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Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

penpot.app

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Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#11

Post by diacritica »

gggtt wrote: post #10

Really cool. I think using standard JS or TS with a standard UI framework (like Vue, React, Svelte, etc.) would have attracted more contributors than Clojure. But otherwise , I'm really looking forward that project !

I hear you! The thing is that sometimes (only sometimes) you do need to use the best technology for a project. In this case, Penpot's very own nature demands technology that is super-performant manipulating zillions of vectors and mathematical objects. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with standard JS or TS but to reach this status in 1 year we needed to go for this route. Anyway, we have plans for a more straightforward plugin contribution architecture so that shouldn't be a problem, but the "core core", yeah, it was our choice, same with SVG, a tough choice but it was worth the challenge. Thanks!!!

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#12

Post by simulo »

I think it is hard to overstate how impressive this is. While it aims to be well integrated in tech workflows, it is a product that allows designers to work well, with a nice, usable and useful UI.

For the few designers in open source, designing with open source software is often a love/hate activity: We want to use and support open software, but it often is painful to use, lacks features relevant for design activities (which, yes, can mean: Being similar to industry standard products) while at the same time being overflowing with settings.

Trying penpot makes me look forward to a product with a clear vision and great utility.

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#13

Post by diacritica »

simulo wrote: post #12

I think it is hard to overstate how impressive this is. While it aims to be well integrated in tech workflows, it is a product that allows designers to work well, with a nice, usable and useful UI. For the few designers in open source, designing with open source software is often a love/hate activity: We want to use and support open software, but it often is painful to use, lacks features relevant for design activiti…

wow... I just screenshot this and shared it with the Penpot team. No need for comment, really. You got it. Thank you.

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#14

Post by redindian75 »

As a regular user of Figma, I am blow away. I did a quick mockup, and it runs as well as figma on my browser. Silky smooth zooms,pans etc.

I briefly played with components, pasted screenshots, and drew rectangles & shapes (80% of UI design is drawing rectangles :-). Yet to play with Prototypes.

Kudos to the team... extremely impressive alpha.

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#15

Post by diacritica »

redindian75 wrote: post #14

As a regular user of Figma, I am blow away. I did a quick mockup, and it runs as well as figma on my browser. Silky smooth zooms,pans etc. I briefly played with components, pasted screenshots, and drew rectangles & shapes (80% of UI design is drawing rectangles :-). Yet to play with Prototypes. Kudos to the team... extremely impressive alpha.

Yeah, that's one of reasons we went for clojure and clojurescript, to get that smoothness and performance. I'll send those amazing kudos to the team in 3, 2, 1... :)

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#17

Post by diacritica »

donclark wrote: post #16

Looks neat! Will it be cable of importing and exporting in various formats? Figma, XD, Sketch, etc?

Yes, proprietary format import/export is on our roadmap. We have given priority to the feel-at-home experience rather than going for format compatibility. Also SVG posed many challenges. But yeah, I think we'd start with Figma, since it was the team knows best

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#18

Post by imsky »

I've been working on a similar project - open source interface design tool with SVG as document format. Glad to see others think it's a good idea, too.

There's an impressive amount of functionality just in the alpha release. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves!

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#19

Post by thecupisblue »

Wow! I'm quite impressed!

An open source sketch-like app with the collaborative aspects of figma? Multiple shadow layers? all of the google fonts already there? Wow! Sign me up! I figure if it came in the desktop version it would eat up a quite bit of sketch/figma market.

Stuff I seem to be missing at first:

1. Double click to go to Component definition

2. Resize/collapse sidebars

3. I get an internal error on shift+click in the Pages sidebar

4. Gets quite stuttery in large document, but well, first version, what can you do.

Re: Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design Plattform

#20

Post by diacritica »

thecupisblue wrote: post #19

Wow! I'm quite impressed! An open source sketch-like app with the collaborative aspects of figma? Multiple shadow layers? all of the google fonts already there? Wow! Sign me up! I figure if it came in the desktop version it would eat up a quite bit of sketch/figma market. Stuff I seem to be missing at first: 1. Double click to go to Component definition 2. Resize/collapse sidebars 3. I get an internal error on shift+…

Wow, thats great feedback, let me write all that down! I'll tell you this already, desktop version is on the roadmap, we will probably produce an electron-based "native" app that can "install". We kind of like the idea of having the best of both worlds. That's also the beauty of open source, what's the risk really? Feel free to go to https://github.com/penpot/penpot and elaborate on those topics! Thank you!
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