Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 18:59:59 -0600 From: Bob Jamison <rwjj@...127...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Another article about Inkscape

Hi, all,

Occasionally I check Google News for articles about Inkscape. Here is another one I found, that is interesting because it is in a tech section of a mainstream media outlet, not in a tech journal:

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2005/3/15/prodit/10221334&a...

Worth a read allright.

Although you could put it down to just the bias of whoever wrote the article I like how they imply that excluding potentential users by failing to be cross platforms. I am nuts about cross platform software, and although I find some KDE applications appealing I do not appreciate vendor lock in no matter which vendor it is coming from.

This seems unfairly harsh: "He tried unsuccessfully to build a scalable vector graphics editor"

If anything Inkscape is testament to how successful its predecessors were and should add to their achievement and what they have inspired not take away from it. It happens so often that developers create whole new projects rather than building from an existing base and I'm sure we can all say good things about Sodipodi without much effort.

It is clear from the article that the messages were are putting out are well understood, that most problems are known but that Inkscape is improving and it is not a crusade to destroy any other tools but rather to provide another useful tool for artists.

I did a google News search myself a few weeks back and rather than trying to remember to do it again I signed up for News alerts (weekly) so I get a summary of any stories that look like they might be inkscape related.

Review of Inkscape 0.41 http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2848985740.html (not great, doesn't praise or criticise, not much more than prosiac rephrasing of the changelog and the basic summary of what is Inkscape but I'm probably being too harsh.)

Inkscape "Vector versus Raster" http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/print/5757/

Not a bad article once you use the print version so you can read it all on one uncluttered page. Knowing a little more about how the underlying program works (paths, gradients, certain patterns and filters, matrixes are vectors too incidentally) and how much a modern version of Adobe Photoshop makes use of vectors and seperates an image into discrete managable chunks, I'm not sure the raster/vector disctintion is useful when applied to how programs act. It is only meaningful when used to dicuss the file formats the information ends up in. An interesting and comparatively technical article (most authors wouldn't mentoin sed or vi and risk limiting their audience).

Inkscape is over a year old but I'm still pleasantly surprised by how often I get the chance to introduce users to Inkscape. I think maybe it will be another year or two before Inkscape fully saturates the various distributions and the name really sinks in. Regular press about Inkscape is definately a good thing. I guess if I want more different articles about Inkscape I'm going to have to get writing.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan