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Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

inkscape.org

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Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#141
post #60
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not on MacOS but find Inkscape pretty snappy in general, even with big projects. Perhaps it's not the Layers but the effects? Blur in particular is pretty slow. Have you tried reducing the displayed filter quality? This doesn't effect the image itself, only the display in Inkscape. It's in the render tab in Inkscape preferences. At View -> Display Mode you can also toggle between full display, display without fil…

I'm getting 2fps when panning an empty document on macOS...

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did test the app for compatibility with Wacom Intuos. "Blob" tool already supports pressure sensitivity [1], as you said it was relatively easy to implement with the Pointer Events API. I'm not sure how pressure and tilt information could be used by other tools (other than "Spray") as SVG does not support stroke with variable width. Tracing could be easily implemented using third party libraries [2]. Custom extensi…

Ah, didn’t spot the blob tool. Good show. Inkscape 1.0 adds what’s basically a more powerful version of that, a pressure-sensitive pencil, implemented with the powerstroke live path effect—more powerful, I say, because it’s editable , because it’s not immediately flattening it to what SVG can represent, but is also keeping its own editor information in namespaced attributes. That’s how you can add things like that an…

On second thought, 100% parity might be a bit overoptimistic as some features such as auto-wrapped text and mesh gradients rely on APIs that must be implemented upstream by Chromium (and those features are not the top priority for Google). But 95% seems sensible to me.

There should be an outline shown when you hover a path with the "Edit" tool [1], though it's a bit sloppy and needs more optimization. Most path-related commands are exposed by the "Shape" panel. To convert a node between a smooth and an edge type you must double-click it. The ability to box-transform selected nodes and to move them with arrow keys is missing but should be added soon.

My main problem with text labels is that they take a lot of horizontal space. Text labels could be shown only when the panel is wide enough to fit them, or when user hovers the icon (like it's done in Autodesk Graphic).

[1] https://i.imgur.com/FgglFOw.gif

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#143
post #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.

Are they patented?

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#144
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point. Sure it could be better, but at a cost (design+dev'p, and alienation of users). It seems big/commercial softwares love to take that cost.

Because they have paying and active customers who want improvements even if it means that one has to relearn some things here and there. Not enhancing UX because some users might have already gotten used to the current setup is rather shortsighted (relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1172/ ). What about all the people you don't get on board because the UX is terrible compared to all the other tools?

> they have paying and active customers who want improvements

My experience is that when software reaches a certain level of maturity, major 'improvements' to the UI are driven very much not by the users.

> Not enhancing UX because some users might have already gotten used to the current setup is rather shortsighted

Perhaps. It depends proportion of 'some'. 1%..99%, it depends doesn't it. You're pushing for change with no quantification of the value of it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, so first find out if it's broke.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#146
post #100
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much more importantly, Blender doesn't shy away from getting inspired by their proprietary counterparts. AFAIK they're even working on a 'industry keybinds' setting which makes changing over from Maya a breeze. Programs like GIMP (or even entire OS UIs like Gnome and KDE) often shy away from 'aping' respectively Photoshop or Apple. But those proprietary vendors have spent millions of dollars on focus groups and man h…

Eh, Photoshop hasn't really optimized their UI/UX, their UI goes back to the original MacPaint by Bill Atkinson (Photoshop started as a more powerful MacPaint) and has evolved over the years starting from that. It is just that it became a very common UI for similar applications and the reason to make something similar isn't because Adobe has spent millions optimizing it, but because a lot of people are already famili…

Gimp is garbage bro. A window for each tool? That your WM manages? Okay where is that tools window or layers window or what if I’m editing 20 icons and one of my icons was covered by a browser window. At least old photoshop would remember z order and bring them to the surface and keep tools on top. Gimp May have fixed this one issue but it’s an example of why paid UX design wins 99 times out of 10

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#147
Glad to read this. Never used inkscape beyond the CLI tools. I hope they continue to keep this chunk of their software mature and growing, too.

Here's my all-time favorite thing to do... transform font types to paths inside svgs (so one doesn't need to hold that font asset in CDN, ...) :

inkscape -T -A tmp-hack.pdf orig-w-custom-fonts.svg

inkscape -l final.svg tmp-hack.pdf

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#148

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.

> a more modern UI…

This is typically code for "doesn't respect my OS theme." I didn't like skinz in the past and that hasn't changed over the years, though the name has.

Good luck on an otherwise cool app however.

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#149
post #128
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on MacOS but find Inkscape pretty snappy in general, even with big projects. Perhaps it's not the Layers but the effects? Blur in particular is pretty slow. Have you tried reducing the displayed filter quality? This doesn't effect the image itself, only the display in Inkscape. It's in the render tab in Inkscape preferences. At View -> Display Mode you can also toggle between full display, display without fil…

The very first item on Affinity Designer's feature list [1] is "Pan and zoom at 60fps". You don't generally accomplish this by accident. They apparently wrote the engine from scratch to use hardware acceleration, and be usable on an iPad with a very small amount of available RAM [2]. There's no reason blur, in particular, must necessarily be slow. Everybody (and their phone) has a GPU that's more than fast enough to…

I use Affinity Designer and Photo and they are very fast even at huge sizes (I do art). But they don't listen to user feedback or suggestions much if at all. AD/P can use OpenGL Vulcan or Metal (I use Metal) and it's amazingly fast for most operations. I also use Artrage 5 and it's abysmally slow probably not optimized for any platform either, probably not much different from Inkscape (though mostly bitmap drawing).

Re: Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Inkscape was an alternative to Illustrator and other vector drawing programs, didn't know people were using it for photo editing.

yeah, this is super weird, it's a vector graphics editor, come on people, use GIMP or photoshop for images.

The program is still able to handle it, and I know its features more than GIMP or Photoshop. To me, it's still an acceptable tool.
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