On 22 janv. 06, at 11:31, Alan Horkan wrote:
On Sat, 21 Jan 2006, Martin Owens wrote:
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:01:15 +0000 From: Martin Owens <doctormo@...1114...> We've been having a discussion in #inkscape about the feedback (almost complaints) about the way inkscape links to images by default instead of embedding them as a document creator would expect.
[... snip ...] Embedding seems like the more straighforward default for ordinary users but then there are questions of making the entire file format self contained and embedding Fonts, Videos, and all kinds of other information resulting in very large files. If images are embedded what else should be embedded? The inkjar files are working towards providing the kind of complete file format these users might want, perhaps it should be the default file format?
If users must learn about embedding some resources and not others, there might be some advantage to linking images and confronting them with this lesson sooner rather than later?
agreed. I personally don't think that embedding everything is a good solution and the default should teach the user what the good solution is, even if it requires some additional work from the user point of view. almost all mac applications do embedding (word, keynote, pages etc.) and it results in: - enormous files as soon as some video/large images are embedded. the original is already somewhere on the disc so the space is taken two times - the difficulty to modify the original image once it is embedded. I think embedding should be default when there is a solution to link images to the gimp or to extract and re-import the image easily. I'm often asked how to modify the contrast or suppress some parts of an image. The easy answer is "Load it into the gimp". But when the image is embedded in word it adds some complexity rather that simplify things...
Does embedding have any performance penalties?
I thought I read here that embedding images directly in SVG is very bad for performance. but maybe you were thinking of a new file format then.
to the image Change Menu Import to embed image data by default Add an ask box for when images are dragged and dropped for weather the images should be linked or embedded.
Please make a decision, allow the user to make progress. Do not ask every time, this kind of blocking behavior can be frustrating especially after long term use. Users will inevitably request an option to always link or always embed.
If the default Import behaviour will be to embed then I think Drag and Drop should follow that behaviour, and the linking behaviour should require the deliberate use of Place Image...
Open Office adds a "Link" checkbox to the "insert image" window. Maybe Inkscape could use the same (personally I would vote for linking by default and adding a Embed check box but I might well be alone), it's value being saved across sessions or on a document basis and the drag and drop behavior would use the last state of the check box.
The easy solution would be to use more the "save to zip" extension and make it more visible (in the save menu, put it just under Inkscape svg for example).
Just my two cents.
JiHO