Live data from Hacker News

Inkscape 1.2 released

inkscape.org

31–40 of 233 posts

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#31
post #26

I am not ashamed to say I found it too difficult to learn. Sometimes I do colored circles or something else easy at one of the free online sites but I just can't spare the time or mental energy. It's a shame too, I have a laser engraver, SVG is made for that.

Ditto. Every time I try to prep a cut design with Inkscape, I get mired up the distinction (internally) or lack thereof (visually) between lines, paths, objects, strokes, and whatever other internal representations may exist.

Some of these things render fine on the display, and cut just fine with the inkcut extension. Some render but do not cut. Some things get cut multiple times, which causes the knife to overpenetrate and destroy the backing. And for years of attempts, I can't seem to understand the distinction, or how to discern what my drawing actually consists of.

Inkscape must be good for something; a lot of people seem to care about it. And it looks pretty neat. But either I'm missing a fundamental concept, or it's just not good for what I want to do with it.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#32
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"FOSS is starting to get left behind in the dust" What does your TV or car boot? Design space ... what do you use day to day - I'd love to see your blog/show piece?

I'm not talking about low level infrastructure, but the user facing software. Offline desktop tools have rapidly started to become obsolete. Products like Office had to scramble to pivot because Google Docs was replacing them. Its been a while now since I have been emailed an actual office file instead of being sent a link to the live version. A while ago it was common for Photoshop or illustrator to be used for UI d…

> The market is rapidly shifting and I'm just not sure how FOSS is going to stay relevant in this space.

How realistic is it to expect FOSS tools to directly compete head-to-head with these incredibly well-funded privately owned tools? The whole point of these companies is to solve the "hard" problems in order to gain a functional and competitive advantage in the market. FOSS OTOH deals with table scraps in terms of funding and technical talent. And let's face it, who are some of the biggest contributors to open source? These very same companies. They're happy to help keep the specific libs that matter to them up to date, but they're certainly not going to give away the entire product for free.

> Offline desktop tools have rapidly started to become obsolete. Products like Office had to scramble to pivot because Google Docs was replacing them. Its been a while now since I have been emailed an actual office file instead of being sent a link to the live version.

Just because the market moves in a particular direction doesn't mean it's the right decision for end users, all it means is that it's the right decision for the business. Take the mobile phone manufacturers removing the headphone jack. No customers asked for that, it was purely a move to drive sales of bluetooth peripherals.

There may come a time when running software locally becomes in-vogue again, who knows? It's companies that get to dictate the platforms because they own them. And as others have pointed out, it's not like these online collab tools aren't without their own issues. I guess I just don't understand why people think that FOSS can deliver polished end-user products on the scale that companies do.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#33
post #19

Great to see the project moving along, but it's been a persistent feeling of mine that FOSS is starting to get left behind in the dust. The design space has been very rapidly moving towards online, live collaboration tools like Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc and FOSS just has no answer for this market. Even a lot of the big name proprietary tools are finding themselves becoming rapidly obsolete in a world where people…

Good employees find ways to collaborate no matter what. That’s to say that real-time collaboration is a luxury feature. Also, many projects have only one designer. Not to mention, it’s rare to find designers that work in tandem. Also, from a dev perspective having designs updates without some process is undesirable.

As a different point of view, I work w/ my designer in Figma, and the collab features are a must-have. Our iterations are much faster in Figma than they would be on static files shipped via PDF, or whatever it would be.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#34
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"FOSS is starting to get left behind in the dust" What does your TV or car boot? Design space ... what do you use day to day - I'd love to see your blog/show piece?

I'm not talking about low level infrastructure, but the user facing software. Offline desktop tools have rapidly started to become obsolete. Products like Office had to scramble to pivot because Google Docs was replacing them. Its been a while now since I have been emailed an actual office file instead of being sent a link to the live version. A while ago it was common for Photoshop or illustrator to be used for UI d…

If the software you use is decently priced and does what you need then fine. I'm sure that support is fine too.

When I call for help in say Krita or Samba on the mailing lists, I often get the actual programmers responding. Not all the time but quite often.

I've been running an IT company for 22 years. I have a fair idea about what the market is up to. It turns out that a wanky LDAP n Kerberos combo will still be available next year, as it has for the last ... (when did Windows NT domains morph into AD? What a bloody nonsense)

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#35
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good employees find ways to collaborate no matter what. That’s to say that real-time collaboration is a luxury feature. Also, many projects have only one designer. Not to mention, it’s rare to find designers that work in tandem. Also, from a dev perspective having designs updates without some process is undesirable.

"That’s to say that real-time collaboration is a luxury feature." So were toilets once upon a time. I am not a fan of webapps, but this line of argument doesn't hold water

I rather have a toilet than saving two clicks.

—-

real-time collab is not exclusive to webapps.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#36

Great to see the project moving along, but it's been a persistent feeling of mine that FOSS is starting to get left behind in the dust. The design space has been very rapidly moving towards online, live collaboration tools like Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc and FOSS just has no answer for this market. Even a lot of the big name proprietary tools are finding themselves becoming rapidly obsolete in a world where people…

Hm, I don't think online tools are that far ahead. If I look at the horrible experience, which is Google docs or MS Office 365, especially their word processing parts, they lack behind soooo much compared to a tool like Libreoffice. You cannot even properly use styles and, if I got a few $currency for every silly bug I encountered in those online half-assed tools, I would probably work half time only. If that experie…

In contrast to your anecdote, I have never had issues with Google docs. It has always just worked, reasonably clean interface. I'm not sure what elaborate styling you need, but it seems serviceable for when you need a basic document which I imagine is most peoples use case. Also the collaboration is actually very useful. The same reason I use overleaf as an interface for a lot of my LaTeX projects. I can quickly share and get updates, they just have to open their browser instead of download pdf > open it in their pdf viewer > make comments > send it back etc. The web interface is great for people that do not use git etc.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#37
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good employees find ways to collaborate no matter what. That’s to say that real-time collaboration is a luxury feature. Also, many projects have only one designer. Not to mention, it’s rare to find designers that work in tandem. Also, from a dev perspective having designs updates without some process is undesirable.

As a different point of view, I work w/ my designer in Figma, and the collab features are a must-have. Our iterations are much faster in Figma than they would be on static files shipped via PDF, or whatever it would be.

I've worked with designers in tandem as well, sharing screen, sitting next to each other, and in online real-time. Real-time collaboration is a way to collaborate, not the only way.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#38
Why does it see so hard for FOSS to design a good looking UI. I honestly struggle visually with distinguishing what all those symbols mean. I don't use inkscape enough to memorise keyboard shortcuts. I'm sure an experienced user will come along and proclaim it just works, but as someone who wants to use it intermittently, it needs some serious refinement.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#39

Great to see the project moving along, but it's been a persistent feeling of mine that FOSS is starting to get left behind in the dust. The design space has been very rapidly moving towards online, live collaboration tools like Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc and FOSS just has no answer for this market. Even a lot of the big name proprietary tools are finding themselves becoming rapidly obsolete in a world where people…

Sandstorm.io tries to make collaborative web apps work easily with sharing for non-technical users, though we haven't solved getting people a server easily, or more crucially, convincing people to buy a server to do things they can do for free with ads.

Unfortunately, the problem is companies powered by ad revenue have a lot more money to throw at usability than FOSS folks do.

Re: Inkscape 1.2 released

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't FOSS do this, though? There's no reason Inkscape couldn't work the same way, where a document lives in the cloud and users pass around links to it. It does require someone to maintain and pay for the cloud hosting. That shouldn't be unsolvable; that's not really any fundamentally different than hosting a download site for traditional FOSS. Donation-supported FOSS can work.

It requires a total redesign of the app and architecture. Being able to live stream edits in and conflict resolution. But I think the biggest barrier is most FOSS enthusiasts consider web apps and collaboration to be anti user malware.

Sounds like there's a need for:

1. A generic CRDT library, preferably in C or something that exposes a C interface. This is probably very hard or even impossible, depending on how much must be abstracted and how much work the developer must do to express edits in terms of the CRDT.

2. A P2P backend for said library for streaming edits.

3. A networked data store, maybe as-a-service, for versioning and persistence.

2 and 3 might even be made transparent to non-CRDT-aware applications through FUSE, but that's not a hard requirement.

Post reply on HN