Hi
Removing CC'es, I really dont like crossposting so I try not to do it. if this message is still relevant feel free to forward it.
You're right. I did a reply-all to a message posted to both lists, and immediately regretted it... :) Not that I don't think that this is any less relevant to inkscape than sodipodi, just that it seemed to follow more naturally from the flag rally and related threads than any discussion that I had previously seen on the inkscape list.
[is 'fex' the username of someone inlcuded in the crosspost? It is quite confusing I dont know the word at all]
(it's "for example", sorry about the personal idiosyncracy...)
Dia shapes/clipart/symbols could be made more generally reusable. Most of it is SVG based with some additional markup for things like connection points and I've said before that it could reasonably easily be converted to SVG with embedded Dia instead of dia with embedded SVG to simplify things for other applications. Dia has some Map Symbols...
I've not been able to find any map symbols clipart in the dia collection (default install). I personally think, for the specific subject of decorative mapmaking, that dia could be an ideal tool for thing such as roadmaps, just like autotrace performs nicely for region/country boundaries. I've created diagrams in dia, finishing them in SP. It worked quite nicely. The whole point is that neither SP or inkscape are as of yet sufficient in themselves for something like mapmaking, but there are free tools out there that can be productively combined to achieve the desired end, at least for this particular purpose.
Symbol libraries, vectors, fonts, - head spinning. SVG seems to be the best format to standardize upon, I'll assume you mentioned dingbats because of some special license it has rather than suggesting using Fonts to store libraries of vector symbols.
No no no. I'm not suggesting that a font should be used to store vector symbols... :) Just that having a good collection of simple b/w symbols (such as mapmaking symbols) easily translates into a font, if that is useful to anyone... If these have a GPL compatible license, so much the better.
I'd love to see a shared library of clipart, preferably in a cleaned homogenized SVG and installed to a standard location (freedesktop.org anyone?) with a few categories that could be shared across any application that was interested (I'm thinking Gnome-office).
Such a collection would be invaluable. Somebody would, however, need to fire it up and define some goals for it. The sodipodi flag rally seemed to me a natural example to follow, especially as the peer-review mechanism seemed to be working nicely in that case. Standardization of the svg can happen naturally, I think, through any such mechanism that is not too complex. A set of instructions on how to clean up your svg could be useful, but should not form a threshold for submissions I think. If someone finds out that the svg of some image doesn't work in some application, and has sufficient svg know-how, they will hopefully try to fix the problem and submit a correct version to the project...
For those that haven't been following the thread on the SP list, it seems that the idea is to branch off the clipart, and collaborate with projects like Klipart (KDE), that I'm unfamiliar with. The important thing for me (and the reason for my meddling) is to have a free collection of international service signs available. I will submit my own work to any project to that end, be it SP, a shared library of clipart or even dia... :)
Best regards
Áki
PS. The new inkscape interface looks great!