Rejuvenate Sodipodi as 'Inkscape Lite'
You guys are going to laugh at this suggestion ...but I thought that I would ask anyway.
I'm the lead developer of Puppy Linux. Puppy Linux is extremely small, the live-CD is only 70M and we have a full suite of GUI applications, including Seamonkey, Abiword, Gnumeric and Inkscape.
Up until recently we had Sodipodi in Puppy, but many people complained they did not like the user interface (although I personally find it okay). So, I went over to Inkscape, but that uses Gtkmm and the binary package is about FIVE TIMES BIGGER than Sodipodi.
One of the key features of Puppy is that when booting from CD, the whole thing loads into RAM, thus freeing up the CD drive for other uses, also giving incredible speed. We use squashfs to keep it small. Our target is that Puppy must load into RAM on a 128M PC, however Puppy is now getting a bit too fat.
What I would really like is to go back to Sodipodi. I will then be able to dump the Gtkmm library (about 4M uncompressed) and Inkscape (about 6M uncompressed). Sodipodi is only about 2M. To satisfy the critics and to greatly rejuvinate the Sodipodi project, redesigning the menu to a "conventional" one would be truly fantastic.
That '6M' figure is for a cut-down Inkscape, with docs and inkview removed, and some other items either removed or cutdown (like the about.svg file).
I contacted one of the old developers of Sodipodi and he explained that there were personality conflicts that caused the Inkscape project fork, then Sodipodi had some bursts of activity, then died. He also warned me the code is crappy in places.
What I'm thinking of is a "Inkscape Lite" based on the Sodipodi code, with some improvements backported from the full Inkscape. The number one thing would be to change the menu structure to the "normal" arrangement.
Is this suggestion totally outrageous? Any Inkscape developer guy with considerable experience with Sodipodi code may consider this idea to be attractive?
Regards, Barry Kauler Puppy URL: http://www.puppyos.com/ My Puppy Developer News page: http://www.puppyos.net/news/ Forum: http://www.murga.org/~puppy/ ________________________________________________
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On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 10:52:08AM +1000, Void wrote:
You guys are going to laugh at this suggestion ...but I thought that I would ask anyway.
Up until recently we had Sodipodi in Puppy, but many people complained they did not like the user interface (although I personally find it okay). So, I went over to Inkscape, but that uses Gtkmm and the binary package is about FIVE TIMES BIGGER than Sodipodi.
Note that Gtkmm itself is not the cause of this size increase. There are a number of libraries that have been added to Inkscape to enable so many of the features it's gained over the years. Gtkmm is just one of these additions.
The real cause is probably the fact that we shifted from C to C++. Compiled C++ code is well known to require more disk space and memory. Inkscape doubled in size overnight when we shifted from C-based compilation to C++-based compilation. Gtkmm and other libs are in C++ so they're in the same situation.
What I would really like is to go back to Sodipodi. I will then be able to dump the Gtkmm library (about 4M uncompressed) and Inkscape (about 6M uncompressed). Sodipodi is only about 2M. To satisfy the critics and to greatly rejuvinate the Sodipodi project, redesigning the menu to a "conventional" one would be truly fantastic.
Is this suggestion totally outrageous? Any
Yes, it does seem illogical... If your goal is simply to have a lighter weight drawing tool, then why not just use an older version of Inkscape? Version 0.35 is basically the same as Sodipodi 0.34, except with a lot of code cleanup and bug fixes. Inkscape 0.36 would probably be a better choice - it's still from before we fully moved to C++ (I think it's the only version of Sodipodi or Inkscape that compiles perfectly using either a C or C++ compiler), and the rpm is actually smaller than the sodipodi 0.34 rpm (867 kb for Inkscape vs. 1.15M for Sodipodi). Plus, Inkscape 0.36 is when we switched from the CSDI interface to the current SDI one, so since your users are asking for the SDI type interface, it would be logical to start from this, instead of having to reinvent all that work yourself. Plus, you'd be more likely to get some support from Inkscape developers if you run into bugs or wish to backport things, than if you were developing from something derived directly from Sodipodi.
Look at http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/PastMilestones to see what things were done in the early days of Inkscape. You should also review the release notes for these early versions to see what features you'd gain or lose for selecting different versions.
E.g. http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes035 http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes036
Bryce
participants (2)
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Bryce Harrington -
Void