Report on a review article of vector programs (including Inkscape 0.43)
Hi,
I finally wrote the report I wanted to write since weeks... :)
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http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Report_on_c%27t_article_12/2006
This is a report on a review article of vector programs (including Inkscape 0.43) in the German c't magazine, issue 12/2006, subtitled "Inexpensive vector drawing programs for amateurs"
The article can be bought at http://www.heise.de/kiosk/archiv/ct/06/12/168/
The price limit for programs in the test was 100 EUR.
Besides Inkscape 0.43, the following programs were reviewed:
Tribar Inform 1.0 (http://www.tribarsw.net), Zoner Zoner Draw 5 (http://zoner.com), Serif DrawPlus 8 (http://www.serif.com), Purgatory Intaglio 2.7 (http://www.purgatorydesign.com), Xara Xtreme 2.0f (http://www.xara.com), Microsoft Expression Grafic Designer CTP (formerly Acrylic) (http://www.microsoft.com)
They say Expression is likely to cost more than 100 EUR once it's out of its preview phase, so it would not belong in that test anymore.
In short, Inkscape got the following rating (from --, -, ., +, ++):
Import and Export: - Exact Drawing/Freehand: ++/- Text design/Prepress: ./-- Efficient work/Documentation: +/--
Winners were DrawPlus and Xara, with Expression and Intaglio still better than Inkscape, the rest got lower ratings than Inkscape. The article text itself is IMO more friendly toward Inkscape than the rating says.
The text lists some highlights (both positive and negative) of each program, and for Inkscape, they were:
* is a bit sluggish
* has dynamic connectors
* one cannot find help for a specific tool
* uses SVG internally and thus is restricted to SVG features; so gradients are limited to linear or radial ones
* potrace is far ahead in the quality of its tracing
* no justified text
* no artistic strokes apart from calligraphy, but it uses the angle information from a tablet, and also supports thickness by mouse speed
* writes EPS but doesn't read it in again - this hinders easy exchange of drawings with other programs
* bitmap export is limited to PNG
* SVG files are included only as a link, if one wants to send a drawing to someone else, one has to take care to manually include all necessary files
* documentation is SVG where one can directly use the tools, but one doesn't have links nor an index
* documentation cannot really be searched - search is limited to the current document and doesn't jump from hit to hit, but just highlights them all, and the user has to comb though these
* an extensive guide is being built at http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.html
* normally is stable, but slower than the other programs
* is under heavy development, but documentation makes it hard for newbies
* usable for productive work
I'm now picking some of the good points of the other programs that they deemed worthy of mentioning:
* features for web designers (slicing, connect with links, rollover buttons)
* animation features and export to animated GIFs
* CAD capabilities for technical drawings (dynamic dimension lines)
* no program supports connected text boxes
* movies for documentation
* natural brushes
* bitmaps can be distorted
* user-defined styles
* centrally defined colors that can be changed later (derived colors also change)
* device profiles, Pantone, process colors, overprinting when doing color separation, color control bars, crop marks
* cliparts, symbols, schematic symbols, fonts
* vector and bitmap layer, when changing layer type, tools also change
* distortion grid
* node sculpting
* pressure profile of a tablet stroke can be adjusted retroactively
* randomization of strokes in width, hue, transparency
* hyphenation, spell checking, indentation, tabulators, multi-page documents
* when drawing a path, nodes (or even the node control points) can be moved without finishing the line first
* dynamic guides
* measurement tool with selectable unit
* shadows get more fuzzy with increasing distance from an object
* user-defined line ends
* copies of an object can be aligned along a path
(Please keep in mind that I'm translating this from German, if something is unclear, just ask: colin (at) marquardt-home (dot) de)
I mentioned this on Jabber, but I don't know if people saw this little review of Inkscape:
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/linux/Inkscape-Review-26626.shtml
bob
I have been reading c't for many years, and I have more faith in it than most other computer magazines. They have more of a "hands on" approach than almost any other.
And it seems that everything they say is exactly correct. The drawbacks they mention are exactly the ones that Inkscape has been examining for a long time.
The "sluggishness" is of course the need for better clipping at various zoom levels.
Context-sensitive help is one thing where I think they are spot-on. How hard would it be for us to provide "F1 Help"? If only to pop up a browser on a given html page and #anchor.
bob
Bob Jamison <rwjj@...127...> writes:
I have been reading c't for many years, and I have more faith in it than most other computer magazines. They have more of a "hands on" approach than almost any other.
Yes, absolutely. They are also very friendly. Peter Koenig, the author, let us review the feature table and the Inkscape-related part of the article before publishing it.
Context-sensitive help is one thing where I think they are spot-on. How hard would it be for us to provide "F1 Help"? If only to pop up a browser on a given html page and #anchor.
I'm not sure if they necessarily mean context-sensive help (although that would be nice to have) - something like Gnome has in Yelp would be fine I think, and possibly a Glossary that is part of the "big manual" but has its own menu item (matiphas and I discussed this a tiny bit on IRC).
We were going to ask Cedric and Kevin if they are okay with changing the user manual to accomodate whatever we find suitable for inclusion.
(I'm talking about this user manual here: http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/inkscape/user_manual/trunk/ http://www.le-radar.com/?mm/inkscapeEn http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/index.html )
matiphas has now started a wiki page for discussing this, let's update that: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Embedded_help
Does someone (Bob maybe?) have experience with GTK programs providing help in their Windows versions? For *nix, using docbook and Yelp would be a logical choice, but can we easily create e.g. CHM files for Windows?
Cheers, Colin
Removed crosspost, replying to the developer list only.
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006, Colin Marquardt wrote:
Hi,
I finally wrote the report I wanted to write since weeks... :) http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Report_on_c%27t_article_12/2006
Besides Inkscape 0.43, the following programs were reviewed:
Microsoft Expression Grafic Designer CTP (formerly Acrylic) (http://www.microsoft.com)
They say Expression is likely to cost more than 100 EUR once it's out of its preview phase, so it would not belong in that test anymore.
The license agreement actually specifies that you must stop using the trial versions after six months or when the product is released. I don't recall if the free version of Creature House Expression 3 the released was full of restrictions too. Realistically there will be many people who will continue to use the product without paying for it. Price doesn't turn out to be as big a deal as you might think, I expect stricter license enforcement would benefit Free and Open Source software in the long run.
The text lists some highlights (both positive and negative) of each program, and for Inkscape, they were:
- uses SVG internally and thus is restricted to SVG features; so gradients are limited to linear or radial ones
It is a shame not to have more gradient types. I do hope developers can come up with a way of providing functionality than currently available in SVG without causing any horrible compatibility problems.
- bitmap export is limited to PNG
Given that GTK and gdkpixbuf supports more than just PNG I have long wondered at this odd limitation in Inkscape.
A quick search didn't turn up any request for Jpeg export (must have missed it, has to be there somewhere) but I did find a request for Gif support amongst others. There is definately quite a bit of interest in having support for raster formats and even layered graphic formats (PSD, MNG, and if you are talking about animation GIF really is layered too) http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1379365&gro...
(I've closed the above request for GIF but if anyone think it is ever realistically going to happen feel free to reopen the request.)
- SVG files are included only as a link, if one wants to send a drawing to someone else, one has to take care to manually include all necessary files
Presenting the existing inkjar package facility in a different way might help alleviate this problem, there was quite a long discussion on it already.
I'm now picking some of the good points of the other programs that they deemed worthy of mentioning:
- features for web designers (slicing, connect with links, rollover buttons)
SVG slice http://freshmeat.net/projects/svgslice/
The basic levels of animation required by SVG Tiny/Mobile would be enough for rollovers and the like
- animation features and export to animated GIFs
Mentioned GIF above.
- CAD capabilities for technical drawings (dynamic dimension lines)
Various requests in the tracker for both drawing functionality and DXF support but sometimes I wonder if users are just missing a good CAD program and reluctant to look.
- user-defined styles
- centrally defined colors that can be changed later (derived colors also change)
To my mind these go together. SVG should be capable of many kinds of style based tricks just as in HTML but I haven't yet seen any examples, maybe I should put in a request to CCS Zen Garden? http://www.csszengarden.com/
- hyphenation, spell checking, indentation, tabulators, multi-page documents
Later version of SVG include specifications for mulitpage documents. (I expect it the various pages would be shown using several tabs at the bottom of the document window much like how OpenOffice.org Draw and Microsoft Visio. Additional pages could possibly just as easily be shown in another palette as Layer are shown, which seems to be what the Mulitpage extension for Adobe illustrator does http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/index.php)
when drawing a path, nodes (or even the node control points) can be moved without finishing the line first
dynamic guides
wasn't sure what the significance of "Dyanmic Guides" was so I looked it up in google (html version of Corel PDF): http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:ASnUIYaxPhkJ:www.corel.co.uk/uk/pdfs/cg...
(If I recall correctly Visio provided a limited but similar feature, when drawing a line temporarily appears at a 45 degree angle to help drawing perfect squares/circles etc.)
(Please keep in mind that I'm translating this from German, if something is unclear, just ask: colin (at) marquardt-home (dot) de)
Thanks for translating, sounded like an interesting article.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
participants (3)
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Alan Horkan -
Bob Jamison -
Colin Marquardt