On Jan 7, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Valessio Brito wrote:
I believe a good programmer must not only think about implementing the "code" perfect, but the good function in spite of a poorly implemented and can help spread the use of the software. Help, because there are many needy movements using only free software and could with this graphic collective and free.
Graffiti, Hip Hop, Artists, Designers, many people only need to print on separate colors in an easy and no longer have to give up or check the Internet for a procedure you need other tools, for example: "Export to GIMP and Split Colors. "
This is somewhat true, but does miss some key points.
There is a bit of a difference between "perfect" functionality and "incorrect". We know that we do not need to get things perfect, only "sufficient" (good enough) to get work done.
However... when it comes to doing print separations too many people think they have a solution that is "good enough" when really they have something that actually makes the problem worse. Print separations are a tricky problem, and care needs to be taken to do a "sufficient" solution, and not fall into the trap of an "incorrect" one.
The good news is that we might be on track to get many things fixed in Inkscape.
First is the placement of the color separation dialog. It really is not a "mode" (at least not at this point), so that just needs to be moved around in the UI.
Second is how colors are managed. The good news is that it is a mainly internal change. We most definitely can *not* just have random numbers tossed in. Those result in different colors for different users, or worse, for different colors for the same user from one printer to the next. (a yellow logo printed onto a blue t-shirt and turning green was just one of the more recent examples I've held in my hands).
So just like how SVG says "all RGB values are in the sRGB color space", an artist needs to at least say "all my CMYK values are in the SWOP CMYK colorspace" and not "just random values that I'll keep changing until my print house returns the results I want".
So, to solve this second problem, we just need to make it *easy* for an artist to do that in Inkscape. The great news is that this is the sort of issue that takes a while to track down all the proper things to do, but can actually be done quite quickly.
And on the other hand, one of the worst things we can do for free software is do things incorrectly, and have those who work professionally hold it up as proof that open source can't be used seriously.