part II done by now if I hadn't had to go through such rigors with this one page. :-)
Well, I hope it was useful.
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.
Yes, certainly.
So, can you please prepare a next version of this document, taking into account all the discussion in this thread (and removing our arguments from the wiki page)? Then we'll hopefully have input from more people. I promise not to delete lots of stuff without discussing it first :)