I finally got a copy of Linux Format issue 56, which is the one that has an article on Inkscape. I think this may be our first 'print' article.
"The only bad press is where they misspell our name." --Unknown
Well, they were consistent -- everyplace (including the table of contents) they used the name 'Inkspace'. Fortunately, they got the URL right (which I think makes the whole thing funnier).
The article is actually a short tutorial on Inkscape (I'll use the right name) but discusses the whole thing as an addition to The GIMP. The author acknowledges that it is all part of an artist's tool chest, and compares it directly with the Adobe products. Scribus gets a mention also. Overall, I think that this is probably a good way to approach Inkscape for users who are more familiar with The GIMP -- Linux Format is targeting geeks more than artists.
The first break out box is titled:
Inkscape: The User Interface Intuitive operation -- experiment for yourself!
And has a paragraph that reads as follows:
Inkscape uses a standard design for its windows, with a menu bar across the top, a toolbar along the side and a workspace, or canvas, connected to both. More importantly, it comes with a built-in tutorial system -- that, incidentally, was creating using Inkscape -- which is interactive and displays directly on an Inkscape canvas!
The tutorial goes on to make a business card. The author basically does his own text along a path to show how to rotate and resize different characters (he does mention that it is easier to do text along a path in Illustrator than Inkscape 0.38 :). It talks about drawing simple beziers and does some simple boolean operations along with some gradients also. The align dialog is also used.
Overall, the article is 3 pages long and covers the basic features of Inkscape. The business card that is created isn't that aesthetically pleasing, which doesn't make the app look as impressive. The thing that upset me the most is that the magazine comes with a 4 GB DVD with tons of stuff on it, not including Inkscape :( A big plus is that we got a screenshot on the opening page of the tutorials section -- a high visibility position. I wouldn't recommend that anyone else spend the $16 to read the article.
--Ted
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 22:53:28 -0700 From: Ted Gould <ted@...11...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Linux Format Article
I finally got a copy of Linux Format issue 56, which is the one that has an article on Inkscape. I think this may be our first 'print' article.
You might not like me much for telling you this right after you bought issue 56 but issue 57 has a comparison of various Vector Graphics software incuding Inkscape and another Inkscape tutorial. At ~12 Euro I am again unlikely to buy the magazine (although I am selling some old things today so if I get a good price I might just further impovrish myself for the benefit of Inkscape) the Slackware and KDE software on the coverdisks act as a further disincentive.
In my joural I mention the review of Inkscape http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/diary.html?start=67 Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw. OODraw has PDF export so it was counted against Inkscape but they do mention using Scribus instead. Given that Inkscape already supports gnome-print (and thus has PDF support) already it would be a really big help if someone tested it and the release notes made it clear that distributors should use and include the extras if at all possible.
It annoys me no end that these reviewers do not contact the development team and provide direct feedback, but I guess if you want to cater to the market you have to hunt down the reviews and address their complaints to get better reviews in future. I'm going to write to the editors and ask them to provide direct feedback.
I really do not know much more detail than that so dont ask. If I get a chance to read more of the article I'll post again.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ http://advogato.org/proj/Inkscape/
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:
You might not like me much for telling you this right after you bought issue 56 but issue 57 has a comparison of various Vector Graphics software incuding Inkscape and another Inkscape tutorial. At ~12 Euro I am again Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw.
It annoys me no end that these reviewers do not contact the development team and provide direct feedback, but I guess if you want to cater to the market you have to hunt down the reviews and address their complaints to get better reviews in future. I'm going to write to the editors and ask them to provide direct feedback.
I got a chance to see the article too, and was quite pleased with what it said. Some quotes:
"Last month we took our first look at Inkscape, the latest open source graphics tool to sweep the Linux desktop marketplace. IS fills a long-standing void in this area: vector illustration."
"Inkscape gains prominence over its progenitor by dint of its superior interface and the pace of development that the coding team has established. This is especially remarkable when you consider the group has only been active on the project for seven months."
"It installed without issue on everything we tried."
"Crucially, Inkscape has the most comprehensive set of 'path' tools for cutting, combining and generally mangling shapes, and this does lift it above the rest of these apps quite significantly."
Verdict: "A young, but very promising application that has the potential to outclass the other apps reviewed here. Definitely one to watch for future improvements."
"This is really a two-horse race." [While OODraw has numerically more features...] "For more design-intensive tasks, Inkscape is the surprising winner... They have a lot to do, and they need the support (both moral and financial) to keep on keeping on."
They really liked the usability, node editing, interactive editing of primitive shapes, toolbar layout "in the traditional fashion", boolean operations, and the calligraphic pen.
There were several things they suggested needed work: EPS/PDF support, text-on-path, a better way for naming and managing gradients, expanded functionality with the calligraphic tool (i.e., more nibs). The scorechart showed:
Features: 7/10 Ease of Use: 9/10 Documentation: 6/10 Performance: 8/10 -------------------- Rating 8/10
The review had been on 0.38, so I think they're going to be pleased to see 0.39, and it looks like 0.40 is going to satisfy at least half the things on their wishlist. I think we can do better on performance, and it looks like there's a lot of gain to be had from better docs (Sodipodi rated a 0/10 in documentation in the article, so we've already come a _long_ way.)
I think this was an extremely good article for Inkscape. I was surprised to see us rank so high compared with OODraw; OODraw has a lot more features than Inkscape, so since Inkscape and OODraw were tied score-wise, that means we're winning because of better intrinsics and usability, rather than simply on feature lists, and that's a very good sign.
Bryce
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:50:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Ted Gould <ted@...11...>, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Linux Format Article
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:
You might not like me much for telling you this right after you bought issue 56 but issue 57 has a comparison of various Vector Graphics software incuding Inkscape and another Inkscape tutorial. At ~12 Euro I am again Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw.
OpenOffice.org Draw was described as the best drawing tool but the reviewer was baffled by the lack of any SVG import whatsoever.
It annoys me no end that these reviewers do not contact the development team and provide direct feedback, but I guess if you want to cater to the market you have to hunt down the reviews and address their complaints to get better reviews in future. I'm going to write to the editors and ask them to provide direct feedback.
There is a tactic amongst proprietary software to work on features specifically to win good reviews and cheap publicity. On its own this stategy is crass and rather foolish but it is useful to keep in mind as a secondary objective. Inkscape is already far more responsive to user feedback than many projects in my heavily biased opinion but it is important to make users feel like they are being listened to even when there ideas are not going to be accepted.
I got a chance to see the article too, and was quite pleased with what it said. Some quotes:
Dammit I wish I'd seen this post before I went scribbling my quick notes. My notes will not be direct quotes and are not likely to even be proper sentences
The article was writtten by Andy Chanelle, in case anyone wants to try and contact him. I assume no one has yet tried to contact the author of the other article mentioned. If reviewers are reading this for the love of god talk to us directly please!
The review was of Inkscape 0.38.
There are some interesting things to be learned from the comments against the other vector graphis software.
"Last month we took our first look at Inkscape, the latest open source graphics tool to sweep the Linux desktop marketplace. IS fills a long-standing void in this area: vector illustration."
"Inkscape gains prominence over its progenitor by dint of its superior interface and the pace of development that the coding team has established. This is especially remarkable when you consider the group has only been active on the project for seven months."
better inteface ... not having so many dialogs ... allows more working space.
"It installed without issue on everything we tried."
"Crucially, Inkscape has the most comprehensive set of 'path' tools for cutting, combining and generally mangling shapes, and this does lift it above the rest of these apps quite significantly."
the reviewer really likes the word crucially (yes I realise I have some questionable writing habits too)
I think the adjustment widgets (such for rounding a rectangle) being shown more often, not just when using the node editor has been a significant improvement and part of the reason he foudn the path tools so pleasant (I am inferring this from the rest of what he wrote).
Verdict: "A young, but very promising application that has the potential to outclass the other apps reviewed here. Definitely one to watch for future improvements."
"This is really a two-horse race." [While OODraw has numerically more features...] "For more design-intensive tasks, Inkscape is the surprising winner... They have a lot to do, and they need the support (both moral and financial) to keep on keeping on."
They really liked the usability, node editing, interactive editing of primitive shapes, toolbar layout "in the traditional fashion", boolean operations, and the calligraphic pen.
The caligraphic pen. It was suggested that Nibs would be a nice feature. and still in that context he mentioned the Corel Image Hose, which I think is similar to the Inkscape Clones but he is describing it from a different direction.
There were several things they suggested needed work: EPS/PDF support,
The reviewer thought EPS and PDF were a crucial omission, but the situation has improved in Inkscape 0.39 and 0.40 (at least on Linux which is what is important in this case).
text-on-path,
text fit to a curve.
the workaround mentioned in the tutorials was useful but reviewer disliked that the text had to be converted to paths and could no longer be edited. (it would be interesting if the underlying text could be preserved in the underlying XML markup to allow for it to be converted back to text later, which is something I think i was able to do in Macromedia Flash).
a better way for naming and managing gradients,
he made a bad pun about making it more transparent.
the way I see it the gradient management needs to be largely seperated out into a seperate full window gradient manager allowing searching sorting renaming and preview of many gradients (and previewing them as Linear, Radial and possible other ways). All that would be kept to the front would be a preview of the current gradient.
I am hoping that by providing over a hundered gradients to OpenClipArt.org than I've forced any future redesign of this functionality to be very scalable because in time it will need to be able to manage hundreds of gradients.
expanded functionality with the calligraphic tool (i.e., more nibs). The scorechart showed:
Features: 7/10 Ease of Use: 9/10 Documentation: 6/10 Performance: 8/10
Rating 8/10
The review had been on 0.38, so I think they're going to be pleased to see 0.39, and it looks like 0.40 is going to satisfy at least half the things on their wishlist. I think we can do better on performance, and it looks like there's a lot of gain to be had from better docs (Sodipodi rated a 0/10 in documentation in the article, so we've already come a _long_ way.)
*** Points worth noting from the other reviews and the roundup ***
He also said the future was bright if intergration with Scribus and the Gimp goes well.
In the roundup section he foolishly suggested that applications might support Gimp XCF export. The Gimp has a good SVG importer already and the gimp developers do not recommend other applications using the XCF format.
Exporting to a standardised file format like MNG (Multiple Network Graphic, related to PNG) or even a de facto standard like Adobe Photoshop Document (.psd) format would make far more sense to me.
Skencil has a colour palette as a toolbar just above the status bar and he mentioned that this was like Corel and very convenient. (I think Xara X did this too). It would seem like a logical extension of how inkscape currently handles its toolbars (but I still wish toolbars could be properly be docked and undocked and used as palettes as well but thats a GTK problem). I've been thinking about colour tools in inkscape recently and how handy it would have been to be albe to do things like "Invert Colours" or Swap Red -> Green (G->B, etc).
The reviwer was paritcularly taken by the Blend tool in Sketch/Skencil which he also described as a Tween tool, as it would combines two shapes into the a shape that is halfway between the two shapes. (I think this is very differnt from what Adobe Illustrator does with its Blend tool but I'd appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could clarify).
He also liked Karbon 14 but was dissappointed by bugs and instability.
I think this was an extremely good article for Inkscape. I was surprised to see us rank so high compared with OODraw; OODraw has a lot more features than Inkscape, so since Inkscape and OODraw were tied score-wise, that means we're winning because of better intrinsics and usability, rather than simply on feature lists, and that's a very good sign.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ http://advogato.org/proj/OpenClipArt.org/ http://advogato.org/proj/Inkscape/
On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 13:20, Alan Horkan wrote:
Skencil has a colour palette as a toolbar just above the status bar and he mentioned that this was like Corel and very convenient. (I think Xara X did this too).
The only problem with those color toolbars is that they're usually very hard to use and organize.
I'd like to use it as an accumulator of common colors I use in the document, rather than a widget to select all the colors of the rainbow (and scroll painfully through them), which tends to be the default.
-mental
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, MenTaLguY wrote:
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 14:39:23 -0400 From: MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Linux Format Article
On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 13:20, Alan Horkan wrote:
Skencil has a colour palette as a toolbar just above the status bar and he mentioned that this was like Corel and very convenient. (I think Xara X did this too).
The only problem with those color toolbars is that they're usually very hard to use and organize.
I'd like to use it as an accumulator of common colors I use in the document, rather than a widget to select all the colors of the rainbow (and scroll painfully through them), which tends to be the default.
I recall raster graphics applications that let you choose exactly what palette you want to use. They are not as dynamic as you suggest, at best you can generate a new palette from all the colours contained in the current image. There doesn't seem to be reason why the recent/frequently used colours could not be provided as a view to the colour palette.
Inkscape Would Inkscape want to have a colour palette eventually? (or would a differnt way to choose and reuse colours be more approriate, say improving the colour picker itself rather than adding a seperate colour palette. I dont know I'm just putting out ideas)
- Alan H.
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, MenTaLguY wrote:
On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 13:20, Alan Horkan wrote:
Skencil has a colour palette as a toolbar just above the status bar and he mentioned that this was like Corel and very convenient. (I think Xara X did this too).
The only problem with those color toolbars is that they're usually very hard to use and organize.
I'd like to use it as an accumulator of common colors I use in the document, rather than a widget to select all the colors of the rainbow (and scroll painfully through them), which tends to be the default.
Yeah, that'd be very handy... For web design especially, you end up reusing the same damn colors (or slight variants on them) again and again.
It would be interesting to see if there could be a smart color widget that displays major colors used in the SVG, plus variants on them like lighter/darker, or their complementary versions, etc. For people with little artistic talent like me, that might even serve to make programmer art not look so bad! ;-)
Bryce
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:
You might not like me much for telling you this right after you bought issue 56 but issue 57 has a comparison of various Vector Graphics software incuding Inkscape and another Inkscape tutorial. At ~12 Euro I am again Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw.
OpenOffice.org Draw was described as the best drawing tool but the reviewer was baffled by the lack of any SVG import whatsoever.
Yeah, he's not alone. ;-)
Getting OpenOffice to support SVG is actually one of the ulterior goals of Open Clip Art. ;-)
There is a tactic amongst proprietary software to work on features specifically to win good reviews and cheap publicity. On its own this stategy is crass and rather foolish but it is useful to keep in mind as a secondary objective.
To me the best things to win are the comments from really advanced users, when they say things like, "Wow, it's so easy to use", and when they show off the amazing things they've created with the software.
Open Source is a bit unusual in that the _size_ of the userbase doesn't produce a direct benefit, as it does with proprietary software (where large userbase == large customer base == more $$$). Rather, for Open Source projects it seems like what is more valuable is the _quality_ of the userbase. It's more useful and fun to have a good user community that helps one another and participate in the process. We may not have a ton of users, but the ones we've got are very cool. :-)
Nathan made a very good point early on in Inkscape regarding our PR strategy - by growing the userbase slowly but steadily, the community quality will grow; if we grew too quickly, too suddenly, there could be a disconnect and we could lose that.
The article was writtten by Andy Chanelle, in case anyone wants to try and contact him. I assume no one has yet tried to contact the author of the other article mentioned. If reviewers are reading this for the love of god talk to us directly please!
Simarilius wrote a letter to the editor, updating them on our recent progress and encouraging further reviews.
I think the adjustment widgets (such for rounding a rectangle) being shown more often, not just when using the node editor has been a significant improvement and part of the reason he foudn the path tools so pleasant (I am inferring this from the rest of what he wrote).
I think you're right. Those handles have turned out to be quite a significant enhancement, despite how subtle they are.
There were several things they suggested needed work: EPS/PDF support,
The reviewer thought EPS and PDF were a crucial omission, but the situation has improved in Inkscape 0.39 and 0.40 (at least on Linux which is what is important in this case).
*Nod* Yeah, I've noticed for each release (including back during Sodipodi days), there has *always* been a "crucial omission". At one point that was boolean operations, at another it was layers, one day it will be cut-and-paste or scripting or something. It's like peeling an onion, each new feature makes some other missing feature more visible as necessary. "Gee, if only it had..."
I think it's to our credit that we've been able to predict these trends pretty accurately. Half the time the requested feature is already implemented in CVS by the time we hear of the need. :-)
the way I see it the gradient management needs to be largely seperated out into a seperate full window gradient manager allowing searching sorting renaming and preview of many gradients (and previewing them as Linear, Radial and possible other ways). All that would be kept to the front would be a preview of the current gradient.
Anyone interested in improving the gradient editing interface should take a look at the Gimp's gradient editor. Seems a lot more usable.
Skencil has a colour palette as a toolbar just above the status bar and he mentioned that this was like Corel and very convenient. (I think Xara X did this too). It would seem like a logical extension of how inkscape currently handles its toolbars (but I still wish toolbars could be properly be docked and undocked and used as palettes as well but thats a GTK problem). I've been thinking about colour tools in inkscape recently and how handy it would have been to be albe to do things like "Invert Colours" or Swap Red -> Green (G->B, etc).
Yeah there's a lot of work to be done with the colors. It seems that this is an onion layer we've not quite reached, but it's close. Feels like it's somewhere under the "redo the text editing interface".
The reviwer was paritcularly taken by the Blend tool in Sketch/Skencil which he also described as a Tween tool, as it would combines two shapes into the a shape that is halfway between the two shapes. (I think this is very differnt from what Adobe Illustrator does with its Blend tool but I'd appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could clarify).
Wow, interesting idea... Sorta sounds like an extension type of thing.
He also liked Karbon 14 but was dissappointed by bugs and instability.
I didn't read that review - what were the particularities he liked about it?
Bryce
participants (4)
-
Alan Horkan -
Bryce Harrington -
MenTaLguY -
Ted Gould