Eric Jonas wrote:
Do people feel inkscape should natively output PDF?
<imho> Inkscape should support SVG natively and only SVG. That's our purpose. If we can redirect all filetype conversion efforts to software that has conversion as its purpose, there are gains for the whole community. </imho>
Do you mean "inkscape should only ever produce SVG files, and leave the conversion to other external programs"? or "We should really try and avoid implementing our own conversion libraries, and just use what's out there"? They seem to be two very different things, both from an inkscape-developer-effort perspective and a usability one.
I mean both. Certainly we should avoid implementing our own conversion libraries. We should either contribute to existing library efforts and attempt to spawn an external lib to fill a void if one exists. But if at all possible we should be leaving the conversion to external programs. (Installing huge applications such as scribus or java, doesn't fit my definition of "if at all possible".) This doesn't create a usibility nightmare; Inkscape is designed to handle this. I fully support putting all of our eggs in the Uberconverter basket. This approach will better the FOSS ecosystem.
Aaron Spike
PS. please understand this is just opinion. I don't have the programming skills to back it up. :)