On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 15:18:00 -0700 From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape is a vector graphics editor inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Bug tracking and Closed feature requests
On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 11:05:18PM +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
I sometimes feel hesistant to close certain feature requests, or how similar things need to be to mark things as duplicates.
One of the requests I closed just today was for asking for Inkscape to use the platform native file chooser.
Agreed. This is a Gtk issue at heart.
There is I assume a shared interest and the long term goal of getting more people using and contributing to the software we all enjoy Inkscape, GTK, and many other associated libraries and wider platform.
I would recommend a polite response something along the line of, "This falls outside the scope of what the current developers plan to work on. If you feel strongly that this should be included, you are welcome to submit a patch that implements the feature, and it'll be reviewed for possible inclusion."
I do try to mention the usual patches welcome and put things into context. I do try to give users a good sense of what might realistically get implemented but having said that I did leave open a request for Microsfot XAML support. I suppose I could use the roadmap and the SVG specifications to exclude many more requests.
On file format support, SVG and PDF seem to be the primary vector file formats and PNG (and maybe JPEG?) for rasters are a necessity but everything else is dependent on outside contributors to improve and maintain (be they in the form of patches, libraries, or extensions using other applications). Is that a fair assesment?
(There are so many file formats in the gimp which many people have an expectation will be maintained. The gimp developers are responsible enought not to pull Firefox and chuck out the baby with the bathwater and are waiting to devolve a lot of these into seperate plugins not included by default. Making the core formats clear up front and requiring active maintainers helps aviod such sprawl happening to inkscape, the seperation provided by extensions helps too.)
In other words, rather than just outright saying "no", give them the thread of hope that it could be included, if only someone can take on the challenge of coding it.
I do try to put things in terms of "Yes, but probably not..." to give things a positive spin. I find anonymous reports very frustrating because you dont know if anyone is even bothering to pay attention to the response.
For all of these iffy fringe features, developers may not be in 100% agreement whether the given idea could or couldn't be included in Inkscape, or even whether it should be on our roadmap,
Inkscape has made so much progress the Roadmap could stand to be fleshed out some more.
Of course, not everyone can code, but we need to clearly delineate that Inkscape is contributor-driven and thus is not going to be able to meet needs for which no contributors exist.
As soon as I sent the previous message it occurred to me that anonymous requests very much go against the ethos of engaging and encouraging contributors to get more involved.
there are many non-coding ways to contribute, but for some features, it really does boil down to needing the code. Thus, the requestor could learn to code themselves, or work out some sort of trade with a coder.
Have any of the Inkscape developers been asked to work for hire improving Inkscape? (Not including the Google Summer of code.) This seems to be something likely to happens later when smaller businesses take the plunge and switch to inkscape. I think most of the people requesting features at the moment would only be able to offer a donation as a gesture rather than enough to pay a developer for a few days work. Theories of end users clubbing together to fund development haven't ever panned out far as I know, but it is certainly a nice hope.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org