Hi Andrew,
Providing a vector image editor by using SVG as the basis, is pretty much Inkscape's strength. It isn't an svg editor directly and it isn't an unhinged vector image editor. It's a grounded project that works within the format specification to do some truly amazing things to provide tools to artists, graph makers and many others. And that has included pushing the SVg specification forwards at times.
Could you imagine is Inkscape was in the position of Gimp (poor gimp), where the internal format wasn't a standard and svg was a conversion? Firstly all the users who use Inkscape because their software outputs svg files, wouldn't have a natural home for tweaking their graphics.
Then think about it the other way round. Saving in Gimp is torture, it's constantly bugging you to save as xcf, you can't open xcf in a browser, can't open it in a different image editor, can't process it with python as a text/xml file for science. It's a burden.
Sure, Inkscape has done some dumb things (svg 1.2 text) but it's also done some good things (gradient meshes + js). It's trying hard to live up to artists' expectations about tooling, while not becoming undisciplined about the importance of standards setting and data formatting. SVG standards plus user standards equals good software.
Best Regards, Martin Owens
On Wed, 2019-03-20 at 13:44 -0700, Andrew Kurn wrote:
While viewing those videos about fund-raising, one point stuck in the back of my mind. Make sure you know who your target audience is.
Inkscape has bothered me a little bit by being neither quite fish or fowl. It tries to be friendly to the artist, but it forces him to learn a lot about the nature of SVG. In fact, its founding principle seems to be to use SVG as its internal representation.
(Is there a mission statement?)
I happen to like it, but that's because I'm a professional programmer, so formal languages are my bread and butter. But, if /I/ am the target audience, then the direct manipulation of XML is too weak for my taste. (I use Emacs. My favorite scenario would be to squirt the XML over to Emacs, edit, and squirt it back. . . . (with some indication of what is selected, but that's for another thread.))
So that's the conflict.
That is, it seems to me that the goal of making it friendly to the artist and friendly to the programmer are in conflict. Maybe you can do both.
Andrew
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