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Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

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Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#71

Post by schiffern »

noxa wrote: post #70
schiffern wrote: post #68

Neat! I want this project to succeed. A couple First Impression Experience pieces of feedback: * when it first starts, how about a blank untitled document to play with, and maybe select a fun tool like the Bezier pencil as the initially selected tool. I was able and motivated to click around, realize there was no open document (probably the biggest stumbling block), create a new document, change the tool, and start p…

Agreed! Looks great, but I did immediately click the pencil to doodle and was disappointed nothing happened. When I created a new document and tried to use the pencil nothing happened. I never figured out how to use it. I tried the Bezier tool and was able to add some nodes but was not able to manipulate them with any of the tools. Maybe dragging is entirely broken on Chrome/Windows?

To select nodes I needed to click on the path in the "Objects" outline on the left side of the screen. Then I could switch to the Nodes tool and select nodes. But after that I can't drag nodes either. Firefox/Linux, so probably something is actually broken not just a compat issue.

Clicking on the path to select them with the Node tool or the Select tool doesn't seem reliable. The Select tool never works, and the Nodes tool I need to click near the nodes (which are invisible) and if I click too fast while searching it thinks I double-clicked and switches to the Select tool.

Maybe some of this makes some sense to the author, and a fix can be forthcoming.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#72

Post by jwmcglynn »

somethingsome wrote: post #47
jwmcglynn wrote: post #36

Very nice! My side project is a C++ SVG rendering library, and I have never been able to find great SVG editors. I usually fall back to Illustrator and then clean up the resulting markup, or a text-based editor such as https://www.svgviewer.dev/ Your UX is quite polished, and your tool already supports more features than other ones I've found, good work! For reference this is my project, https://github.com/jwmcglynn/…

What's the problem with inkscape? It has some bugs, but otherwise it works quite well

It's been a while since I tried Inkscape, but I downloaded it again to give honest feedback.

For context, I got started with Illustrator 9 as a teenager (this is making me feel dated, it was released in 2000), and I'm very familiar with the Illustrator UX and find it intuitive.

When using Inkscape, the UX just feels slightly off, things like:

- Weird keybindings, e.g. pressing Ctrl +/- does not zoom/unzoom

- The golden path feels buggy. When launching the window is for some reason cropped to the top 1/8th of the screen and needs to be resized, and the artboard is tiny.

- Usability issues, such as selecting paths does not show their outline, and the layers window doesn't show a preview of what's in each layer

- Exported SVGs are needlessly verbose. This looks like it has gotten better but is still there. For example, exporting an SVG with two gradients actually puts four gradients in the file (combining with inheritance).

I'm sure that spending more time with it would help, and Inkscape does seem quite powerful, but UX is a big factor when I adopt new tools and Inkscape is lacking there.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#73

Post by [deleted] »

somethingsome wrote: post #47
jwmcglynn wrote: post #36

Very nice! My side project is a C++ SVG rendering library, and I have never been able to find great SVG editors. I usually fall back to Illustrator and then clean up the resulting markup, or a text-based editor such as https://www.svgviewer.dev/ Your UX is quite polished, and your tool already supports more features than other ones I've found, good work! For reference this is my project, https://github.com/jwmcglynn/…

What's the problem with inkscape? It has some bugs, but otherwise it works quite well

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#74

Post by jwmcglynn »

After using it, I think this is a great start. As I mentioned in the previous comment, I really like the UX, and this is specifically about:

- The Pen tool feels intuitive.

- I like how the Objects panel shows previews of each layer.

- It is nice to see clip-path support integrated well, and features such as converting text to outlines, and boolean operations - these seem like rare features.

Here's some critical feedback after using it:

- Keybindings to switch between tools would be useful, and they should be annotated on the tooltips

- I'd like to see zoom/panning supported with Ctrl +/- and panning when holding space and clicking/dragging.

- When editing groups of shapes, it is hard to select individual shapes in the group. Double-clicking switches to the Nodes tool, which is not exactly what I want. I'd like something where double-clicking a group goes into some sort of "Group Isolation" editing mode.

- When using the Pen tool, I'd like to be able to go back to tweak the previous points, such as adjusting the control points, etc.

- Undo in Pen mode does not undo the insertion of points in the path, instead of Undoes operations from before the shape was started.

- Text support seems limited, for example an embedded @font-face did not render correctly. Similarly for filter support. If the editor doesn't support these features I'd expect them to at least be rendered correctly by the browser, but it seems like SVG rendering here is independent.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#75

Post by recursive »

boomskats wrote: post #66
recursive wrote: post #62

I could not figure out how to do stuff. I made a line segment, but then could not find a way to move or resize it, although I did get some drag handles to show up. I couldn't figure out how to make any other shape, like rectangles or circles. I clicked on every button I could find probably twenty times in different orders, but could not get most of them to do anything.

The shape tool is on the main toolbar between the text tool and image tool. The first two shape options are rectangles and circles.

I definitely saw the button, and clicked on it many times. And vigorously, but nothing ever happened. I tried this in Firefox and Chrome on two different machines.

Then I used some debugging skills, and found that there were a pair of zero-opacity s blocking my clicks on the button, which is why nothing happened. After detaching them from the document, the shape button started doing stuff. I suspect these mystery iframes explain most of my difficulty in using it.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#76

Post by jansan »

rizky05 wrote: post #10

Good job! but somehow the UI looks blurry on mac.

You are right, the rulers and thumbnails need to respect high resolution displays. It was always on my mind to take a look into this, but at the same time I was wondering if anyone would notice at all. Obviously some people do :)

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#77

Post by jansan »

jwmcglynn wrote: post #74

After using it, I think this is a great start. As I mentioned in the previous comment, I really like the UX, and this is specifically about: - The Pen tool feels intuitive. - I like how the Objects panel shows previews of each layer. - It is nice to see clip-path support integrated well, and features such as converting text to outlines, and boolean operations - these seem like rare features. Here's some critical feed…

Thanks for a ll the great feedback. I will have to write a bunch of issues over the next days and start working on them. Actually, I was hoping for about 5 upvotes and maybe two comments when I posted this on Hackernews, and the feedback is quite overwhelming.

Regarding selection of elements froma group, you can select individual elements with Ctrl + click. The selection process is a bit messy and I need a cleaner concept, but maybe for now this helps.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#78

Post by jcelerier »

perching_aix wrote: post #61
jcelerier wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't inkscape's native data format SVG? https://inkscape.org/en/develop/about-svg/ > The Inkscape project does not only use SVG as its native file format, it also takes part in the further development and refinement of SVG features by delegating a representative to the W3C SVG Working Group.

It's more of just their personal classification of the software than anything in my reading. That said, Inkscape can default to save in SVG, can actively contribute to the SVG standard, but still be / come across as primarily a vector image editor.

What is missing for you to call it an svg editor? Like, you can even inspect and modify the raw svg tree directly from the UI while you edit your document in inkscape.

Re: Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor

#79

Post by jansan »

recursive wrote: post #75
boomskats wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shape tool is on the main toolbar between the text tool and image tool. The first two shape options are rectangles and circles.

I definitely saw the button, and clicked on it many times. And vigorously, but nothing ever happened. I tried this in Firefox and Chrome on two different machines. Then I used some debugging skills, and found that there were a pair of zero-opacity s blocking my clicks on the button, which is why nothing happened. After detaching them from the document, the shape button started doing stuff. I suspect these mystery ifr…

I Hyvector an `iframe` is only used when parsing an SVG, so apparently something went wrong and the iframe was not removed properly. I will have to add better error handling to prevent ensure everything is cleaned up in any case.
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