I'd like to thank everyone that helped make this release a success. Often times people focus on coder contributions, but software releases are decidedly multi-disciplinary, and I'd like to specially credit four teams in particular for being well organized, thorough, and dependable.
Before the release really even got started, a strong foundation was built for us by the Bug Triaging Team. Especially after such a lengthy development period, with such extensive changes, there can be an overwhelming number of bugs. But due to how thorough the triaging was, we actually had very good transparency into what needed fixed the most.
In the past, we've learned that packaging of our windows and osx builds can make or break the release, and even a small glitch can throw everything out of wack. We certainly had our share of packaging challenges to overcome, and more that still need solved, but the Packaging Team developed a good strategy for charting us through to the release, to ensure we'd have functional packages for all platforms within two days.
Even now the Translation Team is hard at work on the release announcements and our website. This cycle we allocated ample time to their translation of the application, and I think that paid off in spades.
I think this may be the first release where our Web Team played such a crucial role. They established a solid infrastructure both for editing the website and for mirror-caching our downloadables; we have exercised both these functions extremely heavily the last few days, and while we've had a few brief (but quickly fixed) glitches, the infrastructure appears to be shouldering all the loads without complaint.
~ ~ ~
Going forward, my plan is to keep us on course to deliver at least a couple new major releases each year. So, like perhaps shoot for a 0.92 release this summer or early autumn. Maybe even more frequently than that, but to achieve this I think we will need to tighten up in a few areas.
First is marketing. Unsurprising after 4 years since the last release, our marketing abilities seem to have atrophied quite severely. We recognized this would be a problem and attempted to fix it; it's my fault we didn't get things organized here in time, but fortunately all the other teams filled in. We can try again for 0.92, and I will work harder to ensure we have a good solid marketing team by then.
Second is the release mechanics themselves, which are quite byzantine. Fortunately no one else needed to deal with this but me! A number of steps are manual which should be automated, other steps are redundant but can't be skipped for one reason or other, and there's some steps that have to be carried out by specific people or at specific times. The result is that release management requires handling by someone with release experience to know what knobs need turned and levers need pulled, when and by how much. Instead, we need to systematize all this logic in scripts, so that releases become more like a push-button exercise that any one of us could do.
A third area is user documentation. The only reason this hasn't been a release issue is because we haven't got any! :-) We get away with not shipping documentation thanks to having a quite excellent tutorial writing community and well-crafted release notes; users also thankfully have a selection of third-party commercial documentation to fill the gap. But to be considered as professional software, a user manual is a must. Since it'll need updated each release, this implies the need to create a Documentation Team.
Bryce
P.S. here's some of the press we've gotten so far:
Our news announcement: https://inkscape.org/en/news/2015/01/30/inkscape-version-091-is-released/
Was rather a last minute rush. Hopefully we can do better next time.
Slashdot announcement: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/31/1914255/inkscape-version-091-release...
Amongst the usual comment chaff is some strong praise. "Best of Breed," "One of the handful of apps that together make up a good base set," "One of the coolest things it does [is] converting bitmapped images to vectors," "Have always preferred Inkscape", "Plays nicely with Inkcut - vinyl cutting," "My current business depends on Inkscape. I use Inkscape's 'gcodetools' plugin to generate gcode for a CNC mill." "I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip." "Is it just me, or is this whole thread making you feel nostalgic for the good ol' Slashdot days when we gabbed about stuff that was a lot more fun to gab about?"
Much of the critical feedback is stuff we're already working on: UI design looks out of date, needs porting to Gtk3, needs more functionality before it can supplant Illustrator, Gtk+ is poor on Windows, need a more native L&F on OSX, needs proper CMYK / printing support.
http://fedoramagazine.org/inkscape-0-91-released/
An article by our own Ryan Lerch. A great overview of the release, and would have made a much better news announcement than the one we put out.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Inkscape-0.91-Release...
Unfortunately, this one was a leak of the release before we were ready for it to get out. I suppose they wanted to get the scoop, but with no packages available nor the news release posted, there was little to go on and it caused users some confusion and misunderstanding. I fault myself here for not having the marketing end of things better organized, so we could have kept the release hush-hush until everything was ready to go.
http://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/2u6kxi/new_release_of_inksca...
Reddit also scooped the news release. But the comments here were a bit more interesting. A lot of pro-Inkscape cheer. A few areas where work is needed: Working with text, Saving as .eps, CMYK spot color.
Hopefully Monday we'll see wider uptake of our release.
Since it'll need updated each release, this implies the need to create a Documentation Team.
The web team have all joined the inkscape-docs mailing list and we're committed to being a part of the wider docs team. This provides a home for us instead of reply-all to six people :-) but I think other people will appeciate how much work went in for this release from Maren, Brynn and myself if they can see the discussions and get involved when they see something interesting.
Martin,
Here's another: http://www.webupd8.org/2015/02/inkscape-091-released-with-new-renderer.html
-------------------------------------------------- From: "Bryce Harrington" <bryce@...961...> Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2015 6:28 PM To: <inkscape-devel@...6...> Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Good Press for 0.91
I'd like to thank everyone that helped make this release a success. Often times people focus on coder contributions, but software releases are decidedly multi-disciplinary, and I'd like to specially credit four teams in particular for being well organized, thorough, and dependable.
Before the release really even got started, a strong foundation was built for us by the Bug Triaging Team. Especially after such a lengthy development period, with such extensive changes, there can be an overwhelming number of bugs. But due to how thorough the triaging was, we actually had very good transparency into what needed fixed the most.
In the past, we've learned that packaging of our windows and osx builds can make or break the release, and even a small glitch can throw everything out of wack. We certainly had our share of packaging challenges to overcome, and more that still need solved, but the Packaging Team developed a good strategy for charting us through to the release, to ensure we'd have functional packages for all platforms within two days.
Even now the Translation Team is hard at work on the release announcements and our website. This cycle we allocated ample time to their translation of the application, and I think that paid off in spades.
I think this may be the first release where our Web Team played such a crucial role. They established a solid infrastructure both for editing the website and for mirror-caching our downloadables; we have exercised both these functions extremely heavily the last few days, and while we've had a few brief (but quickly fixed) glitches, the infrastructure appears to be shouldering all the loads without complaint.
~ ~ ~
Going forward, my plan is to keep us on course to deliver at least a couple new major releases each year. So, like perhaps shoot for a 0.92 release this summer or early autumn. Maybe even more frequently than that, but to achieve this I think we will need to tighten up in a few areas.
First is marketing. Unsurprising after 4 years since the last release, our marketing abilities seem to have atrophied quite severely. We recognized this would be a problem and attempted to fix it; it's my fault we didn't get things organized here in time, but fortunately all the other teams filled in. We can try again for 0.92, and I will work harder to ensure we have a good solid marketing team by then.
Second is the release mechanics themselves, which are quite byzantine. Fortunately no one else needed to deal with this but me! A number of steps are manual which should be automated, other steps are redundant but can't be skipped for one reason or other, and there's some steps that have to be carried out by specific people or at specific times. The result is that release management requires handling by someone with release experience to know what knobs need turned and levers need pulled, when and by how much. Instead, we need to systematize all this logic in scripts, so that releases become more like a push-button exercise that any one of us could do.
A third area is user documentation. The only reason this hasn't been a release issue is because we haven't got any! :-) We get away with not shipping documentation thanks to having a quite excellent tutorial writing community and well-crafted release notes; users also thankfully have a selection of third-party commercial documentation to fill the gap. But to be considered as professional software, a user manual is a must. Since it'll need updated each release, this implies the need to create a Documentation Team.
Bryce
P.S. here's some of the press we've gotten so far:
Our news announcement:
https://inkscape.org/en/news/2015/01/30/inkscape-version-091-is-released/
Was rather a last minute rush. Hopefully we can do better next time.
Slashdot announcement:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/31/1914255/inkscape-version-091-release...
Amongst the usual comment chaff is some strong praise. "Best of Breed," "One of the handful of apps that together make up a good base set," "One of the coolest things it does [is] converting bitmapped images to vectors," "Have always preferred Inkscape", "Plays nicely with Inkcut - vinyl cutting," "My current business depends on Inkscape. I use Inkscape's 'gcodetools' plugin to generate gcode for a CNC mill." "I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip." "Is it just me, or is this whole thread making you feel nostalgic for the good ol' Slashdot days when we gabbed about stuff that was a lot more fun to gab about?"
Much of the critical feedback is stuff we're already working on: UI design looks out of date, needs porting to Gtk3, needs more functionality before it can supplant Illustrator, Gtk+ is poor on Windows, need a more native L&F on OSX, needs proper CMYK / printing support.
http://fedoramagazine.org/inkscape-0-91-released/
An article by our own Ryan Lerch. A great overview of the release, and would have made a much better news announcement than the one we put out.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Inkscape-0.91-Release...
Unfortunately, this one was a leak of the release before we were ready for it to get out. I suppose they wanted to get the scoop, but with no packages available nor the news release posted, there was little to go on and it caused users some confusion and misunderstanding. I fault myself here for not having the marketing end of things better organized, so we could have kept the release hush-hush until everything was ready to go.
http://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/2u6kxi/new_release_of_inksca...
Reddit also scooped the news release. But the comments here were a bit more interesting. A lot of pro-Inkscape cheer. A few areas where work is needed: Working with text, Saving as .eps, CMYK spot color.
Hopefully Monday we'll see wider uptake of our release.
Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 um 06:20 Uhr Von: Brynn <brynn@...3133...> An: inkscape-devel@...6... Betreff: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Good Press for 0.91
Here's another: http://www.webupd8.org/2015/02/inkscape-091-released-with-new-renderer.html
FWIW, the article on Inkscape 0.91 I wrote for the Swiss "Publisher" magazine has been postponed to issue 2-2015, probably due to the shock of the decision of the Swiss central bank to let the frank's value float freely, which may have led to the editors' decision to reduce the number of pages for the time being. I assume they'll wait until the dust has settled before they make any decisions on the future size of their magazine. The 0.91 release will be mentioned in the "Software News" section of 1-2015, though, alongside Scribus 1.4.5.
The delay isn't necessarily bad news, because my article was based on 0.91-pre3. I can now update the text to include the changes made for 0.91 final.
Best,
Christoph
And here another whith a great video! http://www.jesusda.com/blog/index.php?id=508
On Wed, 2015-02-04 at 22:20 -0700, Brynn wrote:
Here's another: http://www.webupd8.org/2015/02/inkscape-091-released-with-new-renderer.html
From: "Bryce Harrington" <bryce@...961...> Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2015 6:28 PM To: <inkscape-devel@...6...> Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Good Press for 0.91
I'd like to thank everyone that helped make this release a success. Often times people focus on coder contributions, but software releases are decidedly multi-disciplinary, and I'd like to specially credit four teams in particular for being well organized, thorough, and dependable.
Before the release really even got started, a strong foundation was built for us by the Bug Triaging Team. Especially after such a lengthy development period, with such extensive changes, there can be an overwhelming number of bugs. But due to how thorough the triaging was, we actually had very good transparency into what needed fixed the most.
In the past, we've learned that packaging of our windows and osx builds can make or break the release, and even a small glitch can throw everything out of wack. We certainly had our share of packaging challenges to overcome, and more that still need solved, but the Packaging Team developed a good strategy for charting us through to the release, to ensure we'd have functional packages for all platforms within two days.
Even now the Translation Team is hard at work on the release announcements and our website. This cycle we allocated ample time to their translation of the application, and I think that paid off in spades.
I think this may be the first release where our Web Team played such a crucial role. They established a solid infrastructure both for editing the website and for mirror-caching our downloadables; we have exercised both these functions extremely heavily the last few days, and while we've had a few brief (but quickly fixed) glitches, the infrastructure appears to be shouldering all the loads without complaint.
~ ~ ~
Going forward, my plan is to keep us on course to deliver at least a couple new major releases each year. So, like perhaps shoot for a 0.92 release this summer or early autumn. Maybe even more frequently than that, but to achieve this I think we will need to tighten up in a few areas.
First is marketing. Unsurprising after 4 years since the last release, our marketing abilities seem to have atrophied quite severely. We recognized this would be a problem and attempted to fix it; it's my fault we didn't get things organized here in time, but fortunately all the other teams filled in. We can try again for 0.92, and I will work harder to ensure we have a good solid marketing team by then.
Second is the release mechanics themselves, which are quite byzantine. Fortunately no one else needed to deal with this but me! A number of steps are manual which should be automated, other steps are redundant but can't be skipped for one reason or other, and there's some steps that have to be carried out by specific people or at specific times. The result is that release management requires handling by someone with release experience to know what knobs need turned and levers need pulled, when and by how much. Instead, we need to systematize all this logic in scripts, so that releases become more like a push-button exercise that any one of us could do.
A third area is user documentation. The only reason this hasn't been a release issue is because we haven't got any! :-) We get away with not shipping documentation thanks to having a quite excellent tutorial writing community and well-crafted release notes; users also thankfully have a selection of third-party commercial documentation to fill the gap. But to be considered as professional software, a user manual is a must. Since it'll need updated each release, this implies the need to create a Documentation Team.
Bryce
P.S. here's some of the press we've gotten so far:
Our news announcement:
https://inkscape.org/en/news/2015/01/30/inkscape-version-091-is-released/
Was rather a last minute rush. Hopefully we can do better next time.
Slashdot announcement:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/31/1914255/inkscape-version-091-release...
Amongst the usual comment chaff is some strong praise. "Best of Breed," "One of the handful of apps that together make up a good base set," "One of the coolest things it does [is] converting bitmapped images to vectors," "Have always preferred Inkscape", "Plays nicely with Inkcut - vinyl cutting," "My current business depends on Inkscape. I use Inkscape's 'gcodetools' plugin to generate gcode for a CNC mill." "I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip." "Is it just me, or is this whole thread making you feel nostalgic for the good ol' Slashdot days when we gabbed about stuff that was a lot more fun to gab about?"
Much of the critical feedback is stuff we're already working on: UI design looks out of date, needs porting to Gtk3, needs more functionality before it can supplant Illustrator, Gtk+ is poor on Windows, need a more native L&F on OSX, needs proper CMYK / printing support.
http://fedoramagazine.org/inkscape-0-91-released/
An article by our own Ryan Lerch. A great overview of the release, and would have made a much better news announcement than the one we put out.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Inkscape-0.91-Release...
Unfortunately, this one was a leak of the release before we were ready for it to get out. I suppose they wanted to get the scoop, but with no packages available nor the news release posted, there was little to go on and it caused users some confusion and misunderstanding. I fault myself here for not having the marketing end of things better organized, so we could have kept the release hush-hush until everything was ready to go.
http://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/2u6kxi/new_release_of_inksca...
Reddit also scooped the news release. But the comments here were a bit more interesting. A lot of pro-Inkscape cheer. A few areas where work is needed: Working with text, Saving as .eps, CMYK spot color.
Hopefully Monday we'll see wider uptake of our release.
Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
Le 02/02/2015 02:28, Bryce Harrington a écrit :
I'd like to thank everyone that helped make this release a success. Often times people focus on coder contributions, but software releases are decidedly multi-disciplinary, and I'd like to specially credit four teams in particular for being well organized, thorough, and dependable.
and so on...
Hi!
First I want to thank all the team about the release of 0.91, it's a great milestone, I use it a lot since the release, and if I could complain about some bugs and other few things, it's a good step. I particulary appreciate the rendering, that is much faster, I really thank for this, it was just a pain before, with drawings with a ton of filters.
In the same time, 2 major flaws slapped me on the face, and that's why I'm writing this e-mail (and because I've got time, too). But I want to say that I don't want to be rude or offense anyone here, let me be clear : My thoughts are... thoughts, not commandments. However, I would be pleased if they are useful for the future, because I think they are important, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who think that. (by the way, english is not my natural language...)
My first concern is about the svg format itself, that prevents the soft to go further than the format allows to. My only question is : who cares about the format ? Let me explain. If we take 100 guys who are using Inkscape in a intensive way, how many do need to follow the standard ? - If I need diagrams of things like that, svg is OK but other formats exist and are better for this purpose. - If I am a cartographer, I may use svg, but other formats are more accurate. - If I'm an artist, I don't care to be displayable directly in Firefox or Chrome, because I won't share the original drawing anyway, for obvious copyrights problems, I'll publish a png or jpg (in a small size) instead. Except in Wikipedia and sites about Inkscape, I never saw a drawing in svg. Never. Even the great manual online made by Tavmjong Bah shows examples in png ! I think that there's no picture in svg in Deviantart or sites like that. - And so on.
My point is : Today many features aren't in Inskape because it's not in the format (remember the new gradient tool, shown here one week ago. Amazing. It's not in the actual standard so we won't be able to use it ? Seriously ???) and I say, I don't care, because when I draw """art""" I don't want to be restrained by a standard, even if it's well designed like svg.
And here comes my second concern, it's about the way of how many tools are working. LPE, filters, extensions, transform, align and distribute. I do know that there is some "history" behind these tools, but why don't they work together, why don't we have a single UI for all tools, why don't we have an UI like the one used for Cycles in Blender to handle those ? Even few functions are duplicated, we have an extension and a LPE function for the same purpose, but not with exact behavior. I'm an industrial drawer. So all applications that I'm using have historic, all action can be changed or undone. There's almost no such thing in Inkscape (except LPE and the filters) and it's pretty sad. Because with all tools usable under an UI like Cycles, I could do many things and change/delete/improve them when I want. The data would be stored in the header of the file (like filters or 3D boxes) and I could change/re-use them when I want. I could imagine complex filters with transformations, LPE, and so on, at once, with a total control.
By the way when will we have a script language for making our own add-ons, without the obligation to do it in C++ ? Why all the functions/commands can't be invoqued by a command line ? Why can't we have something like script in Blender ? It would be so useful for people to make their own macros, and share them easily. Another issue that prevents Inskcape to be really popular like The Gimp (script-fu) or Blender.
Again, I don't want to insult anyone. Inkscape is not just "better than nothing", it's already a great tool, and it's for free. But tomorrow, if a new tool with all features above is available, I'll say goodbye to Inkscape, and no turning back, even if it costs hundred bucks (but no more).
Your sincerly, Francois.
PS : What do I want the most for 0.92 or 1.00 ? This tool... --> Perspective ruler to help drawing perspective (example : http://www.clipstudio.net/view/img/en/functions/func_en_27.jpg) with 1 to 3 vanishing points. You did it for 3D boxes. An extent of the concept, maybe ?
2015-02-15 17:20 GMT+01:00 Teto <teto45@...2519...>:
Le 02/02/2015 02:28, Bryce Harrington a écrit :
I'd like to thank everyone that helped make this release a success. Often times people focus on coder contributions, but software releases are decidedly multi-disciplinary, and I'd like to specially credit four teams in particular for being well organized, thorough, and dependable.
and so on...
Hi!
First I want to thank all the team about the release of 0.91, it's a great milestone, I use it a lot since the release, and if I could complain about some bugs and other few things, it's a good step. I particulary appreciate the rendering, that is much faster, I really thank for this, it was just a pain before, with drawings with a ton of filters.
In the same time, 2 major flaws slapped me on the face, and that's why I'm writing this e-mail (and because I've got time, too). But I want to say that I don't want to be rude or offense anyone here, let me be clear : My thoughts are... thoughts, not commandments. However, I would be pleased if they are useful for the future, because I think they are important, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who think that. (by the way, english is not my natural language...)
My first concern is about the svg format itself, that prevents the soft to go further than the format allows to. My only question is : who cares about the format ?
I would say millions of people.
A major driving force behind the use of Inkscape is that you can open its files directly in web browsers and upload them to Wikimedia Commons and OCAL. One of the reasons Inkscape forked from Sodipodi was that the main author of Sodipodi wanted to extend the file format in incompatible ways, while would-be Inkscape devs wanted to stay SVG-compatible. I guess the fact that Inkscape prospered and Sodipodi didn't proves that this decision was right.
Let me explain. If we take 100 guys who are using Inkscape in a intensive way, how many do need to follow the standard ?
- If I need diagrams of things like that, svg is OK but other formats
exist and are better for this purpose.
SVG is definitely the best open format for diagrams. The only ones that come to mind are either closed (WMF, EMF, Visio) or are not designed with editing in mind (EPS, PDF).
- If I am a cartographer, I may use svg, but other formats are more
accurate.
- If I'm an artist, I don't care to be displayable directly in Firefox
or Chrome, because I won't share the original drawing anyway, for obvious copyrights problems, I'll publish a png or jpg (in a small size) instead. Except in Wikipedia and sites about Inkscape, I never saw a drawing in svg. Never. Even the great manual online made by Tavmjong Bah shows examples in png ! I think that there's no picture in svg in Deviantart or sites like that.
- And so on.
My point is : Today many features aren't in Inskape because it's not in the format (remember the new gradient tool, shown here one week ago. Amazing. It's not in the actual standard so we won't be able to use it ? Seriously ???) and I say, I don't care, because when I draw """art""" I don't want to be restrained by a standard, even if it's well designed like svg.
It's not as simple as that. The reason some things are not in Inkscape is that we have accumulated a lot of technical debt (simply speaking, mess in the code) and some things are much harder for the programmer than they should be. Specifically, it's not easy to create and manage svg:switch to store both Inkscape's editing data and its SVG representation for display. The answer is to fix the underlying problem rather than invent our own file format.
And here comes my second concern, it's about the way of how many tools are working. LPE, filters, extensions, transform, align and distribute. I do know that there is some "history" behind these tools, but why don't they work together, why don't we have a single UI for all tools, why don't we have an UI like the one used for Cycles in Blender to handle those ? Even few functions are duplicated, we have an extension and a LPE function for the same purpose, but not with exact behavior.
Same reason as above, technical debt. The way LPE data is stored in the SVG file causes several problems in the rest of the application.
I'm an industrial drawer. So all applications that I'm using have historic, all action can be changed or undone. There's almost no such thing in Inkscape (except LPE and the filters) and it's pretty sad. Because with all tools usable under an UI like Cycles, I could do many things and change/delete/improve them when I want. The data would be stored in the header of the file (like filters or 3D boxes) and I could change/re-use them when I want. I could imagine complex filters with transformations, LPE, and so on, at once, with a total control.
By the way when will we have a script language for making our own add-ons, without the obligation to do it in C++ ? Why all the functions/commands can't be invoqued by a command line ? Why can't we have something like script in Blender ? It would be so useful for people to make their own macros, and share them easily. Another issue that prevents Inskcape to be really popular like The Gimp (script-fu) or Blender.
Extensions can be written in any language, they just take an SVG document as input and have to produce a changed SVG document as output - they're not limited to C++.
Blender has a lot more funding compared to Inkscape, so it's no surprise it has more features.
Regards, Krzysztof
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
SVG is definitely the best open format for diagrams. The only ones that come to mind are either closed (WMF, EMF, Visio)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc215212.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc230514.aspx
Blender has a lot more funding compared to Inkscape, so it's no surprise it has more features.
Blender has more funding, because it's managed by an entrepreneur. Everything else -- from selling educational content to fund full-time development to building a high-profile community of passionate users who get things done -- is the direct result of that.
Personally, I don't think that blaming lack of features on SVG is sensible. Creating your own file format does speed up adding new features, because you control everything, but it also tends to lead to crappy design decisions regarding the file format (quite notable in case of Macromedia Freehand, for instance) which then have to be maintained (note that proprietary software often drops *really* old file formats support, e.g. today Corel DRAW would only open v7 file format or so, not any of the earlier versions).
On the other hand, getting stuff right and making a sensible open standard takes ages -- SVG2 is a case in point -- which is simply how pretty much every committee operates. So one makes one's his/her life difficult one way or another.
Alex
2015-02-15 20:23 GMT+01:00 Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@...400...>:
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
SVG is definitely the best open format for diagrams. The only ones that
come
to mind are either closed (WMF, EMF, Visio)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc215212.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc230514.aspx
Yes, I know about this - documented != open.
Regards, Krzysztof
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 10:46 PM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
Yes, I know about this - documented != open.
I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me :)
Documented and published for everyone to see == open. Period.
Now, if it was documented and closed behind paywall (e.g. in commecially available SDK), that wouldn't be open. But those are in the open. They are proprietary, that is, controlled by a single commercial entity, but that is entirely different matter.
Alex
On 15 February 2015 at 11:20, Teto <teto45@...2519...> wrote:
My first concern is about the svg format itself, that prevents the soft to go further than the format allows to. My only question is : who cares about the format ?
I do. An open standard is important. Even if some of the features we have aren't standard, we strive for compatible output. We failed with the text tool and it's been haunting us ever since.
Let's not do that again.
I never saw a drawing in svg.
Yes you did, you just didn't notice because it looked so natural on the page.
I think that there's no picture in svg in Deviantart or sites like that.
Funny you should mention deviantArt. Their new logo is svg. Right in the page there.
Then we have the huge brony community that have championed the use of svg and inkscape because of how easy it is to share and collaborate. They work around deviantart's restrictions to post svg documents to their stash pages.
why don't we have a single UI for all tools,
Because it would cost about $50 million and more programmers than are possibly available. The amount of energy required to sync up and do design properly across such a large and diverse set of programs is over 9000!
Again, I don't want to insult anyone. Inkscape is not just "better than nothing", it's already a great tool, and it's for free. But tomorrow, if a new tool with all features above is available, I'll say goodbye to Inkscape, and no turning back, even if it costs hundred bucks (but no more).
All of the problems you have could be helped with better funding. A hard problem, we're working on solving. Would you contribute that $100 to making inkscape better?
Martin,
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On 15 February 2015 at 11:20, Teto <teto45@...2519...> wrote:
Again, I don't want to insult anyone. Inkscape is not just "better than nothing", it's already a great tool, and it's for free. But tomorrow, if a new tool with all features above is available, I'll say goodbye to Inkscape, and no turning back, even if it costs hundred bucks (but no more).
All of the problems you have could be helped with better funding. A hard problem, we're working on solving. Would you contribute that $100 to making inkscape better?
To further add to what Martin was saying, here's some info about the current initiative we're working on.
https://inkscape.org/en/support-us/hackfest/
Cheers, Josh
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Martin Owens wrote:
why don't we have a single UI for all tools,
Because it would cost about $50 million and more programmers than are possibly available. The amount of energy required to sync up and do design properly across such a large and diverse set of programs is over 9000!
Martin, I would start with "no team is ready to even approach the subject beyond a few common user interaction solutions" :)
E.g. years ago I did a study, how many hotkeys can be shared between different applications. Turned out, not too many. Driving apps further in that direction would imply dramatically changing user interaction in each of them, and not necessarily for the better (for instance, it would limit the way that developers can enhance the tools), and some of the developers would rather die than go for that (the sK1 team, for instance, is deliberately cloning Corel DRAW's user interaction).
Even Adobe's suite has known user interaction incompatibilities between apps. They do try to hunt them down, but the suite is controlled by a single commercial entity, wheareas Inkscape, GIMP, MyPaint, Krita, Blender etc. are apps developed by different teams with different ideas.
The libre design suite is a dream, but, in my all-but-humble opinion, having mature design apps that don't share some design decisions, but are compatible via open standards, is good enough to build production pipelines.
All of the problems you have could be helped with better funding. A hard problem, we're working on solving. Would you contribute that $100 to making inkscape better?
If you can take just one more comment from me :), I would suggest thinking of a more detailed agenda for the hackfest.
"Being together in one room also allows us to work on things that are harder to do on-line: designing a new plugin/extension system, teaming up to squash particularly nasty bugs, authoring better user documentation, and planning where to take Inkscape development in the future." is a bit specific, but only that much.
Fundraising works best when people see stuff like this:
1) We want to bring X developers together who have shown interest to work on A, B, C, and D features or fixing this and that infamous bugs.
2) Implementing those features/Fixing those bugs will benefit you in E, F, and G ways.
3) We have G,H, I, J, and K developers who epxressed their interest in participating. They are known for doing L, M, N, and O work, so they are skillful and already made stuff you most likely benefitted from.
If you think that at this stage you would be able to do something like that, it would likely get you more funds.
Alex
Le 15/02/2015 21:19, Alexandre Prokoudine a écrit :
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Martin Owens wrote:
why don't we have a single UI for all tools,
Because it would cost about $50 million and more programmers than are possibly available. The amount of energy required to sync up and do design properly across such a large and diverse set of programs is over 9000!
Martin, I would start with "no team is ready to even approach the subject beyond a few common user interaction solutions" :)
E.g. years ago I did a study, how many hotkeys can be shared between different applications. Turned out, not too many. Driving apps further in that direction would imply dramatically changing user interaction in each of them, and not necessarily for the better (for instance, it would limit the way that developers can enhance the tools), and some of the developers would rather die than go for that (the sK1 team, for instance, is deliberately cloning Corel DRAW's user interaction).
Even Adobe's suite has known user interaction incompatibilities between apps. They do try to hunt them down, but the suite is controlled by a single commercial entity, wheareas Inkscape, GIMP, MyPaint, Krita, Blender etc. are apps developed by different teams with different ideas.
The libre design suite is a dream, but, in my all-but-humble opinion, having mature design apps that don't share some design decisions, but are compatible via open standards, is good enough to build production pipelines.
All of the problems you have could be helped with better funding. A hard problem, we're working on solving. Would you contribute that $100 to making inkscape better?
If you can take just one more comment from me :), I would suggest thinking of a more detailed agenda for the hackfest.
"Being together in one room also allows us to work on things that are harder to do on-line: designing a new plugin/extension system, teaming up to squash particularly nasty bugs, authoring better user documentation, and planning where to take Inkscape development in the future." is a bit specific, but only that much.
Fundraising works best when people see stuff like this:
- We want to bring X developers together who have shown interest to
work on A, B, C, and D features or fixing this and that infamous bugs.
- Implementing those features/Fixing those bugs will benefit you in
E, F, and G ways.
- We have G,H, I, J, and K developers who epxressed their interest in
participating. They are known for doing L, M, N, and O work, so they are skillful and already made stuff you most likely benefitted from.
If you think that at this stage you would be able to do something like that, it would likely get you more funds.
Alex
Thank you Alexandre for your answer and I'll use it for my answer to all people after my last message :
- I thank you for this message because when I read the annoucement for the hackfest I didn't understand what it's about and why I'd give money for having people around a table and talking about Inskcape. I'm serious. So thanks for selling me the concept (better).
- Someone talked about Deviantart and something like "that's funny that you said that nothing in deviantart is made with svg, because the logo is made with svg, actually, hahaha, gotcha !". *Sigh*. I think there's some difference between a site made for the most part in svg for graphics, and a site with just its logo. And I was talking about artists that may draw with vector software, but never share their work directly in svg or other vector format, for obvious reasons. Oh, well, never mind.
- Also, It's not because svg is the best format for diagrams that it is widely used for them. In my professional work, when people need to make a diagram, they use Powerpoint, or a soft made specifically for diagrams, not a soft like Inskcape that is not designed to draw easily and quickly complex diagrams (I tried, and I had hard time).
- Someone told me about giving 100$ to help for development. Yep, sure, except that now I'm sure that Inkscape will never be what I wish. Unify the UI for tools like Filters, LPE and so on ? Don't count on that, you said, because of "debts" and the fact that it's too much work. OK, so you tell me that you'll never touch of those "debts" ? Do you realize that a day or another, you soft will be stuck because of this, and it will be impossible to improve because "really too much work" ? Is it really not possible to change that now, when it's not too late ? (or maybe it's already too late ?) Now I clearly see what Inkscape will be. A soft that can draw in the svg (2, 5, whatever) standard, but with an user interface that is a pain to use for many tools, and limited by its own structure. Sorry, I won't pay 100$ for this. I'll prefer pay that for a soft that fits my """artist""" needs.
Don't get me wrong. Again, I don't want fo insult anyone. The soft is great, and fairly perfect for 80% of my needs. But I do know now that for more ambitious drawings I'll need another vector soft, more artist-oriented. There are many cheap softs for painters (really good, and without a standard to follow !), no doubt there will be new softs for vector artists sooner or later (Illustrator doesn't count, too expensive).
Cheers, Francois.
17 февр. 2015 г. 0:20 пользователь "Teto" <teto45@...2519...> написал:
- Someone told me about giving 100$ to help for development. Yep, sure,
except that now I'm sure that Inkscape will never be what I wish. Unify the UI for tools like Filters, LPE and so on ? Don't count on that, you said, because of "debts" and the fact that it's too much work.
François,
I'm not sure that you understood it right. Or maybe Krzysztof was too quick with his reply. Certain things in Inkscape's UI are certainly fixable, but not in 3 days of the hackfest. For example, there's no reason why Inkscape couldn't have a node-based editor for Filters, as there is no "technical debt" there, but 1) it's not something you can code in 3 days, 2) it appears that some users are, unfortunately, against this idea.
What I *think* should happen is that someone sits down and patiently writes down all the problems Inkscape has with its UI and then maybe someone else with good understanding of the code prioritizes the problems based on how much work it is to fix each of them. Then we would have a better idea, what's a hackfest material, and what could be worked on duing either Google Summer of Code or our own upcoming paid development program.
To sum it up, Inkscape is not a lost cause. But the project probably needs a boring formal approach towards identification and elimination of its shortcomings.
Alex
About Filters Editor UI I hope my advice in the past didn't prevent anybody to work at a node-based UI. I am sure that should be a must for the users who already work with 3D programs and a chance to see more people involved in filters design. No problems if this kind of change force me to learn something new ;-) I would never be a blokker :-)
ivan
Le Mardi 17 février 2015 2h04, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> a écrit :
17 февр. 2015 г. 0:20 пользователь "Teto" <teto45@...2519...> написал:> - Someone told me about giving 100$ to help for development. Yep, sure,
except that now I'm sure that Inkscape will never be what I wish. Unify the UI for tools like Filters, LPE and so on ? Don't count on that, you said, because of "debts" and the fact that it's too much work. François,I'm not sure that you understood it right. Or maybe Krzysztof was too quick with his reply. Certain things in Inkscape's UI are certainly fixable, but not in 3 days of the hackfest. For example, there's no reason why Inkscape couldn't have a node-based editor for Filters, as there is no "technical debt" there, but 1) it's not something you can code in 3 days, 2) it appears that some users are, unfortunately, against this idea.What I *think* should happen is that someone sits down and patiently writes down all the problems Inkscape has with its UI and then maybe someone else with good understanding of the code prioritizes the problems based on how much work it is to fix each of them. Then we would have a better idea, what's a hackfest material, and what could be worked on duing either Google Summer of Code or our own upcoming paid development program.To sum it up, Inkscape is not a lost cause. But the project probably needs a boring formal approach towards identification and elimination of its shortcomings.Alex
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Alexandre,
Thanks for your reply. The answers I had yesterday were quick, yes, and sometimes with traces of irritation. Your few words reinsure me. Nothing is definitively lost about the UI for such important tools (for artists) like Filters, LPE and so on.
I really think that's it's important, more than having new features, because the more we delay about that, the more it will painful to correct/change after. Also, by the way, improve filters is an obvious task to think about (add features like size, rotation, and be able to show/hide steps in a filter). A good goal for the Google Summer of code, maybe ?
-> "To sum it up, Inkscape is not a lost cause" : Really pleased to read that !
Cheers, Francois.
Le 17/02/2015 02:03, Alexandre Prokoudine a écrit :
17 февр. 2015 г. 0:20 пользователь "Teto" <teto45@...2519... mailto:teto45@...2519...> написал:
- Someone told me about giving 100$ to help for development. Yep, sure,
except that now I'm sure that Inkscape will never be what I wish. Unify the UI for tools like Filters, LPE and so on ? Don't count on that, you said, because of "debts" and the fact that it's too much work.
François,
I'm not sure that you understood it right. Or maybe Krzysztof was too quick with his reply. Certain things in Inkscape's UI are certainly fixable, but not in 3 days of the hackfest. For example, there's no reason why Inkscape couldn't have a node-based editor for Filters, as there is no "technical debt" there, but 1) it's not something you can code in 3 days, 2) it appears that some users are, unfortunately, against this idea.
What I *think* should happen is that someone sits down and patiently writes down all the problems Inkscape has with its UI and then maybe someone else with good understanding of the code prioritizes the problems based on how much work it is to fix each of them. Then we would have a better idea, what's a hackfest material, and what could be worked on duing either Google Summer of Code or our own upcoming paid development program.
To sum it up, Inkscape is not a lost cause. But the project probably needs a boring formal approach towards identification and elimination of its shortcomings.
Alex
2015-02-17 2:03 GMT+01:00 Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@...400...>:
17 февр. 2015 г. 0:20 пользователь "Teto" <teto45@...2519...> написал:
- Someone told me about giving 100$ to help for development. Yep, sure,
except that now I'm sure that Inkscape will never be what I wish. Unify the UI for tools like Filters, LPE and so on ? Don't count on that, you said, because of "debts" and the fact that it's too much work.
François,
I'm not sure that you understood it right. Or maybe Krzysztof was too quick with his reply. Certain things in Inkscape's UI are certainly fixable, but not in 3 days of the hackfest. For example, there's no reason why Inkscape couldn't have a node-based editor for Filters, as there is no "technical debt" there, but 1) it's not something you can code in 3 days, 2) it appears that some users are, unfortunately, against this idea.
True, probably I was unclear.
"Technical debt" simply means that there is a lot of mess in some places and it will require some time to sort out. But it is entirely fixable.
FWIW I think better integration of LPEs into something like the modifier stack known from 3D Studio Max would be a really great feature. But I would not attempt this without first making some internal changes, otherwise we could code ourselves into a corner.
Regards, Krzysztof
On 15/02/15 19:59, Martin Owens wrote:
Then we have the huge brony community that have championed the use of svg and inkscape because of how easy it is to share and collaborate. They work around deviantart's restrictions to post svg documents to their stash pages.
There is some integration of sta.sh into deviantart, when submitting to the latter one can simply choose the svg file (or a zip archive or whatever) as "main file" and the rendered png file as "preview image", works fine, I do it all the time.
Alexander
participants (11)
-
"Christoph Schäfer" -
Alexander Brock -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Bryce Harrington -
Brynn -
Ivan Louette -
Jabier Arraiza -
Josh Andler -
Krzysztof Kosiński -
Martin Owens -
Teto