On 9/13/05, Michael Salsbury <msalsbury@...58...> wrote:

I've only very recently heard of Inkscape (say in the last couple of months). Recently I downloaded the software and tried it out on a Mac OS X machine, as part of an article I'm researching for my blog. After spending a few hours with Inkscape, I was impressed enough with your work to write a "compare and contrast" review for my blog:

http://mikesalsbury.com/mambo/content/view/231/1/

Thanks, very much appreciated! I wish there were more such comparisons for different vector editors. I added a link to it to our FH page:

http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MacromediaFreehand

I'm cc'ing the devel list so others can comment too.

My comments:

Import:

Actually you're being too kind to Inkscape, its import plainly sucks. It can import all these formats, but in many cases this requires installing additional helper apps, and the quality is generally poor.

Automatically draw a "connector" between objects, which works something like the arrows on a flowcharting tool

We will have a first draft of the Connector tool in 0.43.

A variety of "effects" for manipulating objects, like fractalization

Many path effects are available in the Effect menu, which is currently off by default. You need to have Python installed for extensions to work. We plan to make them work out of the box in a future version. Among others we have Kochify fractal effect and node randomization.

In Inkscape, it appears you can only select one end of the color you're trying to create the gradient from. The other color it uses is apparently the background color underneath that object.

No, of course not. It's only that the DEFAULT gradient goes from opaque to transparent of the same color. Of course you can change both colors and transparency of both ends of gradient (and of additional stops in between, though this is currently less intuitive than it should be). For example in Gradient tool select the bottom handle, open Fill&Stroke or Swatches and assign green color with no transparency to that handle. You can also use the Dropper to assign colors to the gradient handles. Or you can edit the gradient in the Gradient Editor (double click a handle to open it).