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> While true in some aspects, it's not true in others. Open standards might have been a better term. The example in this project would be the use of "Pencil Pr

by Closi 6y ago

> While true in some aspects, it's not true in others. Open standards might have been a better term. The example in this project would be the use of "Pencil Project" for UX design rather than Figma / Sketch / Adobe XD (which to some extent may be for licencing and cost reasons too).

diggan 6y ago
Funny enough, Pencil Project in itself is a testament to how badly open source software needs better/more designers who know good UX/UI. Try putting a modern designers coming from Figma/Sketch in front of Pencil Project and watch them puke colorless rainbows while trying to figure out how to do the most basic of operations. Figma, because of the cost (or lack off) and availability, seems to be the only tool realistically available for doing open source design today. Unfortunately neither the format nor the editor is open source itself, but sometimes the means justify the end I guess.
- allannienhuis 6y ago
  Figma is able to import and export svg files pretty well (for my purposes) - I wonder if that's sufficient for a good number of workflows/projects? I doubt the click-through presentation stuff can be exported in any way, but basic design work could be persisted and collaborated on by multiple people with different tools if that approach was used.
  - diggan 6y ago
    Yeah, SVG import/export for smaller elements works fine but once you get into larger files, design systems or designing entire applications in Figma, import/export of SVGs becomes untenable. Otherwise you just have the .fig file format, which is also proprietary as well. Currently for my open source project, we all just work directly in Figma then export the design to a website via the tool we're building. Works fine for now, but not doing anything too complex. Project is https://github.com/instantwebsite https://github.com/instantwebsite in case you're curious.

by Closi 6y ago

diggan 6y ago

Funny enough, Pencil Project in itself is a testament to how badly open source software needs better/more designers who know good UX/UI. Try putting a modern designers coming from Figma/Sketch in front of Pencil Project and watch them puke colorless rainbows while trying to figure out how to do the most basic of operations. Figma, because of the cost (or lack off) and availability, seems to be the only tool realistically available for doing open source design today. Unfortunately neither the format nor the editor is open source itself, but sometimes the means justify the end I guess.

allannienhuis 6y ago
Figma is able to import and export svg files pretty well (for my purposes) - I wonder if that's sufficient for a good number of workflows/projects? I doubt the click-through presentation stuff can be exported in any way, but basic design work could be persisted and collaborated on by multiple people with different tools if that approach was used.
- diggan 6y ago
  Yeah, SVG import/export for smaller elements works fine but once you get into larger files, design systems or designing entire applications in Figma, import/export of SVGs becomes untenable. Otherwise you just have the .fig file format, which is also proprietary as well. Currently for my open source project, we all just work directly in Figma then export the design to a website via the tool we're building. Works fine for now, but not doing anything too complex. Project is https://github.com/instantwebsite https://github.com/instantwebsite in case you're curious.