Please don't say things like that or I'll insist you prove it...
... and smack you with a great big fish because talk like that is feeding the trolls and asking for trouble. Bad, bad, bad.
We look ignorant if we do not know the flaws in Inkscape and if you make grandiose claims like that you can be damned sure there will be no shortage of people willing to point them out. Pride comes before a fall.
Don't make the users angry, you wont like them when they are angry.
Don't underestimate the importance of a vibrant community and good word of mouth. I have seen other projects go sour and developers discouraged from working on the software because of constant criticism brought on by unrealistic claims. Careless talk has consequences, better to undersell inkscape and let the program speak for itself.
- Alan
On 9/24/05, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
Hey Alan, he just said that Inkscape is the best illustraion package in the world. I like that and I think so too :) Don't you? :)
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
No.
Prove it.
I want a 500 word comparision to Adobe Illustrator and I want it yesterday. You are not allow consider Price or availabity of Code in your analysis because users sure as hell wont and will slate you for it if you try. Do you want to put up with the consant abuse and comparisions to commerical products a certain well known Photo Manipulation program suffers?
Why I am always stuck playing Devils advocate?
- Alan
P.S. Saying "Inkscape is already better at some things" I can agree with but claiming it is best is asking for trouble. Get back to me when you can support CYMK and Pantone. Stop asking for trouble.
P.P.S. I realise you are teasing but I generally ingore written sarcasm.
On 9/24/05, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
I want a 500 word comparision to Adobe Illustrator and I want it yesterday.
Heh, I'm not keen on Illustrator, but I did exactly this for Xara X on our wiki, whereas you're on record saying (at bottom of that page) that my detailed list is useless :)
http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Xara_X
Of course I want it. The more comparisons the better. Content-free rants I just ignore, they don't bother me. When there are any specific complaints, I learn from them.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
Late reply but I am going to reply nonetheless
On Sat, 24 Sep 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Please stop misrepresenting me. Missing the point again.
Comparing inkscape to other software is useful but I think it is more useful to compare it to commercial software with a large user base rather and see what might help bring Inkscape to the widest possible audience. Comparing to Xara has some benefit but it is a minor product which Corel lost interest in but still imitates many aspects of Corel software, and even Corel is far behind both Adobe and Macromedia in terms of market and overemphasising it (as you accuse me of over emphasing Adobe) threatens to marginalise Inkscape. If you are going to imitate, at least imitate the winnners not the also ran.
Also the point of the wiki was supposed to be what can be learned from Other Projects. It was not supposed to be a marketing exercise.
You chose to make the Xara X into a long winded subjective diatriabe about all the things you thought were great about Inkscape. If you are trying to create marketing material that might make sense and you should come straight out and say so (I think you did eventually) but comparative advertising is often seen to be in poor taste and counter productive when you could let Inkscape speak for itself. Let users be pleasantly surprised even impressed rather than underwhelmed when they decide it isn't the best illustration program ever. It doesn't matter if you think you are right if you set the user up for disappointment.
Again you tragically miss the point. There is a lot to be learned from supposedly "content free" rants and it is a shame you are too arrogant to realise that there is usually a reason behind the rants. Even though the rant might not spell it out for you in simplistic enough terms chances are there are still problems just ones you are too stubborn to recognise.
We've all seen the traditional head in sand, developers know best, and it fails spectacularly and results in lots of users bitching and moaning and developers getting all high and mighty and feeling unappreciated. Stop and ask yourself why people are ranting and admit you would probably be better off if you could convince those people to calm down and provide you with useful feedback and maybe even start contributing in some way. Divert the river, you cannot ever completely block the flow no matter how big a damn of ignorance you try to build.
Like it or not the list reflects directly on Inkscape and ignoring
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
On 9/27/05, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
Of course I don't care much which commercial packages _you_ consider worthy or worthless. I can judge them for myself, thank you very much. I'm pretty sure there are Xara and Corel fans other than me to refute what you say above. I just wanted to point out that your "winner takes all" mentality seems to permeate many of your other opinions and assessments, making them much less useful.
Frankly, it baffles me that with all the rants about Illustrator's atrocious usability and clumsiness, both on this list and everywhere on the net, you still keep championing it as the sole example for us to measure against. I think I'd rather stop trying to convince you, it seems pointless by now.
You chose to make the Xara X into a long winded subjective diatriabe about all the things you thought were great about Inkscape.
You are wrong, and everyone can see this easily by going to that page. It's a long and detailed list of differences between the two programs, designed for those who want to make up their own minds:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Xara_X
Stop and ask yourself why people are ranting
In fact, I don't see anyone here ranting, except you. Where are all those rants that you're speaking about?
Gimp gets tons of them, and deservedly so. But we are not Gimp.
We are different.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Your words not mine. I'm not saying Xara is worthless but what I am saying it is you are giving it a massively disproproptionate worth compared to other far more successful products.
I can judge them for myself, thank you very much. I'm pretty sure there are Xara and Corel fans other than me to refute what you say above.
Xara and Corel fans are going to give Inkscape its best reviews but there are not as many of them as there are Adobe and Macromedia users it is a shame all your zeal comes from Xara and you dont seem to have been influenced by much else.
I didn't say winner takes all but it makes more sense to look at the more successful products first, namely Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand and Corel Draw (pretty much in that order).
feel free to link to some of them in the wiki and use the Other Projects if they are so numerous and easy to find.
Prime example, but not the only example.
You are wrong, and everyone can see this easily by going to that page.
They can see you didn't point out anything Xara did badly but instead made a list of features Inkscape has that Xara doesn't.
It's a long and detailed list of differences between the two programs, designed for those who want to make up their own minds:
Whereas most of the other pages are not trying to evangelise inkscape and repeating a whole lot of things developers already know but point out features worth copying from other applications or worth doing better which.
Only the hypothetical ones you brought up, but perhaps I shouldn't have responded to one hypotherical with another.
Gimp gets tons of them, and deservedly so. But we are not Gimp.
You were just saying you would welcome that kind of criticism.
We are different.
Just about but your suggestion about ignoring criticism you didn't like to hear sounded terribly familiar and a fast track to being just like them.
- Alan
On 9/27/05, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
I'm not "giving it worth". It just so happens that I know Xara very well. And I also know Illustrator well enough to understand in what ways the latter is worse than the former.
My zeal comes from my experience with all programs. I've tried almost all of them, and did some paid design work at least in AI, Corel, FH, and Xara. How many real-world design projects have you done in any vector editor?
Have you actually read it? There are TWO lists there, one of Inkscape features/conveniences that Xara does not have, and the other of Xara features/conveniences that Inkscape does not have. Both lists are pretty detailed, and recently I started reworking them into even more detailed and focused per-feature comparison (see below the two lists).
Here I agree. No one has been doing content-free ranting on Inkscape so far, so the point is moot.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
Alan Horkan wrote:
Tis true, but giving something value based on "popularity" is also giving it massively disproportionate worth. Don't make me bring up Microsoft's products (namely Windows, Office, and IE)... we could ALL go on rants about how that is. Unfortunately Photoshop & Illustrator have that type of stranglehold on the design world. I've been an Illustrator user for over 10 years and will tell you that I may miss some things, but even I find Inkscape to be bloody brilliant. Yeah, there are some things that I'd prefer the Illustrator way on, but I've never seen Bulia not have solid reasoning in the instances where he won't go that way. And also, please don't forget that as good as Inkscape may be it's still nowhere near a mature product yet and who knows how it'll change and adapt over time.
I'm an Inkscape fan and I'll give it the best reviews. ; ) Seriously though, we'll see what happens though with Illustrator and Freehand now that Adobe owns them both... maybe they'll come up with something incredibly different than the existing products. Give it a couple years and we'll see what direction they go. We can't count on them always being the same because they have both evolved and matured into fairly different products than they used to be.
But you can't forget that for the most part they hold their current positions not based on worth, but based on name recognition and 'value'. "Everyone I know says Adobe is the best." or "I use Dreamweaver, so why not save some money and get a package that has their other products too?"
I'm not belittling their products or trying to say they're not worth what they charge... but, I also think they're way overhyped. Had I found Xara before Inkscape, I can guarantee I would have switched to them from Illustrator.
I'm really not trying to get into the middle of things with you guys... I just want to point out that both of you tend to come across as a little extreme in your perspectives, even though you're both really not. The problem is you both start to get into these semi-hostile tiffs on the list, and I think that it's useless head butting, chest beating, and wasted energy. We all wouldn't be here if we weren't on the same team. Bulia can be very hard to persuade, as can Alan, but that can be very good for everyone. Getting personal about it though is good for no one. That's just my .02 (sorry no time to re-read before sending)
-Josh
--- bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:
Plus he is one of those users your so fond of talking for... he puts his money where his mouth is and creates stuff daily with this tool. I dont have a problem with our users loving our product, and if you notice, he was pointing out areas we're still weak. Andys not a core developer, hes a core demographic. I'm always happy to hear what he has to say, and even happier if he's got good things to say about inkscape as well as constructive feedback. If he said it in a front page story on Slashdot, I agree it might be inappropriate, but he didnt, he said it in a mail to the dev list, so chill out.
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participants (5)
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Alan Horkan
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Bryce Harrington
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bulia byak
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John Cliff
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Joshua A. Andler