Inkscape for AI users: a revert war :)
Recently the wiki user Kwixson has significantly expanded and rewritten the "Inkscape for AI users" document on our wiki. Some of his edits seemed strange to me, and I proposed my variants. Unfortunately we could not reach a consensus, so after several mutual reverts we decided to post here and ask for the help and judgement from the community.
The latest revision with our extensive comments is here:
http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IllustratorUsers
Below I briefly list the things I disagree with.
0. To begin, I really appreciate the input on this document from the user who obviously knows AI well. This is some kind of expertise which I personally lack, so I would not be able to write such a document all by myself. Obviously it must be written from an AI user's point of view and use AI terminology and concepts.
1. However, Kwixson's approach seems to go further than that. He apparently wants this document to describe _only_ those things which you can do in Illustrator, and describe them exactly _the same way_ as one would do them in Illustrator, even if Inkscape offers more convenient methods. I think this is wrong.
2. With Kwixson's approach, Inkscape would always seem inferior to AI, because you can't win just by copying. You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
3. After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document. I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are looking for something different and better. And therefore we must stress our strengths and differences, explaining them in a way which is easy to understand for AI users.
Now on to specific examples.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
C. In the section on Node tool, Kwixson provided some very cumbersome descriptions of how to convert a segment from curve to straight line and how to continue a path. When I proposed much simpler and more straightforward ways to do the same, he insisted that his descriptions closely match the way AI does this and therefore must stay. Once again, I don't see why one should go through all this when there's a much simpler way. Disclaimer on this point: I cannot even claim to completely understand Kwixson's descriptions, so I may have missed something important in them. Please anyone who knows AI's path editing, review these paragraphs and let us know what you think.
Any feedback will be appreciated. I'm crossposting this to the user list too.
On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 13:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document. I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are
That doesn't need to be the case. I absolutely love Adobe Illustrator, yet I was seeking an alternative for a long time. The biggest difference you have with Inkscape is that it's free software. I can love the functionality and interface and still seek an alternative because it's nothing else but platform dependent, $$$-bound upgrades requiring, patent filled, proprietary package.
On the other hand I agree you should concentrate on designing rather than copying. We seem to have a disagreement on the task-based design approach though. ;)
cheers
Hi, all,
Here is my poor IMHO, please ignore:
As far as I'm concerned, Inkscape is an SVG editor, and it is becoming one of the best. If that lends itself to DTP, then that is wonderful! If not, then there are other DTP tools. SVG tools, on the other hand, are rare, and it would be a shame to dilute the core functionality of this one. Import and export of EPS are secondary.
Again, that's just my humble opinion. I'll go lurk in the corner again now. ;-)
(Off topic: If someone has a good algorithm to improve the octree pruning for color quantization, please let me know. The set of final colors selected needs some improvement; they are a bit dreary.)
Bob
Jakub Steiner wrote:
On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 13:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document. I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are
That doesn't need to be the case. I absolutely love Adobe Illustrator, yet I was seeking an alternative for a long time. The biggest difference you have with Inkscape is that it's free software. I can love the functionality and interface and still seek an alternative because it's nothing else but platform dependent, $$$-bound upgrades requiring, patent filled, proprietary package.
On the other hand I agree you should concentrate on designing rather than copying. We seem to have a disagreement on the task-based design approach though. ;)
cheers
Yeah, have to agree there to some degree. Inkscape does what it does best, SVG, and EPS can come secondary. However theres no reason it cant do EPS just as well as it does SVG. EPS IS important to DTP, as SVG should become. I cant say that there are "other DTP tools" that do what Inkscape does though, certainly not on Linux anyway. Scribus vectors work quite well, but Inkscape really is where its at for vector editing.
From the point of view of Scribus, it is our SVG importer that needs work to
bring it to the standard of the SVG that Inkscape exports. Some of it does depend on whether the SVG is "plain" or not. It also depends on whether you are taking over AI on doze and working with PS and ID, or working with Scribus on whatever platform.
Craig
On Wednesday 09 March 2005 19:00, Bob Jamison wrote:
Hi, all,
Here is my poor IMHO, please ignore:
As far as I'm concerned, Inkscape is an SVG editor, and it is becoming one of the best. If that lends itself to DTP, then that is wonderful! If not, then there are other DTP tools. SVG tools, on the other hand, are rare, and it would be a shame to dilute the core functionality of this one. Import and export of EPS are secondary.
Again, that's just my humble opinion. I'll go lurk in the corner again now. ;-)
(Off topic: If someone has a good algorithm to improve the octree pruning for color quantization, please let me know. The set of final colors selected needs some improvement; they are a bit dreary.)
Bob
Jakub Steiner wrote:
On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 13:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document. I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are
That doesn't need to be the case. I absolutely love Adobe Illustrator, yet I was seeking an alternative for a long time. The biggest difference you have with Inkscape is that it's free software. I can love the functionality and interface and still seek an alternative because it's nothing else but platform dependent, $$$-bound upgrades requiring, patent filled, proprietary package.
On the other hand I agree you should concentrate on designing rather than copying. We seem to have a disagreement on the task-based design approach though. ;)
cheers
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On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 13:34 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
This is indeed one of the things that Inkscape is superior to Illustrator. I did miss being able to move a node in a fine-grained manner at a zoomed view. AI only allowed me to move by the absolute unit which was a huge jump.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
That also doesn't seem to be a valid approach. Specific shapes can be a huge time-saver in many use cases and the classic shape editing would very much slow down the process. Many times I would have killed for perspective transformations on top of shapes. It just does wonders to workflow being able to easily modify attributes of a shape later in the process. I loved that about 3D Studio Max ages ago.
If the purpose of the document is to help former AI users to get used to Inkscape, it *should* show the new concepts behind Inkscape and not propose workflows that may appear to be similar to AI, but are in fact a lot slower.
cheers
Jakub Steiner wrote:
If the purpose of the document is to help former AI users to get used to
Inkscape, it *should* show the new concepts behind Inkscape and not propose workflows that may appear to be similar to AI, but are in fact a lot slower.
The document is just meant to be a quick orientation for AI users, so they can jump in and start playing with the program, not an exhaustive treatment of the differences. The differences in workflows will be self evident, and even if they weren't, Inkscape's workflow will be documented elsewhere.
-Kevin
Recently the wiki user Kwixson has significantly expanded and rewritten the "Inkscape for AI users" document on our wiki. Some of his edits seemed strange to me, and I proposed my variants. Unfortunately we could not reach a consensus, so after several mutual reverts we decided to post here and ask for the help and judgement from the community.
Since I've been an AI user for a little under 10 years, I think I'll check it out tonight when I have some time. I think I may be able to offer some more perspective from another user of AI.
- To begin, I really appreciate the input on this document from the
user who obviously knows AI well. This is some kind of expertise which I personally lack, so I would not be able to write such a document all by myself. Obviously it must be written from an AI user's point of view and use AI terminology and concepts.
Agreed
- However, Kwixson's approach seems to go further than that. He
apparently wants this document to describe _only_ those things which you can do in Illustrator, and describe them exactly _the same way_ as one would do them in Illustrator, even if Inkscape offers more convenient methods. I think this is wrong.
Agreed. This is VERY wrong. The more that inkscape improves, the harder AI is for me to use. The only reason I use AI anymore is because it allows multiple pages as well as color profiles (like my pantones... which I'll probably never have in Inkscape, but that's minor since CMYK will suffice). There are maybe a few features that AI offers that we don't have yet, but there are RFEs filed already, so I'm not too concerned.
- With Kwixson's approach, Inkscape would always seem inferior to AI,
because you can't win just by copying. You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
I think that responsiveness is partially a platform issue. There are some areas where Inkscape seems unresponsive on win32, but when I boot over to Linux it flies. But as for something being intuitive, that's mostly a matter of opinion. If I grew up peeling potatoes by spinning one around and using my teeth to peel the skin off, I'd probably think it was more intuitive than having to use a device that's not a part of my body. Bad example, but you get the point. I think it's more of a "what someone is used to" issue than anything else. There may be some areas where it is more intuitive (node editing for example), but in my experience, Inkscape is more intuitive all around.
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document. I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are looking for something different and better. And therefore we must stress our strengths and differences, explaining them in a way which is easy to understand for AI users.
You are correct. If people love AI and can afford it, they have no reason to switch. I think we should maybe target those who use AI because that's what they were trained with, not because it's really a choice. Schools don't typically teach anything but Adobe anymore, which is why this documentation is very important.
Now on to specific examples.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
I tend to think he's wrong. It's very handy and incredibly helpful and dismissing such a useful feature is just plain dumb. Inkscape has some of the best kb shortcuts around and should be recognized for such.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
Inkscape's shapes put all others to shame in my opinion. Plus, doesn't the SVG spec describe shapes as well? (not just paths... if I'm not mistaken) I always keep a shape a shape unless I HAVE to change it to a path for some other editing I can't do as-is. I had shown an artist friend of mine how cool our shapes are and he was surprised because he hadn't seen any software that offers such intuitive controls. I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but has Kwixson even used the shapes as shapes and not just converted to a path right away? If anything, an in-depth explanation about how our shapes are different... and BETTER, is how it should be presented. Converting to a path right away is just a shot in the foot for editing and usability.
C. In the section on Node tool, Kwixson provided some very cumbersome descriptions of how to convert a segment from curve to straight line and how to continue a path. When I proposed much simpler and more straightforward ways to do the same, he insisted that his descriptions closely match the way AI does this and therefore must stay. Once again, I don't see why one should go through all this when there's a much simpler way. Disclaimer on this point: I cannot even claim to completely understand Kwixson's descriptions, so I may have missed something important in them. Please anyone who knows AI's path editing, review these paragraphs and let us know what you think.
I will have to review his descriptions and post again later. I do have to say that in a lot of ways, it is more difficult/cumbersome (non-intuitive as well) to edit nodes in Inkscape than in AI. But it goes without saying that I know of many RFEs for improvements to the node editing facilities in place, so once again, I'm pretty sure we'll change for the better and be the best in this area too. The node editing tool in Illustrator makes my workflow quite a bit faster, that's not even the add a node anywhere on path issue, but it's one of their node editing tool is just damn good.
After I review the wiki page on it tonight, I'll post my follow-up comments.
-Josh
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 13:34:14 -0400 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Inkscape users list inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape for AI users: a revert war :)
Recently the wiki user Kwixson has significantly expanded and rewritten the "Inkscape for AI users" document on our wiki. Some of his edits seemed strange to me, and I proposed my variants. Unfortunately we could not reach a consensus, so after several mutual reverts we decided to post here and ask for the help and judgement from the community.
The latest revision with our extensive comments is here:
http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IllustratorUsers
Below I briefly list the things I disagree with.
- To begin, I really appreciate the input on this document from the
user who obviously knows AI well. This is some kind of expertise which I personally lack, so I would not be able to write such a document all by myself. Obviously it must be written from an AI user's point of view and use AI terminology and concepts.
I take it this document was intended to eventually become a Tutorial and be shipped with Inkscape?
- However, Kwixson's approach seems to go further than that. He
apparently wants this document to describe _only_ those things which you can do in Illustrator, and describe them exactly _the same way_ as one would do them in Illustrator, even if Inkscape offers more convenient methods. I think this is wrong.
I did feel the article tried too hard to make comparisions and it did seem a little like Inkscape marketing/propoganda. I can understand how immensely proud you are of your work on Inkscape but this is not the best place for it and if anything it is likely to piss of Illustrator users instead of make things easier for them.
I think comparisions should be kept to a minimum. I dont know if you are aware of it bulia but you use very strong language and your arguements always seem very passionate but from how our disucussions are resolved and comments from a few people I can understand (or at least I believe) that it is mostly imagined hostilty on my part.
A lof of the content in that article does not relate directly to teaching Illustrator Users to use Inkscape and could be moved to our section about what we can lear from other software. http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AdobeIllustrator10
The comparisions and descriptions about how great Inkscape is makes the article much longer than it needs to be. We should try and keep the articles technical if not necessary neutral or unbiased.
I can't abide the use of unnecessary acronyms and abbreviations in technical writing. I so I have changed it from "can't" to "can not" (but a general restucturing of the document will probably soon make this redundant).
I dont think it would hurt for inkscape to make the effort to call always open (non-transient) utility windows Palettes and to use the term Dialog for the more traditional modal (and less often non-modal) transient dialogs. I've always hated how the GNU Image Manipulation Program failed to make this distinction.
- With Kwixson's approach, Inkscape would always seem inferior to AI,
because you can't win just by copying.
I think Inkscape is successfully following an "Embrace and Extend" strategy. I think "Copy or Improve" is the way to go do the same or better, not just different for the sake of being different. And inkscape is taking influence from a variety of diffent sources, not just Adobe so I think there is not much risk of being caught in that dead end.
Inkscape is already expending in different directions like InkView and other projects. Inkscape needs only to do something useful, anything useful, and ask artists to include Inkscape in their work. There is no real need to compete head on with other projects or try to replace them.
You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
We probably need to be clearer about the underlying purpose and intent of the document and make it clear that such subjective judgements are entirely inapprorpriate. The document uses strong language and talks about superior or inferior, when a less subjective or neutral terms like "different" would be <strike>better</strike> more appropriate. ;)
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document.
In all honesty the notion of "switching" is a total dead end. It sets up unrealistic expectations and only leads to disappointment. Anyone who wants to promote Inkscape should try to promote it as another useful weapon in an arsenal of tools rather than any foolish attempt to replace tools that artists know and are happy using.
Any difference this document highlights should be considered carefully as valuable feedback and a potential opportunity to improve our terminology. (I happen to think the world has moved on since Illustrator and the term clones is no longer an obscure technical term and is in fact more approriate than trying to figure out what is meant by 'symbols' in this context.)
I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are looking for something different and better. And therefore we must stress our strengths and differences, explaining them in a way which is easy to understand for AI users.
Inkscape is free.
The only significant cost I can think of is that of learning to use Inkscape.
There is very little reason why anyone should be encourage to through out software they have paid for and works for them. Inkscape can work with your other tools not against them.
Let us not talk of replacing other software but providing alternatives and providing useful software.
Now on to specific examples.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
I would step back and say that it may not be the best idea to have these comparisions on our page about what we want to learn from Adobe Illustrator. A more objective comment might be about Inkscape having a different set of keybindings and that are no real plans to directly copy their keybindings (a task which is made much more difficult by Inkscape having keybindings for almost everything).
It would be better to simply say that Inkscape has more keybindings and let that speak for itself rather than being emphatic about that necessarily being superior.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
There might be a way to rephrase this like: "Illustrator users may be more comfortable converting Shapes to Paths but it is worth trying out the Shapes as they sometimes offer different/unique and useful behaviours" or somthing like that.
We should probably ask Kwixson to be a little bit more reserved about removing things and try to mostly add rather than remove.
C. In the section on Node tool, Kwixson provided some very cumbersome descriptions of how to convert a segment from curve to straight line and how to continue a path. When I proposed much simpler and more straightforward ways to do the same, he insisted that his descriptions closely match the way AI does this and therefore must stay. Once again, I don't see why one should go through all this when there's a much simpler way. Disclaimer on this point: I cannot even claim to completely understand Kwixson's descriptions, so I may have missed something important in them. Please anyone who knows AI's path editing, review these paragraphs and let us know what you think.
I hope that helps. I drafted this a few times but I'm still not quite sure I really said what I wanted to say but I hope we can put all this information to good use and redirect Kwixons enthusiasm and avoid this kind of conflict.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com
Alan Horkan wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, bulia byak wrote:
I take it this document was intended to eventually become a Tutorial and be shipped with Inkscape?
Not a tutorial. I think it's supposed to be a page of the help file. At least I've folded it into the help file draft I'm working on (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/) and will probably be incorporated into the next version. I guess it's up to Cedric to put it in or not. It's a similar sort of document as I've seen in other programs' help files, so I don't see why it shouldn't be there.
- However, Kwixson's approach seems to go further than that. He
apparently wants this document to describe _only_ those things which you can do in Illustrator, and describe them exactly _the same way_ as one would do them in Illustrator, even if Inkscape offers more convenient methods. I think this is wrong.
The audience of this document is *only* AI users (hence the name and purpose of the document). It's appropriate therefore, that the document serve exclusively as an orientation for AI users and cover just those things that relate to AI users, and be just an overview at that. An exhaustive study of Inkscape's features are better documented on other pages than this one page dedicated to AI users being introduced to IS. It's a matter of translation. Of course a translation from AI to IS is going to sound funny to native IS users, but this page is NOT for IS users. It's for AI users, and making sense to them is what's important. So, yes, I intend to explain to AI users how to translate their experience with AI into IS. They can (and I emphatically say they will) learn "the Inkscape way" as they gain more experience with the program. It's not important that they learn all of IS's methodologies before they start to use the program. They'll just need to get up to speed on IS, as people coming from AI. That's what I give them, and in that mission I think some of Bulia's changes detract.
I did feel the article tried too hard to make comparisions and it did seem a little like Inkscape marketing/propoganda. I can understand how immensely proud you are of your work on Inkscape but this is not the best place for it and if anything it is likely to piss of Illustrator users instead of make things easier for them.
Precisely. Inkscape is a great program, and AI users will come to see that once they start using the program. You don't need to sell them on it in this document. They're already interested in the program by the time they read this page. Alan's right, giving the sales speech here is just going to piss off AI users. Sell the program with PR, not in help files. As I said in the notes on the page, I understand how proud you are of the program, Bulia, and rightly so. Nobody's saying you shouldn't sing its praises, only that this particular page isn't the appropriate place to do that.
A lof of the content in that article does not relate directly to teaching Illustrator Users to use Inkscape and could be moved to our section about what we can lear from other software. http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AdobeIllustrator10
Alan, you're right that the goal should not be to "teach" AI users how to use IS. The goal of the writing the document should be limited to helping the user realize the goal they're trying to achieve by reading the document. Describing the in's and out's of the program in detail happens on other pages. The scope of this doc is merely to quickly orient AI users to IS. Anything that goes above and beyond that very preliminary orientation only serves to make it less usable.
The comparisions and descriptions about how great Inkscape is makes the article much longer than it needs to be. We should try and keep the articles technical if not necessary neutral or unbiased.
Some comparison is absolutely necessary. By the time someone who fits the profile of the intended audience reads this document they are asking certain questions of comparison. Can Inkscape do X, like I can do in Illustrator? Can Inkscape do gradient meshes, for example, something that's a big deal in AI but isn't a feature of IS and therefore isn't mentioned elsewhere. Somewhere that question has to be answered, and the best place is this document. And you have to be up front with AI users. You have to say, "Well, no. You can't do gradient meshes," and then let the AI user decide whether or not that's a deal breaker or something they can live without. I agree that in general help files should be 100% technical and have no bias expressed in the tone. In the other documentation I'm working on for Inkscape I follow that rule religiously, and I expressed exactly that sentiment in the style guide I wrote on the Wiki for the other documentors. This document, however, needs to walk a different line that one strictly absent of bias. Certainly it cannot come out in "favor" of one program or another, but some judgments of the stength's and weaknesses of IS from an AI POV might be appropriate, as long as its fair and honest.
I can't abide the use of unnecessary acronyms and abbreviations in technical writing. I so I have changed it from "can't" to "can not" (but a general restucturing of the document will probably soon make this redundant).
Good call. Thanks. I don't think the document should be fundamentally restructured, however, and I don't think Bulia does either. I could go into a lengthy defense of the structure, but I won't bore you with the details until it becomes absolutely necessary.
- With Kwixson's approach, Inkscape would always seem inferior to AI,
because you can't win just by copying.
I don't think IS is inferior to AI and I don't think that is what is written in the document. I think it's clear about what a AI user can and can't expect from IS, but I don't think it puts IS down for it. You're forgetting the value of IS as OSS and a free program has for a potential AI convert.
I think Inkscape is successfully following an "Embrace and Extend" strategy. I think "Copy or Improve" is the way to go do the same or better, not just different for the sake of being different. And inkscape is taking influence from a variety of diffent sources, not just Adobe so I think there is not much risk of being caught in that dead end.
Huzaa! Don't be different just to be different. Take what works, and ditch what doesn't, but don't miss the opportunity to learn from other peoples' (or companies' or programs') successes. I totally agree with Alan.
You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
First, "is much less responsive" isn't my text. Go back to the September draft, authored long before I even heard of IS, and that's where you'll find the genesis of that phrase. I tried to incorporate as much as possible of the original author's text into my rewrite, in the spirit of the Wiki. I wouldn't have written much of the document the way it came out if I were starting from scratch, because my style is more technical. That said...
What's better? Better might be fewer features and less convenience if it also means open source and free. Keeping the dynamic of value in mind, is having a forthright message about IS's features condescending? You, Bulia, are not the intended audience for this piece, because you are not a fluent AI user. The intended audience will not have a defensive reaction to the text because they don't have the personal stake in the program that you do. Since it doesn't misrepresent the program at all, I don't see how being honest with these very minor (albeit admittedly somewhat judgmental) transgressions of an entirely neutral tone detract from the document achieving it's purpose. If it doesn't undermine the purpose of the document, what's the problem?
We probably need to be clearer about the underlying purpose and intent of the document and make it clear that such subjective judgements are entirely inapprorpriate. The document uses strong language and talks about superior or inferior, when a less subjective or neutral terms like "different" would be <strike>better</strike> more appropriate. ;)
As I said in the note, in this particular case it's not entirely subjective to say that the way that IS presently handles node transformation is less responsive *in they eyes of AI users.* That last bit is important. I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated that with http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/ntwf.htm ; and in my discussions with some of the people I talked to on the #inkscape IRC channel last night it seems that IS's developers are willing to admit that IS's implementation of node transformation and editing is incomplete.
I totally agree that in the normal course of documentation "better" is never acceptable in a situation where comparisons cannot be avoided outright. This is not a page that fits into the normal course of documentation, as I've pointed out. It's not out of line, I don't think, for some judgment of the relative strengths of various individual features to be documented, if they are relevant to AI users. And what's relevant to AI users is based not on my opinion, but on a collective and aggregate opinion from my base of user data (from presenting IS to AI users.)
That goes a long way to defend parts of the document I don't particularly care about that much, I guess. So as I said in the notes, if you want me to swap out "more responsive" with "more context sensitive" I'm willing to do that.
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document.
Not true. The audiences I've presented Inkscape to (some pretty hard core AI users) have all expressed a great deal of interest. I don't have the hard data to back this up, but anecdotally the reason an AI user might switch has to do with the cost of Adobe products and the unique capacity of open source for developers to directly interact with users. I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
I don't think it's stupid to target AI users at all. Read the first sentence on your own web site, www.inscape.org. "Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C http://www.w3.org standard scalable vector graphics http://w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ format (SVG)." See, you target AI users already. How is writing an orientation to IS for AI users stupid?
I think there's a lot of demand for an open source vector drawing program with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw. What's wrong with appealing to those users? What open source program is better positioned to meet those demands? There isn't one. Inkscape is the best, isn't it?
In all honesty the notion of "switching" is a total dead end. It sets up unrealistic expectations and only leads to disappointment. Anyone who wants to promote Inkscape should try to promote it as another useful weapon in an arsenal of tools rather than any foolish attempt to replace tools that artists know and are happy using.
I wouldn't say disappointment. Yeah, I wish Inkscape could do object blends, but so what? Maybe that will be a feature some day, but in the mean time I have a program that runs on all three of the OS platforms that I care about instead of just two, and is open source and is free and does a pretty good job for many of the tasks I need it for. Artists (users) are never going to be happy unless you cut down your "user base" to those that are perfectly happy with the program already. And if that's all you're going to work for, why bother adding or improving features at all? Isn't the purpose of adding features to make it "useful" to a broader set of users than it was before? If you're going to make it more useful, and therefore appeal to a broader user base, then why can't some of that broader user base include those that use these other programs?
Any difference this document highlights should be considered carefully as valuable feedback and a potential opportunity to improve our terminology. (I happen to think the world has moved on since Illustrator and the term clones is no longer an obscure technical term and is in fact more approriate than trying to figure out what is meant by 'symbols' in this context.)
I have no opinion about this. But I'll tell you that clones would be a lot more useful to me if I could store them in a library, and stroke a path with a pattern of clones, or paint with them with some sort of clone brush. :-) Singing the praises of Inkscape's implementation of clones, however, is misplaced in this particular document as is best served on the page of documentation that documents clones, wouldn't you think?
I think we need to target those who are used to AI but are looking for something different and better. And therefore we must stress our strengths and differences, explaining them in a way which is easy to understand for AI users.
What you're describing is a PR document, not a piece of program documentation. Do the PR in the spaces that are appropriate for PR, so that by the time an AI users get to this piece of documentation they're already convinced that IS has something to offer them. I cannot say emphatically enough that this piece of documentation is NOT the place to make a case for Inkscape in the marketing sense, which is what you're proposing.
Inkscape is free.
The only significant cost I can think of is that of learning to use Inkscape.
There is very little reason why anyone should be encourage to through out software they have paid for and works for them. Inkscape can work with your other tools not against them.
Let us not talk of replacing other software but providing alternatives and providing useful software.
Don't forget that for a user like me, and I'm pretty typical, the cost of future upgrades is very much in my mind. No professional designer (print) that I know doesn't have the latest version of AI. When they come out with a new one, we pretty much all have to upgrade, otherwise we can't effectively collaborate (trade files) and we have a devil of a time with print houses. Having an alternative that we can afford to keep upgraded all the time without a leash to Adobe is very appealing. Please don't discount it.
Now on to specific examples.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
I would step back and say that it may not be the best idea to have these comparisions on our page about what we want to learn from Adobe Illustrator. A more objective comment might be about Inkscape having a different set of keybindings and that are no real plans to directly copy their keybindings (a task which is made much more difficult by Inkscape having keybindings for almost everything).
It would be better to simply say that Inkscape has more keybindings and let that speak for itself rather than being emphatic about that necessarily being superior.
So, you're saying that you agree with what I said in the comments about some wording at the top of the page to that effect?
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the difference between a shape and a path and the unique features that shapes offer. Instead he inserted an advice to do Ctrl+Shift+C (convert to path) as soon as you created a shape, to be able to node-edit it! This is because AI does not have shapes as such, treating everything as paths. I think this is plain stupid. Inkscape's shapes are clearly superior to those of any other program I know, and we must present them as such.
There might be a way to rephrase this like: "Illustrator users may be more comfortable converting Shapes to Paths but it is worth trying out the Shapes as they sometimes offer different/unique and useful behaviours" or somthing like that.
We should probably ask Kwixson to be a little bit more reserved about removing things and try to mostly add rather than remove.
The problem is that Bulia was missing the point of the original text. I think he thought I was being judgmental about how IS handles shapes, or missing an opportunity to hype IS's superior qualities. As I point out in the notes the original text was written to address a very specific question that AI users have, one that you can't understand the significance of if you're not a proficient AI user, which Bulia has admitted he's not.
As for being reserved, the whole reason we got into the reverting business is because large sections of my original text were whacked outright and it was easier for me just to revert than add back in the large sections that were removed. I'm going to defend the practice of editing, though, as opposed to the "add, don't delete" process, because this isn't a normal Wiki page. It's ultimately going to live in a different venue. I learned in my training as a writer that "Most of good writing is in the editing."
C. In the section on Node tool, Kwixson provided some very cumbersome descriptions of how to convert a segment from curve to straight line and how to continue a path. When I proposed much simpler and more straightforward ways to do the same, he insisted that his descriptions closely match the way AI does this and therefore must stay. Once again, I don't see why one should go through all this when there's a much simpler way. Disclaimer on this point: I cannot even claim to completely understand Kwixson's descriptions, so I may have missed something important in them. Please anyone who knows AI's path editing, review these paragraphs and let us know what you think.
I hope that helps. I drafted this a few times but I'm still not quite sure I really said what I wanted to say but I hope we can put all this information to good use and redirect Kwixons enthusiasm and avoid this kind of conflict.
How shall I be redirected? ;-) I'm already doing Inkscape's documentation. Last week I rewrote/translated/edited the entire Part I, chapters 1-9, of the manual. I could have had Part II done by now if I hadn't had to go through such rigors with this one page. :-) Seriously, though, the process has had some really good outcomes and it wouldn't be as good as it's going to be if it hadn't been for Bulia's input. I think I've shown I can be reasonable when appropriately persuaded. I do have good reasons for my assertions on the outstanding issues, however, and I hope I can express them adequately enough.
Thanks to you Alan, and thanks to Bulia too. I do want to be a help. I hope I can be of some use to you all.
Cheers, -Kevin Wixson
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Kevin Wixson wrote:
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 02:39:48 -0500 From: Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape for AI users: a revert war :)
*** I am going to respond out of order as some comments are much more important to respond to than others. ***
I'm sorry that this message is so very long. It took ages to write and even longer to try and cut it back a bit.
You can't be a better Illustrator than Illustrator, you need to be different to be better. And indeed Kwixson's text has a generally condescending tone and phrases like "is much less responsive", "is not as intuitive" etc. We need to be honest about Inkscape's weaknesses, but these judgements were often not based on any real weaknesses.
First, "is much less responsive" isn't my text. Go back to the September draft, authored long before I even heard of IS [2], and that's where
you'll
find the genesis of that phrase. I tried to incorporate as much as possible of the original author's text into my rewrite, in the spirit of the Wiki. I wouldn't have written much of the document the way it came out if I were starting from scratch, because my style is more technical. That said...
It seems as if a large part of this misunderstanding doesn't have much to do with Kevin Wixson and now that this has been brough up publically I'm sure fast progress will be made and conversations on IRC might help clear things up. (This seems to already be happening, great!)
are of the program, Bulia, and rightly so. Nobody's saying you shouldn't sing its [Inkscapes] praises, only that this particular page isn't the appropriate place to do that.
"Neutral language preferable"
I take it this document was intended to eventually become a Tutorial and be shipped with Inkscape?
Not a tutorial. I think it's supposed to be a page of the help file.
I'm referring to the documentation that currently ships wiht Inkscape in SVG format. I think were are more or less talking about the same thing.
The audience of this document is *only* AI users (hence the name and purpose of the document).
I'm sure it will be Primarily Adobe Illustrator users (like >95%) but I have an interest in learning transferable skills and not being locked into any one product and learning more about Adobe Illustrator as I better understand Inkscape will be interesting. I really doubt Adobe will be in any hurry to produce a document helping Inkscape users understand Adobe Illustrator better.
Even with open source I still worry about unreliable suppliers and it doesn't matter that the code is available if I will never be able to afford to manage a large project on my own. You might not think it is likely for open source projects to really die off but I think it will happen sooner or later. The loose grouping of applications described as Gnome Office has survived the major change of attention to OpenOffice.org but other projects might not be so resilient. Ever since Firefox became a fork rather than an experimental branch I have feared a day will come when they try to announce the "End of Life" for Mozilla Seamonkey. I expect some Sodipoid users feel similarly but perhaps eventually Inkscape will meet all their needs (better chance of that happening than Firefox satisfying me).
(Sorry for going a bit offtopic as usual.)
An exhaustive study of Inkscape's features are better documented on other pages than this one page dedicated to AI users being introduced to IS [2].
I mostly agree with you but there will still necessary to introduce Adobe Illustrator users to new ideas and potentially better ways of working with tools (like the already dicussed case of working with shapes rather than only paths).
to explain to AI users how to translate their experience with AI into IS [2]. They can (and I emphatically say they will) learn "the Inkscape way" as they gain more experience with the program. It's not important that they learn all of IS's methodologies before they start to use the program. They'll just need to get up to speed on IS, as people coming from AI. That's what I give them, and in that mission I think some of Bulia's changes detract.
I think this can be sorted out but I think we should err a little on the side of praising Inkscape and encouraging users to learn the Inkscape way of doing things. The workarounds should definately also be explained but I dont think they should be given the primary emphasis (but that is just my opinion). We should be encouraging users to adapt to Inkscape not just workaround behaviours they haven't gotten accustomed to yet.
A lof of the content in that article does not relate directly to teaching Illustrator Users to use Inkscape and could be moved to our section about what we can lear from other software. http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AdobeIllustrator10
Alan, you're right that the goal should not be to "teach" AI users how to use IS. The goal of the writing the document should be limited to helping the user realize the goal they're trying to achieve by reading the document. Describing the in's and out's of the program in detail happens on other pages. The scope of this doc is merely to quickly orient AI users to IS. Anything that goes above and beyond that very preliminary orientation only serves to make it less usable.
Hrrm. I'm torn.
I know users dont want to change and would prefer the mountain move to them rather than them being forced to learn the software (and in principle I agree with that because software is supposedly about making our lives easier). On the other hand we dont want to recommend cumbersome workarounds for users unwilling to adapt a little.
The fundemntal thing is to keep the underlying slant in favour of Inkscape where necessary as this is not a completely unbiased tutorial (like one intended for publication in a magazine might try to be).
Illustrator? Can Inkscape do gradient meshes, for example, something that's a big deal in AI but isn't a feature of IS and therefore isn't mentioned elsewhere.
Gradient meshes? Not yet.
Somewhere that question has to be answered, and the best place is this document.
I'd put this in an FAQ rather than in the tutorial which should show users what they can do not what they cannot do (at least not yet, ).
Certainly it cannot come out in "favor" of one program or another, but some judgments of the stength's and weaknesses of IS from an AI POV might be appropriate, as long as its fair and honest.
No need to give the critics ammunition but of course it is certainly fair to indicate things that the developers hope to improve in future.
The intended audience will not have a defensive reaction to the text because they don't have the personal stake in the program that you do. Since it doesn't misrepresent the program at all, I don't see how being honest with these very minor (albeit admittedly somewhat judgmental) transgressions of an entirely neutral tone detract from the document achieving it's purpose. If it doesn't undermine the purpose of the document, what's the problem?
Do you think you can adjust things and maybe slant it a little bit more in favour of Inkscape?
I suppose I could take this opportunity to bash Wiki and remind people that it is not the be all and end all in collaborative document management. It is very much linear, only allowing one author at a time to make changes and it makes it difficult sometimes to compromise and get an overall view like we are seeing here.
- After all, who is this document for? Those who like AI the way it
is will never switch, so it seems stupid to target them in such a document.
With greater clarity about what exactly the document is for hopefully some of this confusion will go away.
Not true. The audiences I've presented Inkscape to (some pretty hard core AI users) have all expressed a great deal of interest. I don't have the hard data to back this up, but anecdotally the reason an AI user might switch has to do with the cost of Adobe products and the unique capacity of open source for developers to directly interact with users. I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
That is great to hear. If you are not already included on the quotes page you probably should be. Technically though you still use Adobe Illustrator which is why I prefer to avoid the whole "switch" arguement altogether.
I have no opinion about this. But I'll tell you that clones would be a lot more useful to me if I could store them in a library, and stroke a
This kind of thing has been mentioned previously and there is definately some interest in making it easier to manage all of these kinds of things.
As I point out in the notes the original text was written to address a very specific question that AI users have, one that you can't understand the significance of if you're not a proficient AI user, which Bulia has admitted he's not.
I see what you mean. Can you find a way to change this that takes into account Bulias view a bit more and change the emphasis so it is a little bit less about just how to workaround/ignore how Inkscape behaves?
I hope that helps. I drafted this a few times but I'm still not quite sure I really said what I wanted to say but I hope we can put all this information to good use and redirect Kwixons enthusiasm and avoid this kind of conflict.
How shall I be redirected? ;-) I'm already doing Inkscape's
the inkscape developers tend to be very good about being positive and telling people how they would like things to be done and not complaining about people doing useful things so this comment isn't about you so much as it is about making it clearer what is really wanted.
Seriously, though, the process has had some really good outcomes and it wouldn't be as good as it's going to be if it hadn't been for Bulia's input. I think I've shown I can be reasonable when appropriately persuaded. I do have good reasons for my assertions on the outstanding issues, however, and I hope I can express them adequately enough.
I think you have shown this again by having convinced bulia (on the developer mailing list) to improve that node behaviour that was bothering you (Jimmac is praising your request as model behaviour in his journal). It is remarkable how much valuable feedback documentation writers can provide because they are essentially forced to to become expert users before they can write the documentation. I doubt this would be anywhere near as effective if Inkscape didn't provide nightly builds.
Thanks to you Alan, and thanks to Bulia too. I do want to be a help. I hope I can be of some use to you all.
I feel like I might be adding more signal than noise and the two of you are well able to negotiate this but that Wiki didn't lend itself to clear commmunication which Email and IRC do a better job of.
Please do cull as much text as possible from any responses to keep things somewhat readable.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Alan's Journal http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com
[1] I try to always use the full term "Adobe Illustrator" TM (or AI) but never "Illustrator" due to past ridiculous claims of ownership of the word illustrator.
[2] Please please please if the word Inkscape is too long for you to type perhaps try shorting it to something a bit more meaningful like Ink.
Alan Horkan wrote:
*** I am going to respond out of order as some comments are much more important to respond to than others. ***
I'm sorry that this message is so very long. It took ages to write and even longer to try and cut it back a bit.
...
I haven't forgotten this thread, by the way...
[1] I try to always use the full term "Adobe Illustrator" TM (or AI) but never "Illustrator" due to past ridiculous claims of ownership of the word illustrator.
[2] Please please please if the word Inkscape is too long for you to type perhaps try shorting it to something a bit more meaningful like Ink.
If IS doesn't work for you (although I don't know why not, for informal speech) then I'll try to remember to do a search/replace before I send.
-Kevin Wixson
If IS doesn't work for you (although I don't know why not, for informal speech) then I'll try to remember to do a search/replace before I send.
On one hand I am a bit of a language snob, and I dislike acronyms. I've had to deal with technical people who are no smarter than I am but insist on using obscure jargon, confusing their audience and making things difficult for everyone one else.
"If you cannot blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bull****!"
If English is not your first language I appreciate any efforts mades as $PERSONs ability to write English is usually better than my ability to write $LANGUAGE but that only makes it all the more important for the rest of us to try and be as clear as possible.
I know it seems pedantic (and it is) but I can justify it. It is important to thinks of the Search Engines, think of marketing Inkscape. "IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
Every post we make to the mailing lists is marketing for Inkscape.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Alan's Journal http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com
Alan Horkan wrote:
If IS doesn't work for you (although I don't know why not, for informal speech) then I'll try to remember to do a search/replace before I send.
On one hand I am a bit of a language snob, and I dislike acronyms. I've had to deal with technical people who are no smarter than I am but insist on using obscure jargon, confusing their audience and making things difficult for everyone one else.
I am a language snob (I'm a writer,) which is why I try especially hard not to be when it doesn't matter, but...
"If you cannot blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bull****!"
If English is not your first language I appreciate any efforts mades as $PERSONs ability to write English is usually better than my ability to write $LANGUAGE but that only makes it all the more important for the rest of us to try and be as clear as possible.
I know it seems pedantic (and it is) but I can justify it. It is important to thinks of the Search Engines, think of marketing Inkscape. "IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
...this is a good explanation of why it matters. Point taken. Will do.
I don't think terminology is off topic, though. What about the windows/dialog/palette debate in the Wiki page? What should the various windows be called. For a refresher of the debate:
Palettes
Instead of palettes, Inkscape has dialogs that can be called up by various commands through which the artist communicates with the program. Dialogs function similarly to palettes. (In Windows, they do not stay on top of the Document window; this is a known problem.) You can toggle visibility of all active dialogs with F12 key.
--- These are traditionally called dialogs. I don't see a reason to rename them. Just "windows" is too vague. --bb --- You're going to have to duke this out with Cedric (the head documentor guy) et al. I got it from him, the developers I was chatting with on IRC the other night didn't have a problem with it as far as I know, and it seems to make sense. A dialog requires a response before the command can continue--it's having a dialog (two way interaction) with the user. Everyting else is technically just a window. It's not vague if they have a name, like the Document Preferences window. How is that any more vague than the Document Preferences dialog. Sounds like a stylistic bias. I frankly don't care, as long as it's consistent and I was simply going with what had already been established. See the style guide for more detials. --kw --- "traditionally called dialogs" a tradition from the GIMP. Nothing else in Gnome really has the same kind of widgets as this very specific subset of Dialogs (just as dialogs are a subset of Windows) and what Gnome normally means by Dialogs can be very different so I hope you will consider that using the term Palettes could help reduce ambiguity -- Alan
Anyone care to clarify the issue?
-Kevin Wixson
Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>:
I know it seems pedantic (and it is) but I can justify it. It is important to thinks of the Search Engines, think of marketing Inkscape.
"IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
Every post we make to the mailing lists is marketing for Inkscape.
Chill out, man. Seriously.
-mental
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:34:36 -0500, mental@...3... <mental@...3...> wrote:
Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>:
"IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
Every post we make to the mailing lists is marketing for Inkscape.
Chill out, man. Seriously.
Actually, here I tend to agree with Alan.
And I was just about to rename Image Tracing to 'IT.' ;-)
mental@...3... wrote:
Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>:
"IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
Every post we make to the mailing lists is marketing for Inkscape.
Chill out, man. Seriously.
-mental
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 mental@...3... wrote:
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:34:36 -0500 From: mental@...3... To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...>, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] [way offtopic] terminology
Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>:
I know it seems pedantic (and it is) but I can justify it. It is important to thinks of the Search Engines, think of marketing Inkscape.
"IS" is far too common a word to register on search engines whereas Ink or Inkscape are very disctinctive words and Inkscape is a very strong brand.
Every post we make to the mailing lists is marketing for Inkscape.
Chill out, man. Seriously.
I should apologise, I guess that came across as rather harsh which wasn't my intention. Of course people can call Inkscape anything they like but Inkscape is a great name and I would encourage people to keep using it.
I suppose I got a little carried away in my enthusiams for Inkscape.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>:
I suppose I got a little carried away in my enthusiams for Inkscape.
No worries; it's just hard to interpret tone sometimes.
Admittedly I'm strung a little tight myself at the moment from an ongoing technical argument over in Cairo.
-mental
From the Inkscape Wiki:
http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IllustratorUsers
Zooming : Plus and Minus Keys
Instead of holding down the Ctrl key and pressing + or - to zoom the canvas, in Inkscape the artist simply presses the + or - key to zoom.
Can Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- be made to work also?
This would be benefit to Gnome users too, the Gnome HIG currently recommends
Zoom out Ctrl+ - Zoom in Ctrl+ + but Ctrl + = should also work so that users with +/= on the same key dont need to think about it
and Zoom Normal aka 100% is Ctrl+0 because it is conveneintly beside - and + (and it is what Mozilla uses)
To be as clear as possible I'm suggesting additional keybindings for these very fundamental tools rather than replacing or getting rid of any bindings.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
PS Did a quick search of the Feature requests but didn't see anything that seemed relevant.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:00:10 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
From the Inkscape Wiki: http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IllustratorUsers
Zooming : Plus and Minus Keys
Instead of holding down the Ctrl key and pressing + or - to zoom the canvas, in Inkscape the artist simply presses the + or - key to zoom.
Can Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- be made to work also?
No, they're occupied by boolean ops
This would be benefit to Gnome users too, the Gnome HIG currently recommends
Zoom out Ctrl+ - Zoom in Ctrl+ +
HIG is written for general applications. In a drawing app, zooming is infinitely more common operation which therefore more than deserves a single-key shortcut.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:05:55 -0400 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...>, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: Zoom Zoom [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape for AI users: a revert war :)]
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:00:10 +0000 (GMT), Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
From the Inkscape Wiki: http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IllustratorUsers
Zooming : Plus and Minus Keys
Instead of holding down the Ctrl key and pressing + or - to zoom the canvas, in Inkscape the artist simply presses the + or - key to zoom.
Can Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- be made to work also?
No, they're occupied by boolean ops
Right, sorry now that you mention it is all too familiar.
This would be benefit to Gnome users too, the Gnome HIG currently recommends
Zoom out Ctrl+ - Zoom in Ctrl+ +
HIG is written for general applications. In a drawing app, zooming is infinitely more common operation which therefore more than deserves a single-key shortcut.
I was very clear to say I wasn't advocating removing the keybinding but adding another combination. I'll have to take a closer look at InkView where this idea might actually be approriate.
Thanks.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Sorry for a belated reply...
It's a matter of translation. Of course a translation from AI to IS is going to sound funny to native IS users, but this page is NOT for IS users. It's for AI users, and making sense to them is what's important.
I still think this is wrong. Imagine you're learning some foreign language, say French. Would you want your French teacher to teach you phrases that sound funny to native French speakers? Of course not. On the contrary, you want to learn phrases and constructions that are idiomatic and natural for the target language.
time they read this page. Alan's right, giving the sales speech here is just going to piss off AI users.
I'm not arguing for a "sales speech", just for a concise and practical introduction which mentions the most important capabilities, _especially_ if they are different from those of AI.
certain questions of comparison. Can Inkscape do X, like I can do in Illustrator? Can Inkscape do gradient meshes, for example, something that's a big deal in AI but isn't a feature of IS and therefore isn't mentioned elsewhere.
No it cannot, and of course it must be mentioned. I never said it must not.
Good call. Thanks. I don't think the document should be fundamentally restructured, however, and I don't think Bulia does either.
Currently it's just an embryo of a document. It needs to be much longer to be of any use. But we need to agree on the approaches before growing it further.
First, "is much less responsive" isn't my text. Go back to the September draft, authored long before I even heard of IS, and that's where you'll find the genesis of that phrase.
Maybe you didn't author it, but you restored it when I deleted it.
program that you do. Since it doesn't misrepresent the program at all, I don't see how being honest with these very minor (albeit admittedly somewhat judgmental) transgressions of an entirely neutral tone detract from the document achieving it's purpose. If it doesn't undermine the purpose of the document, what's the problem?
I would not mind the tone transgressions if they would not be accompanied by some factual inaccuracies and approaches which I consider wrong.
As I said in the note, in this particular case it's not entirely subjective to say that the way that IS presently handles node transformation is less responsive *in they eyes of AI users.*
"Less responsive" says nothing useful. It may mean anything. Please be specific: what exactly it can and cannot do. If you want an overall statement, you can add it, but please make it more to the point (e.g. "misses some important features", or "uses a one-tool approach", or "is less convenint in working with such-and-such use cases").
if you want me to swap out "more responsive" with "more context sensitive" I'm willing to do that.
"More context sensitive" makes more sense, but please explain exactly what type of context is missing in Inkscape.
I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
Fine, then why won't you mention "the ability to talk to a developer" among Inkscape's advantages in the document :)
I have no opinion about this. But I'll tell you that clones would be a lot more useful to me if I could store them in a library, and stroke a path with a pattern of clones, or paint with them with some sort of clone brush. :-) Singing the praises of Inkscape's implementation of clones, however, is misplaced in this particular document as is best served on the page of documentation that documents clones, wouldn't you think?
I have only AI 9 and it has nothing in the way of clones at all, which is why I added a mention of it. By the way AI 9 isn't all that old. As for the features you mention, they will all be addressed eventually, some of them hopefully very soon.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
Looks like the majority of replies here, including those from AI users, supports this point. So I think we need to restore this. It is important.
B. In the section on shapes, Kwixson has removed my explanation of the
The problem is that Bulia was missing the point of the original text. I think he thought I was being judgmental about how IS handles shapes, or missing an opportunity to hype IS's superior qualities. As I point out in the notes the original text was written to address a very specific question that AI users have, one that you can't understand the significance of if you're not a proficient AI user, which Bulia has admitted he's not.
OK, I agree to put the "convert to path _if you need path_" advice first in that section. But my paragraph on shapes must remain, even if it comes second. Again, the consensus on the list seems to be in favor of explaining shapes.
How shall I be redirected? ;-) I'm already doing Inkscape's documentation. Last week I rewrote/translated/edited the entire Part I, chapters 1-9, of the manual.
I really appreciate that.
I could have had Part II done by now if I hadn't had to go through such rigors with this one page. :-)
Well, I hope it was useful.
Seriously, though, the process has had some really good outcomes and it wouldn't be as good as it's going to be if it hadn't been for Bulia's input. I think I've shown I can be reasonable when appropriately persuaded. I do have good reasons for my assertions on the outstanding issues, however, and I hope I can express them adequately enough.
Yes, certainly.
So, can you please prepare a next version of this document, taking into account all the discussion in this thread (and removing our arguments from the wiki page)? Then we'll hopefully have input from more people. I promise not to delete lots of stuff without discussing it first :)
bulia byak wrote:
I still think this is wrong. Imagine you're learning some foreign language, say French. Would you want your French teacher to teach you phrases that sound funny to native French speakers? Of course not. On the contrary, you want to learn phrases and constructions that are idiomatic and natural for the target language.
You don't expect first year French students to learn perfect French by the end of the first class, either. Baby steps, man. Again, learning more about Inkscape's particular advantages is in's and out's is something they can do once they get their feet under them. What's important about Inkscape will stand out as important without so much pointing, I promise you. You're pushing too much on to them, expecting too much of them, and you are anticipating a stronger desire to learn Inkscape than the target audience is likely to have at first. You are talking like someone is very enthusiastic about something you're proud of and that you want to emphatically express how cool you think it is. I'm advocating giving the audience what they want, not what you (or we) may want. You can lead a horse to water...
I'm not arguing for a "sales speech", just for a concise and practical introduction which mentions the most important capabilities, _especially_ if they are different from those of AI.
No, a concise and practical document is what I'm pushing, and why I'm resisting having more added to it. You later say that it has to be longer (which goes against being concise) and the most practical approach is putting AI tasks in an Inkscape context at first and letting Inkscape reveal itself to the users at a pace the users can handle and want. You keep wanting to add Inkscape tasks in an Inkscape context. As of tonight (local graphic design meetup group) I've road tested this document with some actual AI users who haven't yet used Inkscape. Have you? Any feedback?
Currently it's just an embryo of a document. It needs to be much longer to be of any use. But we need to agree on the approaches before growing it further.
I emphatically object. The longer it is, the less it serves as a practical introduction to AI users. It's not an embryo, it's a stepping stone from where they will move on to other documents. You have to start looking at this like one page in a book, not the whole book.
Maybe you didn't author it, but you restored it when I deleted it.
We've covered this. I restored 'cause you hacked too much. Let's not keep rehashing. We're really a lot closer than all of this.
I would not mind the tone transgressions if they would not be accompanied by some factual inaccuracies and approaches which I consider wrong.
You consider them wrong approaches because you have a bias that comes from working closely on the project, and a lack of experience with AI. Please consider that this might be adversely influencing your decisions here, and that other people's approaches, like mine, might have some credibility in spite of the fact that they're different than yours. Developers rarely make good documenters.
As I said in the note, in this particular case it's not entirely subjective to say that the way that Inkscape presently handles node transformation is less responsive *in they eyes of AI users.*
"Less responsive" says nothing useful. It may mean anything. Please be specific: what exactly it can and cannot do. If you want an overall statement, you can add it, but please make it more to the point (e.g. "misses some important features", or "uses a one-tool approach", or "is less convenint in working with such-and-such use cases").
Well, as has been the consensus from the AI users who have registered their thoughts, to a man they have all said that Inkscape is less responsive when it comes to node editing and that the Pen tool is still young in Inkscape. So obviously it does have a meaning that's fairly well understood. But if you want to say "is less convenient" instead, then that would probably make sense too. I'll consider some revision in that phrasing if that paragraph says at all, which it might not, depending on developments.
if you want me to swap out "more responsive" with "more context sensitive" I'm willing to do that.
"More context sensitive" makes more sense, but please explain exactly what type of context is missing in Inkscape.
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/aiwf.htm
I mean, here I am talking to you developers, and I don't know the first bit of C or C++. I own AI, the latest version, and I like it just fine. By your reckoning I shouldn't be here. But I've never been able to talk to an Adobe developer. So you see, there are reasons beyond simply features and capabilities for users to switch.
Fine, then why won't you mention "the ability to talk to a developer" among Inkscape's advantages in the document :)
Because that's a function of OSS, not a feature of this program. The section is very tightly constrained as a feature list, and in a "either it has it or it doesn't" sort of way at that.
I have only AI 9 and it has nothing in the way of clones at all, which is why I added a mention of it. By the way AI 9 isn't all that old. As for the features you mention, they will all be addressed eventually, some of them hopefully very soon.
AI 9 is two versions old. That's old regardless of how many years it's been. As features are added to Inkscape, then obviously this section can be revised. In the mean time it provides useful information to AI users.
A. Kwixson has removed my mention of keyboard accessibility, in particular keys for screen-pixel-sized transformations, claiming this is not important. I've seen this attitude before from other AI users; they tend to dismiss this because they don't have it. Those who are really using Inkscape (or Xara, where I got the idea from, though by now Inkscape's keyboard is superior even to Xara) will disagree.
Looks like the majority of replies here, including those from AI users, supports this point. So I think we need to restore this. It is important.
From what I saw of the responses, all of the reactions were based on your phrasing in the email and they hadn't read the Wiki page in question.
OK, I agree to put the "convert to path _if you need path_" advice first in that section. But my paragraph on shapes must remain, even if it comes second. Again, the consensus on the list seems to be in favor of explaining shapes.
I have a thought on this that might be a workable compromise. More later.
Yes, certainly.
So, can you please prepare a next version of this document, taking into account all the discussion in this thread (and removing our arguments from the wiki page)? Then we'll hopefully have input from more people. I promise not to delete lots of stuff without discussing it first :)
Okay, but I've already made it half way through a "one issue at a time" draft of resolving the remaining issues... I'm convinced that there are only three or four specific points of contention left, and the biggest one I was going to tackle first I really thing is contentious because you don't know AI that well. That's why I made the aiwf.htm page, and I'm planning on yet another explainer to demonstrate your technique and my technique side by side to let people see if what I'm saying makes sense or not. Let me finish that process and I'll put together a new version and I think we'll be pretty much done.
Okay.
Thanks, -Kevin
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 01:28:20 -0500, Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...> wrote:
"More context sensitive" makes more sense, but please explain exactly what type of context is missing in Inkscape.
Well, from a cursory reading of this document I see that AI presents its capabilities as many different tools and its "context sensitivity" consists mainly of being smart when to use which tool. As such, this concept is hardly applicable to Inkscape which has just two tools (one for editing and one for drawing). It just does not need to be "sensitive" to switch its tools. Or in other words IT IS sensitive because in the edit tool "knows" to do different things when clicked in different places with different modifiers. We just don't call this "tools".
Again, I know of exactly three fundamental limitations of our node tool:
- it can't drag segments, only nodes
- it can't add nodes in arbitrary place on path
- it can't edit nodes of two objects at once.
These are the things that matter, things you need to tell AI users in big letters. Everyrhing else is either:
- easy to fix (like the two small improvements I added recently)
- actually better in Inkscape than in AI, if you think of it
- purely cosmetic or terminological (like your "context sensitivity").
Surely these smaller issues need to be addressed, and they will be addressed. And eventually we'll approach the three big issues too. However, you won't be doing good service to AI users if you focus on the smaller issues (interspersing them with judgemental remarks) and not put the three big ones on top.
Looks like the majority of replies here, including those from AI users, supports this point. So I think we need to restore this. It is important.
From what I saw of the responses, all of the reactions were based on your phrasing in the email and they hadn't read the Wiki page in question.
Actually, many reactions were based on the firsthand experience with both AI and Inkscape. You can propose your own wording but I insist that this item must stay.
I feel it important to remind you, Bulia, that if I didn't think Inkscape were a great program, I wouldn't be wasting my time duking this out with you. Please remember I'm ultimately on your side.
bulia byak wrote:
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 01:28:20 -0500, Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...> wrote:
"More context sensitive" makes more sense, but please explain exactly what type of context is missing in Inkscape.
Well, from a cursory reading of this document I see that AI presents
I think the work I did to make that document deserves more than just a "cursory reading." How seriously am I supposed to take your comments about something you've only sorta, kinda, looked over briefly?
its capabilities as many different tools and its "context sensitivity" consists mainly of being smart when to use which tool. As such, this concept is hardly applicable to Inkscape which has just two tools (one for editing and one for drawing). It just does not need to be "sensitive" to switch its tools. Or in other words IT Inkscape sensitive because in the edit tool "knows" to do different things when clicked in different places with different modifiers. We just don't call this "tools".
No, it's precisely the kind of productivity enhancements Inkscape has over AI generally, which in the case of the pen tool the reverse is actually true. In AI you can perform a dozen functions in 9 different modes using nothing but a mouse button and two keys in combination and never leaving the canvas. You have been telling me of the importance of Inkscape's keyboard shortcuts as a key feature of Inkscape, but at the same time you are marginalizing that same kind of strength being represented here in AI. If keyboard shortcuts are important in Inkscape, the productivity enhancements of AI that I've detailed are important too. They aren't just different, as I point out next. [Note: I am not unconvinced about the value of Inkscape's keyboard shortcuts.]
There aren't 9 different "tools," which you should know; the word "tools" is just an abstraction for capabilities. What were talking about is Inkscape and AI's overlapping capabilities. AI and Inkscape have, with respect to creating and editing vector paths, roughly the same purpose and capabilities. It is the UI of the capabilities that differs. With AI, all of the capabilities are accessed with two keys and a mouse, without ever leaving the canvas. In Inkscape, many more mouse clicks, key presses and trips around the UI are required in order to accomplish the same thing. This means more work and more time, which means less convenient.
Again, I know of exactly three fundamental limitations of our node tool:
it can't drag segments, only nodes
it can't add nodes in arbitrary place on path
it can't edit nodes of two objects at once.
Plus...
- it can't do all drawing and editing of a path with the mouse and two keys without leaving the canvas. {If this isn't a significant feature, then neither is Inkscape's use of shortcuts or Inkscape's enhanced shape editing.}
- it can't continue drawing a path once it's been stopped. You can extend a path in Inkscape, with copying the nodes or whatnot, but that is NOT the same as being able to continue to draw the path with drawing tools.
These are the things that matter, things you need to tell AI users in big letters. Everyrhing else is either:
easy to fix (like the two small improvements I added recently)
actually better in Inkscape than in AI, if you think of it
purely cosmetic or terminological (like your "context sensitivity").
I don't think your assertion that the versatility of path authoring and editing in AI is "purely cosmetic" is any more fair or factually accurate than woud be saying that the use of keyboard shortcuts in Inkscape is purely cosmetic. For people who work in a production environment, where they're doing a lot of complex illustration, it is VERY important that they have the optimized workflow like you get in AI for path authoring and editing. "Context sensitivity" is a term that has real meaning, by the way. Don't marginalize it, because if you factor context into your UI, you have to come up with a lot fewer keybindings and individual tool implementations, and you end up with an overall better user experience to show for it. {Because I know you'll bust my balls about it: better = less work, less time, easier comprehension and accessibility. :) }
If things are so easy to fix, then why don't you get busy fixing them instead of standin' here jawin' away with me? :) {I mean that in the most jovial way possible.} I would myself, but I'm not a programmer. I'm a writer, so I have to stick to those things I do best. As a writer, a documenter, I can't write about how things *will work* or what *will be*, I can only write about what *is* and how things *do work*. Once those changes are made, then this whole debate will be moot and we can document things as they are without there being any controversy.
-Kevin
Quoting Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...>:
- it can't continue drawing a path once it's been stopped. You
can extend a path in Inkscape, with copying the nodes or whatnot, but that is NOT the same as being able to continue to draw the
path
with drawing tools.
No, we've supported that since we were Sodipodi -- hit 'a' for append mode while in any of the drawing tools.
However, bulia has just reworked the feature so that appending is the default if you have an existing shape selected, so hopefully people won't keep missing the feature anymore...
-mental
mental@...3... wrote:
Quoting Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...>:
- it can't continue drawing a path once it's been stopped. You
can extend a path in Inkscape, with copying the nodes or whatnot, but that is NOT the same as being able to continue to draw the
path
with drawing tools.
No, we've supported that since we were Sodipodi -- hit 'a' for append mode while in any of the drawing tools.
However, bulia has just reworked the feature so that appending is the default if you have an existing shape selected, so hopefully people won't keep missing the feature anymore...
-mental
Yeah, I wasn't aware of it. I assumed he would have said something about this when the issue first came up. It is exactly this functionality that was the genesis of my "awkward" and "cumbersome" workarounds I was detailing in the Inkscape for AI users guide. Since he was suggesting duplicating the end node, or something, I figured there really wasn't a "add mode". Now I know, plus it'll be easier to use with Bulia's enhancements. (Huzaa! Hurray!) So, all's well that ends well.
-Kevin
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 14:13:30 -0500, Kevin Wixson <kevin@...738...> wrote:
I think the work I did to make that document deserves more than just a "cursory reading." How seriously am I supposed to take your comments about something you've only sorta, kinda, looked over briefly?
I looked over them briefly only to respond to a single point in your letter. After that I of course looked at them more carefully. Please don't be oversensitive.
Again, I know of exactly three fundamental limitations of our node tool:
it can't drag segments, only nodes
it can't add nodes in arbitrary place on path
it can't edit nodes of two objects at once.
Plus...
- it can't do all drawing and editing of a path with the mouse and two
keys without leaving the canvas. {If this isn't a significant feature, then neither is Inkscape's use of shortcuts or Inkscape's enhanced shape editing.}
No because Inkscape can do all the same things, except for the big three I listed above, AND it can do it without leaving the canvas, too. Yes it uses much more keys than two, but this may be because it has some additional capabilities. For example can AI drag a node along its handles? Can it scale or rotate handles by keys? Select nodes by keys? etc.
- it can't continue drawing a path once it's been stopped. You can
extend a path in Inkscape, with copying the nodes or whatnot, but that is NOT the same as being able to continue to draw the path with drawing tools.
YES it can. Just switch to Pen or Pencil and continue your path.
If things are so easy to fix, then why don't you get busy fixing them instead of standin' here jawin' away with me? :) {I mean that in the most jovial way possible.}
Hey, what else am I doing these last days? Not fixing, you say? What else then?
bulia byak wrote:
Hey, what else am I doing these last days? Not fixing, you say? What else then?
*big grin*
You rock.
But since you asked... seriously, I just found something else you might be interested in looking at, but I'll save it for a bit.
-Kevin Wixson
You don't expect first year French students to learn perfect French by the end of the first class, either. Baby steps, man.
Well it is not that easy. You are not suppose to learn perfect french out of the first class, but you are NOT suppose to learn wrong french. Why the best time to learn some external language is when you are VERY young (4 years old ?) because you DONT transpose from one language to the other, you learn (as a native speaker do) ... on the run, how it comes.
I do not want to misjudge a work that have been done, but I work with someone coming from press-world (that is Illustrator, photosohp, quark express) 10 years of practice. I decided to switch her from mac to linux and from thoses softs to Inkscape, gimp, scribus.
Sometime, that was a hard day (how can i ... where is the tool that ... why did that do that...) and, as i am not a designer nor users, just web developper i didn't know, i didn't even know what she was speaking about.
Sometimes, reading the mailling list, i discovered some features (such as ctrl+something..) and when i was trying to tell her, she had already discovered it.
The point is if you really want to use one soft like Inkscape, no matter what it does, no matter how it works, no matter how you are used to do things, work with it and just do it (TM inside).
The only thing i could say (and i did it more than hundred times) was : "Yes you can do it, but not the way you were used to do it". Today (that is 6 month latter) she designed web sites with it, i don't think she will accept to swich back to mac.
And, just by the way, because we are here, how much of the Illustrator users we are suppose to 'convince' owns legally the illustator they use : One machine : one license. ?
that is my 2 cts
and one more : speaking to developpers is REALLY important : it is not beause you can't do it with adobe that it must be silenced. The most important thing with Inkscape (and other open source soft) is that you can ASK for YOUR tool or tricks to developpers or (if you can) code it. That CAN'T BE ignored
hervé
participants (9)
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Alan Horkan -
Bob Jamison -
bulia byak -
Craig Bradney -
herve couvelard -
Jakub Steiner -
Joshua A. Andler -
Kevin Wixson