On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 05:31:32PM +0100, Aaron Digulla wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
What we really need are people's opinions on what the plan should be to do this work. There is a page here where you can add your thoughts: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/PrintingConsensusPoll
I think what we need is someone to do it :-) The link shows that there is interest but no real direction.
Why do we need to define what PDF should be able to do? Why not start with a simple line-drawing (no fills) and then extend from that?
Well, basically as I see it we have (at least) two different ways to tackle this.
One approach would be, yeah, start with something simple and extend it; this is how a lot of useful work has been done in inkscape - someone with an interest just gets into it and starts doing it. They are motivated by something better than just money, and as we've seen, this works very well.
However, we've not been able to find a coder with this inner motivation to work on the PDF issues. Maybe it's too hard or too complex? Or maybe people who can code have other ways to solve their needs?
So, the second approach is the traditional "sponser someone to do the work". However, this approach requires a bit more care. We need to be specific about the requirements and expectations. This means we need to understand exactly what can't be done right now, and what users would expect from this effort. Of course, we also have to find someone with the skill and interest to do this work...
Indeed, I've heard conflicting statements; some say PDF export is impossible, others claim they've been doing it for a long time. So is it that PDF export works but is incomplete, or does it work only for certain configurations? Maybe it works for Linux but not OSX? Unfortunately, this is not a feature I personally need so I don't really have a good understanding of what the problems are, so while I'm interested in helping us find a direction to getting it solved, it's really going to depend on others to get involved by contributing ideas and helping us get organized.
So, what we really need is for a couple people who are REALLY BUGGED about this lacking feature to dedicate themselves towards helping us understand it, and help us organize the various ideas that have come up into a plan for fixing it.
Bryce