Re: [Scribus] Announcing Inkscape 0.37 Release
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But back to Inkscape -- my experience with Sodipodi [also in the < 1.0 version zone (both < 0.5 actually)] suggests that I have better things to do with my time.
I'll have to respectfully disagree there.
I have enjoyed some very productive discussions with the Inkscape devels and observed how they work together - it is a textbook example of FLOSS development.
I have a *lot* of respect for what they are doing and the rapid progress they have made to date. The latest 0.37 is a much smoother, more polished release than anything to date in OSS svg editing. With some minor issues, SVG import to/from Scribus <> Inkscape is getting better by the day.
See: http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?BigPicture
and : http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Roadmap
I have built RH9/Fedora RPMS for the Inkscape 0.37 release, which are on their download page. Mdk RPMS and debs are also packaged. SuSE rpms soon to come.
Peter
crossposting as usual is confusing and hard to follow ...
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Peter Linnell wrote:
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:00:25 -0500 From: Peter Linnell <scribusdocs@...84...> To: Gregory Pittman <gpittman@...238...> Cc: Scribus List <scribus@...119...>, inkscape List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Re: [Scribus] Announcing Inkscape 0.37 Release
<snip>
But back to Inkscape -- my experience with Sodipodi [also in the < 1.0 version zone (both < 0.5 actually)] suggests that I have better things to do with my time.
but this comment on version numbers gives me an excuse to say something that has been on my mind for a while
The roadmap does not have an Inkscape 1.0 Stable Release on it.
I think Inkscape is great, and I think there could easily be a release of Inkscape 1.0 Stable in under six months. I dont think this would require much deviation from the existing roadmap just a little extra push for stability and deciding which features are exactly needed to declare 1.0.
I realise that release numbers like 'stable 1.0' are not very important to many open source users and developers and some dismiss it just as 'marketing' but they are very important to ordinary users and it makes it much harder to convince people to use pre-1.0 software and for those people it is very worthwhile to provide stable 1.0 (and it wont matter to the others either way).
It may be necessary to disable some of the advanced features if they do not work perfectly yet but the current feature set of Inkscape is easily as good as Jasc Web Draw (although it is often still quite hard to find all that functionality).
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Alan Horkan wrote:
The roadmap does not have an Inkscape 1.0 Stable Release on it.
I think Inkscape is great, and I think there could easily be a release of Inkscape 1.0 Stable in under six months. I dont think this would require much deviation from the existing roadmap just a little extra push for stability and deciding which features are exactly needed to declare 1.0.
I realise that release numbers like 'stable 1.0' are not very important to many open source users and developers and some dismiss it just as 'marketing' but they are very important to ordinary users and it makes it much harder to convince people to use pre-1.0 software and for those people it is very worthwhile to provide stable 1.0 (and it wont matter to the others either way).
It may be necessary to disable some of the advanced features if they do not work perfectly yet but the current feature set of Inkscape is easily as good as Jasc Web Draw (although it is often still quite hard to find all that functionality).
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Yes, that would be good for marketing. Case in point is Subversion, which has been wonderfully usable for a couple of years, but did not really start getting attention until it reached 1.0 this week.
But there are some costs to putting on a version number like that, that the ordinary user normally does not see. "Version 1.0" normally implies:
1) A stable API 2) A stable set of file formats
....and there is an implied promise that compatibility will not be broken until the major version number changes to 2.
We would need to be able to define our standards, and freeze them, before we go to beta. Can this happen by this summer? Maybe. We are still -very- fluid as we stabilize the codebase and support as much of the SVG standard as possible.
Just my IMHO.
Bob
Alan Horkan wrote:
The roadmap does not have an Inkscape 1.0 Stable Release on it.
I think Inkscape is great, and I think there could easily be a release of Inkscape 1.0 Stable in under six months. I dont think this would require much deviation from the existing roadmap just a little extra push for stability and deciding which features are exactly needed to declare 1.0.
My take on it is that we'd might end up just like Subversion.
If you take a look at their project status history, their versioning is quite clear:
0.17 ... 0.30 0.31 0.32.1 0.33 0.33.1 0.34 0.35 Beta 0.35.1 0.36 0.37 1.0.0 beta1 1.0.0
So... taken in hand with things like the studies Peopleware cites where developers were *most* productive when there is no schedule at all... the general impression I had was that we'll just go along making things better, and at some point we'll decide that there are enough features and enough robustness to declare the 'next' version to be 1.0 candidates. No preassure, just do good work and eventually it will be taken up by "the public"
In other words, we'll take our time and number as we have been going, and then renumber once it just happens to become a "1.0 candidate"
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
So... taken in hand with things like the studies Peopleware cites where developers were *most* productive when there is no schedule at all... the general impression I had was that we'll just go along making things better, and at some point we'll decide that there are enough features and enough robustness to declare the 'next' version to be 1.0 candidates. No preassure, just do good work and eventually it will be taken up by "the public"
In other words, we'll take our time and number as we have been going, and then renumber once it just happens to become a "1.0 candidate"
Yes, I think this sums up the approach we're using now. We are not going to specify any 1.0 release goals or conditions at this time. I think most of us would like to see more functionality and more complete SVG compliance before we hit 1.0, but for now we'll just keep going and see where we get.
Bryce
participants (5)
-
Alan Horkan -
Bob Jamison -
Bryce Harrington -
Jon A. Cruz -
Peter Linnell