Advanced PDF export plugin for Inkscape?
I may have missed it... but is anyone here involved in this?
Advanced PDF export plugin for Inkscape http://www.indiegogo.com/Advanced-PDF-export-plugin-for-Inkscape
Just curious if this is coming from within the community, or anyone within the community knows about it - or it's a totally independent initiative?
cheers Donna
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:42 AM, Donna Benjamin wrote:
I may have missed it... but is anyone here involved in this?
Advanced PDF export plugin for Inkscape http://www.indiegogo.com/Advanced-PDF-export-plugin-for-Inkscape
Just curious if this is coming from within the community, or anyone within the community knows about it - or it's a totally independent initiative?
The person who started the initiative contacted me last week re publishing news about it at inkscape.org, submitted a news item to LGW (currently not approved for reasons listed further) and wrote an announcement at inkscapeforum.com.
In a nutshell:
- cost of the project seems to be well underestimated (more on it below) - we know nothing about expertise of those two companies who agreed to do it for $800 - noone contacted the team to discuss the project - the person who runs the kickstarter has been pointedly ignoring the requests to contact the team
Personally, I'm not doing anything until I see some sort of respect for community. No, wait, I tell a lie. Actually, if it hits OMG!Ubuntu or whatever, I will have to publish official announcement that we have nothing to do with it, and this is a 3rd party effort we are not affiliated with in any way imaginable.
Now, about the cost. Back in 2008 when there was a slight chance to put some money into Inkscape development by Russian government I spoke to several developers in the team, and bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K. That's at least half a year of work for one person and I dare say it's a very real estimation. Color management and color separation are hugely complicated things.
It is entirely possible to not do it via Cairo. For instance, Scribus has a custom 8K line large C++ library, so while they do use Cairo fro rendering things on dsplay, for PDF exporting they use that library. Using some custom solution is still few months of work, and the Cairo way is better in the long run, because we have more applications like GIMP that would benefit from it (v2.8 will be shipping with a Cairo based PDF exporter that only does RGB).
Overall, you need to have a very good understanding of prepress technologies to implement correct color separated output. In my absolutely not humble opinion anyone who claims to be able to do that for $800 either has no clue or is laughing at someone else's expense. And since the person who started the initiative does't even want to bother himself talking to actual Inkscape developers, personally, I see no reason to get involved.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
Donna,
I appreciate Alexandre's level of tact with this. I personally feel that a person or group may be preying upon our users and that this all may be a scam. As Alexandre pointed out, the numbers certainly don't match up to anyone who has really looked into it. Additionally the lack of wilfulness to discuss the task at hand with our dev team just feels fishy. Yes, it is stated to be an independent effort, but please know that I am taking the stance to ask you to please not give your money to them and also do not advertise nor draw any attention to their effort.
If they want to go it alone (which certainly seems to be the real case) I say let them, and do not publicise for them, nor talk further about it on our lists, nor in any groups, nor forums that we pseudo-support. I want to protect our users and the project. If they decide to open up communications with us, I may end up backing them, but for now all I see is red flags all over the place. I want to make it clear we have nothing to do with this and that they seem to want for us to not have anything to do with it other than press (which feels extra fishy/scammy). Yes, I just probably made up a word.
Cheers, Josh
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:42 AM, Donna Benjamin wrote:
I may have missed it... but is anyone here involved in this?
Advanced PDF export plugin for Inkscape http://www.indiegogo.com/Advanced-PDF-export-plugin-for-Inkscape
Just curious if this is coming from within the community, or anyone within the community knows about it - or it's a totally independent initiative?
The person who started the initiative contacted me last week re publishing news about it at inkscape.org, submitted a news item to LGW (currently not approved for reasons listed further) and wrote an announcement at inkscapeforum.com.
In a nutshell:
- cost of the project seems to be well underestimated (more on it below)
- we know nothing about expertise of those two companies who agreed to
do it for $800
- noone contacted the team to discuss the project
- the person who runs the kickstarter has been pointedly ignoring the
requests to contact the team
Personally, I'm not doing anything until I see some sort of respect for community. No, wait, I tell a lie. Actually, if it hits OMG!Ubuntu or whatever, I will have to publish official announcement that we have nothing to do with it, and this is a 3rd party effort we are not affiliated with in any way imaginable.
Now, about the cost. Back in 2008 when there was a slight chance to put some money into Inkscape development by Russian government I spoke to several developers in the team, and bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K. That's at least half a year of work for one person and I dare say it's a very real estimation. Color management and color separation are hugely complicated things.
It is entirely possible to not do it via Cairo. For instance, Scribus has a custom 8K line large C++ library, so while they do use Cairo fro rendering things on dsplay, for PDF exporting they use that library. Using some custom solution is still few months of work, and the Cairo way is better in the long run, because we have more applications like GIMP that would benefit from it (v2.8 will be shipping with a Cairo based PDF exporter that only does RGB).
Overall, you need to have a very good understanding of prepress technologies to implement correct color separated output. In my absolutely not humble opinion anyone who claims to be able to do that for $800 either has no clue or is laughing at someone else's expense. And since the person who started the initiative does't even want to bother himself talking to actual Inkscape developers, personally, I see no reason to get involved.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Josh Andler wrote:
If they want to go it alone (which certainly seems to be the real case) I say let them, and do not publicise for them, nor talk further about it on our lists, nor in any groups, nor forums that we pseudo-support.
We don't do pseudo-support, we do support :) Just pointing out :)
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 3:37 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Josh Andler wrote:
If they want to go it alone (which certainly seems to be the real case) I say let them, and do not publicise for them, nor talk further about it on our lists, nor in any groups, nor forums that we pseudo-support.
We don't do pseudo-support, we do support :) Just pointing out :)
Perhaps when the new site launches we should discuss adding things like this (and I don't know, removing that Jabber is the primary communication method). I only say "pseudo" because I am only aware of a couple committed people who chime in at them.
Cheers, Josh
On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 13:30 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K.
That would be US Dollars for a US based person working for professional wages. And not a student working from rural Africa where PPP means a livable wage is lower.
From what I can tell these people are in Poland, so not that cheap. But
they might also be subsidising it from their businesses. We just don't know. You're right to be skeptical until the people involved become more respectable in the community and provide the information.
I'm not sure what part we have to play in getting more 3rd party developers involved in Inkscape development, the project is fairly anarchic and leaderless. Not much to tie one's boat to. Certainly not a boat full of cash for development.
Martin,
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Martin Owens wrote:
bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K.
That would be US Dollars for a US based person working for professional wages. And not a student working from rural Africa where PPP means a livable wage is lower.
The problem here is that given the information (or, rather, lack thereof) we are talking about random money paid to random people for doing a very specific and complex project.
I'm not sure what part we have to play in getting more 3rd party developers involved in Inkscape development, the project is fairly anarchic and leaderless. Not much to tie one's boat to. Certainly not a boat full of cash for development.
There certainly is a way to organize 3rd party development. The boat ties itself to SFC. This is not a problem. Now, communication and leadership... That's entirely different thing.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:39 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Martin Owens wrote:
bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K.
That would be US Dollars for a US based person working for professional wages. And not a student working from rural Africa where PPP means a livable wage is lower.
The problem here is that given the information (or, rather, lack thereof) we are talking about random money paid to random people for doing a very specific and complex project.
Let's be clear. We're talking about user donations paid to random/anonymous people at this point and the potential for blowback to the project due to people not reading/understanding the fine print. If people donate money to get a very specific set of features implemented and nothing comes to fruition, we will be the ones who feel the pain. Not the nameless people.
I'm not sure what part we have to play in getting more 3rd party developers involved in Inkscape development, the project is fairly anarchic and leaderless. Not much to tie one's boat to. Certainly not a boat full of cash for development.
There certainly is a way to organize 3rd party development. The boat ties itself to SFC. This is not a problem. Now, communication and leadership... That's entirely different thing.
I'll add that we want to get involved in the 3rd party development effectively to ensure that they have the support and information they need to be successful. As for communication and leadership, this just happens to be one of the issues of having an all volunteer project. I will say I have bigger issues about our communication issues as a community/team than about leadership. Note: I'm way more guilty of communication issues than I'd like to admit, I'm not trying to complain about others.
Cheers, Josh
The term '3rd party' gives me the chills. Reminds me more of corporatespeak than opensource.
Cheers! (verbally sensitive) Alex :)
On Sep 27, 2011, at 2:29, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 13:30 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
bulia estimated cost of this very project via Cairo as ca. 30K.
That would be US Dollars for a US based person working for professional wages. And not a student working from rural Africa where PPP means a livable wage is lower.
From what I can tell these people are in Poland, so not that cheap. But
they might also be subsidising it from their businesses. We just don't know. You're right to be skeptical until the people involved become more respectable in the community and provide the information.
I'm not sure what part we have to play in getting more 3rd party developers involved in Inkscape development, the project is fairly anarchic and leaderless. Not much to tie one's boat to. Certainly not a boat full of cash for development.
Martin,
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
2011/9/26 Aleksandar Kovač <alex.open.design@...400...>:
The term '3rd party' gives me the chills. Reminds me more of corporatespeak than opensource.
And that's another problem with the proposal: we are community after all. Well, actually, 3rd party development is OK when there is a strong core team, but we are kinda stuck in between old and new core team, and 3rd party development is going to make matters only worse.
We have a good track record of sponsored development, both community based (Tav's work on the Text tool), private (Measure tool and type design stuff in 0.49) and GSoC (anno 2005). There's little to no sense to go for 3rd party.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
participants (5)
-
Aleksandar Kovač -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Donna Benjamin -
Josh Andler -
Martin Owens