Live data from Hacker News

Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

inkscape.org

71–80 of 170 posts

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this 'not completely changing interface' has a side effect: it fails to evolve and become better. I am a long-time user of Inkscape (since 2007 at least), and it is sad how poor it looks now next to Sketch/Figma. Their vector tools are better, their layer tools are better. It's a million little things that make drawing a similar shape in Sketch 50x faster than in Inkscape.

This is what stops me of using it as a professional user: you can get things done, but the processes are more convoluted and less intuitive. The way Blender does it is near optimum in my eyes: not shying away from a major overhaul once in 5 years and aleays making sure it is really making things better.

I would think Blender does a good job too, but inkscape has no paid contributors. If it had people employed to work on it, I think you would see more attention being paid to UI.

Blender is one of the most successful projects out there, and assuming other projects could just 'do what Blender does' is ignoring some of the fundamental differences between Blender and smaller projects.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#72

Why does Inkscape's UI feel so... sloppy? I mean, Blender is a cross-platform, open-source design tool, and it manages to have a tight, professional looking UI. So how does Inkscape's UI still contrive to look like the first Java AWT application I wrote in the 90s? I know it's just a surface thing, and there's a lot of great functionality there. But it's still not exactly a sight that helps inspire you to create beau…

Like most open source end user software, the open source contributions are strictly in development. Good software needs a consistent design vision, for which I’ve found exactly 0 open source examples.

This is exactly the opposite of “a good FLOSS project.” It’s comically bad compared to even the discount competitors (sketch, affinity)

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#73

Just in case you are looking for a commercial alternative to Inkscape with a more modern UI and Chromium-based rendering engine, check out my project Boxy SVG: https://boxy-svg.com The next version (to be released in 2-3 weeks) is going to introduce full support for filters and color swatches. In the upcoming 12 months I expect to reach full feature parity with Inkscape.

"Unsupported browser. Please view this page in Internet Explorer 6.0"

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#74
One thing I still miss in inkscape is calligraphic strokes, which is very useful for creating a professional looking cartoon style.

EDIT: Calligraphy is available but only hand-drawn. What I meant is calligraphy applied to a path, and the ability to transform the resulting stroke back into a path. These are powerful operations that are available in commercial offerings but not yet in inkscape, afaik.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#75

Why does Inkscape's UI feel so... sloppy? I mean, Blender is a cross-platform, open-source design tool, and it manages to have a tight, professional looking UI. So how does Inkscape's UI still contrive to look like the first Java AWT application I wrote in the 90s? I know it's just a surface thing, and there's a lot of great functionality there. But it's still not exactly a sight that helps inspire you to create beau…

If you're just looking at the surface of the UI, the v1 release appears to include theming. There's a lot more to UI than that, but it might help it feel a bit fresher

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#76
post #9
post #2

Inkscape is my go to image editor. The UI is reminiscent of the old Macromedia Fireworks, with a paradigm that feels much nicer (to me) than Photoshop et al. I downloaded the beta pessimistically thinking that they still wouldn't have native OSX Menu support (I've been using the non-updated 0.91+devel+osmenu fork/branch forever), but was pleasantly surprised to see full OSX integration in this beta. Great job guys!

I'm used to Affinity Designer, unfortunately Inkscape is very slow for even just ~10 layers of medium complexity shapes on MacOS :-/ While on Affinity, I can have hundred layers without noticeable performance issues.

I love Affinity Designer! I used to use Inkscape, but it has a horrible user interface (typical FOSS software). Paying $50 to buy Affinity Designer with a decent UI is ok for me.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Keeps getting better (some commercial software seems to bloat beyond repair) Adobe's video editing suite of latest versions is actually well known to be buggy in terms of regular crashes and hangings. It took me many months to realize that the problem was not inferior CPU or drivers or other software or virtual machines or little memory, but that their software is straight up buggy. That's a company that charges…

I am an extensive user of Premiere and After Effects and didn’t experience a single crash that was to blame on Adobe within the last 12 months. The crashes I had were due to 3rd party plugins. I am slowly replacing AE with Blender now, but for certain stuff I still like it.

My crashes were definitely due to Adobe. It was latest updated Windows, Nvidia card with latest drivers, latest adobe, plenty of free space and RAM, etc. It crashed even without any plugins.

Also as an additional thought, is it really that good that they make such a big software that can be crashed because of a plugin? They know there will be a plugin Zoo out there, they know the plugins sometimes have to use GPU on their own, which brings many troubles with drivers etc, - they still can't manage to just isolate in in their own processes? Plugins are used all the time, it's an industry of itself. Company of the size of Adobe can't foresee that some plugins will be unstable and they need to take care of it? The dreaded chrome can isolate websites in their own processes, Adobe can't do the same with a mere plugin??

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#78
One thing I love about Inkscape is its keyboard interface and specifically how it lets you scroll up and down, left and right and in and out. This should be standard in all two-dimensional editing applications but I find it sadly is not. When it comes to editing speed, the keyboard is absolutely essential and shouldn't be an afterthought.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#79
Inkscape is just totally awesome and very much needed. Without it the only serious option left for vector graphics is the overly expensive Illustrator, entering Adobe's sucking subscription model where you can only edit your own files when a subscription is paid.

Inkscape is another great example of why we should try to support open source if we can.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#80

Just in case you are looking for a commercial alternative to Inkscape with a more modern UI and Chromium-based rendering engine, check out my project Boxy SVG: https://boxy-svg.com The next version (to be released in 2-3 weeks) is going to introduce full support for filters and color swatches. In the upcoming 12 months I expect to reach full feature parity with Inkscape.

Thanks but I'll stick with free software. Why don't you give me an option to pay you to contribute to Inkscape instead?

Probably because not everyone wants to mess with decade old dependency and just start with something fresh? So it is sad, that it is not open source, but apparently he proved the starting new approach is worth it.
Post reply on HN