From: Alan Horkan <horkana@...3...> Reply-To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Inkscape-user] My impressions on Inkscape Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:37:26 +0000 (GMT)
On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:15:18 -0800 (PST) From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...69...> Reply-To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Inkscape-user] My impressions on Inkscape
On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Jozsef Mak wrote:
Inkscape, in some ways, is in a similar situation as Freehand was a
few
years ago. It is new,
I'm pretty sure Freehand has been around a long time (the wikipedia article about Illustrator talks about Aldus Freehand on the Macintosh many moons ago) but that doesn't make any of your other comments less true. There are clearly times when back compatibility needs to be sacrificied to make progress and reach a wider audience.
it doesnt have to worry backward compatibility issues
and free to think out a development strategy which can make it
flexible (in
terms of usability) and in the mean time it can devise its own
character. In
my view, it makes lots of sense to take a good look at the commercial programs, adapt what is great in them, and discard the rest. This way
of
approaching to developing Inkscape would not make it a clone; far from
it.
Yup, exactly, you got it. We want to synthesize good ideas from a lot of sources and hopefully produce something which pushes the ball forward in a few areas, too. :-)
If you look through Inkscape's Wiki, you can see some pages that people have written that review various applications. It would be wonderful to flesh those out further, and add more pages about additional applications.
I spent a while adding comments recently on a variety of applicatiosn but I'd appreciate comments on the strenghts of FreeHand in particular because I have only tried it briefly and found it extremly weird in comparision to applications I had used before, only my brief use of Flash prepared me for it.
I'm trying to avoid negative comments about other applictions or dwelling for too long on what Inkscape does better than these other applications because (it is unnecessary and) negative comparison advertising is not a great idea.
- Alan
Hi Alan,
I have been using Freehand for many years (I even wrote a small book on it, though it has never been published) so I can tell you a few things what I find great about this program. It is true, as you said that the program had been around before Macromedia bought it. I guess, Aldus Freehand couldnt attract enough users and when macromedia bought the app it could safely ignore the small number of users and could go ahead designing a great product out of it. But even a fine program as Freehand is now, couldnt manage to grab more than 25% of the market (Ive learned this recently by reading an interview with macromedia marketing official) due to Adobes monopoly of the marketplace.
Freehand have all the bells and whistles that most programs have in this category. (Bezier curves, pencil, eraser, shapes and so on.) Among all the programs Ive ever used, Freehand has the best implementation of gradients and color management; plus the finest interface.
From the gradient options you can chose Linear, Radial, Logarithmic, Contour
and Cone. You can further modify each of these by applying Normal, Repeat, Reflect and Auto size modifiers to the gradient styles. In addition, the gradients allow you to interactively modify the style within the object using small handles. With this you can create a great variety of patterns including abstract ones and also 3D effects. (Freehand also has a sophisticated 3D tool, as well, which is similar to Corels but more advanced).
The other great feature of Freehand is its color management system. The program has all the standard palettes from which you can drag and drop colors into objects or into the swatches palette; you can also save, export, import palettes and when you drag a color to the swathes palate you have a choice to save it as process color or spot color. But my all time favorite is the Tint palette. You drag a color to the tint palette window and the program automatically splits the color into shades, like 10%, 20%, 30% and so on. Then, you can apply the shades to any object. You more appreciate this feature if you compare it to Illustrators way of doing the same. In illustrator, first you create a color, drag it to the color swathes palette, then double click on it, a window pops up where the color must be made global and then a slider appears where you can adjust the shades. Big difference eh?
Lastly, let me tell you about Freehands interface. Macromedia created a panel layout that is similar to Firefox side panel, which is clipped to the side of the screen. Freehand layout is like this. In this side panel you find all the palettes, which of course, can be customized according to your own needs. With a click of a button you can also close and open the side bar any time. But because the palettes and the windows are compact and economically laid out you seldom want to close them. The best among all these panels is the Property panel. In the property panel you can set, edit and undo virtually all attributes or transformations of the object. Here are only a few of the attributes you can edit in this panel. Fill color, stroke size and color, gradient settings, texture settings, brush settings, transparency, filters and so on. This means that you hardly ever have to bother look for windows and dialog boxes in other places.
I still could go on and on telling you about Freehands great features such as the Symbols, Drop Shadows, the various Embossing options such as Inset Emboss, Raised Emboss, Outer Bevel, Inner Bevel or its great pattern creating capabilities with the Bend, Duet, Ragged and Sketch options. But the best way to appreciate this fine program is to use it. I think Inkscape developers could find great ideas in this application just by playing around with it.
Regards, jozsefmak
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