FYI - there's an article in 'Linux Format' magazine comparing different vector graphics apps, and Inkscape got a good review.

Bryce

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:50:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...69...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...3...> Cc: Ted Gould <ted@...10...>, Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Linux Format Article

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:

You might not like me much for telling you this right after you bought issue 56 but issue 57 has a comparison of various Vector Graphics software incuding Inkscape and another Inkscape tutorial. At ~12 Euro I am again Inkscape got 8/10, as did OpenOffice.org Draw.

It annoys me no end that these reviewers do not contact the development team and provide direct feedback, but I guess if you want to cater to the market you have to hunt down the reviews and address their complaints to get better reviews in future. I'm going to write to the editors and ask them to provide direct feedback.

I got a chance to see the article too, and was quite pleased with what it said. Some quotes:

"Last month we took our first look at Inkscape, the latest open source graphics tool to sweep the Linux desktop marketplace. IS fills a long-standing void in this area: vector illustration."

"Inkscape gains prominence over its progenitor by dint of its superior interface and the pace of development that the coding team has established. This is especially remarkable when you consider the group has only been active on the project for seven months."

"It installed without issue on everything we tried."

"Crucially, Inkscape has the most comprehensive set of 'path' tools for cutting, combining and generally mangling shapes, and this does lift it above the rest of these apps quite significantly."

Verdict: "A young, but very promising application that has the potential to outclass the other apps reviewed here. Definitely one to watch for future improvements."

"This is really a two-horse race." [While OODraw has numerically more features...] "For more design-intensive tasks, Inkscape is the surprising winner... They have a lot to do, and they need the support (both moral and financial) to keep on keeping on."

They really liked the usability, node editing, interactive editing of primitive shapes, toolbar layout "in the traditional fashion", boolean operations, and the calligraphic pen.

There were several things they suggested needed work: EPS/PDF support, text-on-path, a better way for naming and managing gradients, expanded functionality with the calligraphic tool (i.e., more nibs). The scorechart showed:

Features: 7/10 Ease of Use: 9/10 Documentation: 6/10 Performance: 8/10 -------------------- Rating 8/10

The review had been on 0.38, so I think they're going to be pleased to see 0.39, and it looks like 0.40 is going to satisfy at least half the things on their wishlist. I think we can do better on performance, and it looks like there's a lot of gain to be had from better docs (Sodipodi rated a 0/10 in documentation in the article, so we've already come a _long_ way.)

I think this was an extremely good article for Inkscape. I was surprised to see us rank so high compared with OODraw; OODraw has a lot more features than Inkscape, so since Inkscape and OODraw were tied score-wise, that means we're winning because of better intrinsics and usability, rather than simply on feature lists, and that's a very good sign.

Bryce