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A few days ago I tried 1.1.1 after a long absence on windows. I don't want to rain on your parade, but to be honest, it was a miserable experience. Don't get m

A few days ago I tried 1.1.1 after a long absence on windows. I don't want to rain on your parade, but to be honest, it was a miserable experience. Don't get me wrong: Inkscape is huge, it's quite an achievement and I'm glad we got an open source vector app. But everything feels so strange and awkward to use. And when you get further with your project, the input lag gets out of hand. Path effects and filters are cool, but the UI feels... Just strange. And they add even more lag to everything. Oh and there's also the random crash now and then... The exporting side could use some love too. You need to fallback to the commandline to export all layers or groups for example. But it's really cumbersome. And for some reason you can't even disable anti-aliased edges and it cuts of filters. Oh well... Unfortunately I don't have enough time to contribute, sorry. Bought Affinity Designer this week and immediately fell in love. Everything just works, the UI is well thought out and it's snappy. I don't know: I love open source. For example Blender or Gimp are great and improved massively over the years. We need something like Inkscape, but the current state simply doesn't cut it for me, sorry.

vanattab 5y ago
No doubt it could be better( as everything always can) but as primarily a developer who occasionally has to make/modify simple vector images and icons I love inkscape. I am sure if your a professional graphics artist using the software everyday the little stuff adds up and is really annoying but if your graphic design professional it's easy to justify shelling out cash for Adobe or similarly polished software. Inkscape in my view is for those of us who need to work with vector graphics regularly but not everyday.
- zubspace 5y ago
  The thing is, I'm spoiled. There are so many great vector applications out there. We're in an age, where we're able to run awesome vector applications in a browser. How cool is that! I'm just saying, that Inkscape needs to massively improve to stay relevant. For example, I realized that I'm completely going crazy when an app just crashes on me. I'm not used to that anymore. Well, I understand, that Inkscape can be usable as long as you're doing simple stuff and as long as you're staying on the happy path. But a graphic application needs to get out of its way for the user, who just wants to be creative. And as I was using inkscape, I used more time fighting it than creating. In my opinion it needs to completely revamp the UI and streamline everything. Similar to what Blender did. But right now, I have a harder time using Inkscape than Blender, which us not a good place for Inkscape to be in.
CraneWorm 5y ago
I downloaded Inkscape because trying to use Gimp for pixel perfect graphics was an exercise in frustration. Sadly, my experience seems to mirror yours, my first project crashed (no data loss, fortunately). Then I tried writing a simple plugin and it turned out 1.1.1 broke unit conversion.
city41 5y ago
I don't have any performance problems and I use Inkscape quite extensively. Although I am using it on Linux. I always got the impression Inkscape and Gimp both work best on Linux. I really like Inkscape quite a bit. But it took a lot of relearning after using Illustrator for decades. Once I got over that hump, I have very few complaints, especially for the price.
raffraffraff 5y ago
Any time someone mentions alternative graphic design software I get a glimmer of hope, then check out product website and find that it's not available on Linux. I should be used to it by now.
agency 5y ago
+1 though I disagree about Gimp. Tried to use it recently too and found the UI to be as much of a mess as Inkscape. All I wanted to do with Inkscape was open an SVG and change the color of one of the paths and re-export it and I could not make heads or tails of the UI.
- ako 5y ago
  Would be interesting to see how your mental model of how this should work differs from the inkscape developer's mental model. I would assume there's an easy way to achieve what you wanted to do, wonder why it is so hard to discover it. Just tried it: open svg, select path, menu: object -> fill & stroke, change the color, menu: file -> save as. Done...
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > menu: object -> fill & stroke, You lose 90% of the people here. One click should make the fill color changeable, two clicks the border color, and bring up / highlight the relevant panel automatically.
    - AdamBelis 5y ago
      there is multipl ways how to skin a cat . you can single clisk to cahnge color fill. selct object an chose color from pallet down or click on color in info bar that wil open fill and stroke panel
mproud 5y ago
Yeah, about two years ago I was trying different vector-based apps. Started with Sketch, tried Inkscape, but ended up with Affinity Designer too. The UI feels much better, and it’s far more stable. One small gripe I have is that it doesn’t support many transforms in SVG without rasterizing them, where Inkscape often does.
lostgame 5y ago
Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender (haven’t tried since it’s 2.X release, but since this was true for decades, just roll with it) - have long had one thing in common that completely ruins any chance of seriously using the software for anything meaningful, for many; many people - and that - of course - is the UI/UX. And I will deflect immediately the ‘well if you don’t like it, contribute’ to state - I’ve actually tried, in the past. I was involved with the GIMP coding community for a while post high school, because I actually do know that under this awful, counter-intuitive and ugly as all living hell software, there is actually great image rendering and editing code under there. I’m not sure if it’s changed, I really hope it has - because it majorly turned me off of contributing to FOSS projects since - but the community was extremely hostile, at least to me - and; more importantly - nobody seemed to care about the work I was doing or wanted to do with regards to overhauling the UI/UX. It clearly wasn’t a priority for the rest of the team. We need a dedicated team of 3-4 people to overhaul the awful useless mess of a UI/UX that a lot of these FOSS creative apps have - and it just never seems to come together, so the apps never get to a usable state in their UI/UX, so they never get as many people using them as they need to, so they never grow enough to find the team they need to in order to fix it. I’ve been following this shit for 20 years, and at this point I’ve just given up on GIMP/Inkscape. Unfortunately these particular projects seem to be run by people who just do not prioritize these things. I know just as well as the next back end coder that the functionality matters most. But this ‘function over form’ mentality for 20 years - in GIMP’s case - has led to one very ugly and counter-intuitive piece of software that could literally rival Photoshop if only it the team could change its mentality/philosophy a bit. I’ve considered forking it to make something ‘usable’, but the thing is, I’d like to really help with the issue in the main app itself!
- indrora 5y ago
  Inkscape has had the same basic UI for about a decade. I just upgraded this week on my machines to 1.1.2 after using 0.96 for a long while, and I felt at home still. Inkscape's UI hasn't changed much because there's really no other UI for SVG stuff. Look at Adobe Illustrator and you'll see that modulo some very small differences, there's a lot of the same UI in the same place or nearly the same place. What has seriously improved in Inkscape over the last decade is definitely performance. Every release, I see major perf improvements. Blender and GIMP have both had major UI overhauls, but Blender has seen the largest. in 2019, Blender threw out their old UI and built a whole fresh one for 2.80. 2.80's UI absolutely brought it up to the same par that a lot of professional tools are at now. I will also mention that Blender is being used __In Industry__. In 2019, Ubisoft began tossing money into the funding pool & is using it internally for their animation: https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund/ https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-developm... & there's a few places it's been confirmed to be in use over in the Techways course on blender: https://techways.online/courses/blender/lessons/blender-basics/topic/blender-uses/ https://techways.online/courses/blender/lessons/blender-basi... But to your point about community: Something I had to learn long ago was that all projects, open source or not, push against "Change for Change's Sake." Several attempts had been made at updating Blender's overall look and feel but with mixed reception, even from within. The best way to get something done in any part of a well established ecosystem is to rally some friends, get a good proof of concept working, and present it. This is how three major changes in Linux have been done: Lennart Poettering, as much as you might disagree with him, stood up and said "Sound on linux sucks because you have to do a bunch of ioctl shit. Let's make a good API and a sound server to go along with it so you get all the advantages of modern audio routing". He then stood up again and said "you know what, sysV init sucks too, let's make something that handles the configuration for the vast majority of the peripherals on a system and the services that depend on those peripherals." The fact of the matter is that most Open Source is maintained in the spare time between meetings and shifts flipping burgers: * Lots of FOSS projects are one person maintained, in their spare time, more and more by people working dead end hourly jobs like retail. Seriously. * The big ones out of companies are probably maintained by zero people full time.

vanattab 5y ago

No doubt it could be better( as everything always can) but as primarily a developer who occasionally has to make/modify simple vector images and icons I love inkscape. I am sure if your a professional graphics artist using the software everyday the little stuff adds up and is really annoying but if your graphic design professional it's easy to justify shelling out cash for Adobe or similarly polished software. Inkscape in my view is for those of us who need to work with vector graphics regularly but not everyday.

zubspace 5y ago
The thing is, I'm spoiled. There are so many great vector applications out there. We're in an age, where we're able to run awesome vector applications in a browser. How cool is that! I'm just saying, that Inkscape needs to massively improve to stay relevant. For example, I realized that I'm completely going crazy when an app just crashes on me. I'm not used to that anymore. Well, I understand, that Inkscape can be usable as long as you're doing simple stuff and as long as you're staying on the happy path. But a graphic application needs to get out of its way for the user, who just wants to be creative. And as I was using inkscape, I used more time fighting it than creating. In my opinion it needs to completely revamp the UI and streamline everything. Similar to what Blender did. But right now, I have a harder time using Inkscape than Blender, which us not a good place for Inkscape to be in.

CraneWorm 5y ago

I downloaded Inkscape because trying to use Gimp for pixel perfect graphics was an exercise in frustration. Sadly, my experience seems to mirror yours, my first project crashed (no data loss, fortunately). Then I tried writing a simple plugin and it turned out 1.1.1 broke unit conversion.

city41 5y ago

I don't have any performance problems and I use Inkscape quite extensively. Although I am using it on Linux. I always got the impression Inkscape and Gimp both work best on Linux. I really like Inkscape quite a bit. But it took a lot of relearning after using Illustrator for decades. Once I got over that hump, I have very few complaints, especially for the price.

raffraffraff 5y ago

Any time someone mentions alternative graphic design software I get a glimmer of hope, then check out product website and find that it's not available on Linux. I should be used to it by now.

agency 5y ago

+1 though I disagree about Gimp. Tried to use it recently too and found the UI to be as much of a mess as Inkscape. All I wanted to do with Inkscape was open an SVG and change the color of one of the paths and re-export it and I could not make heads or tails of the UI.

ako 5y ago
Would be interesting to see how your mental model of how this should work differs from the inkscape developer's mental model. I would assume there's an easy way to achieve what you wanted to do, wonder why it is so hard to discover it. Just tried it: open svg, select path, menu: object -> fill & stroke, change the color, menu: file -> save as. Done...
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > menu: object -> fill & stroke, You lose 90% of the people here. One click should make the fill color changeable, two clicks the border color, and bring up / highlight the relevant panel automatically.
  - AdamBelis 5y ago
    there is multipl ways how to skin a cat . you can single clisk to cahnge color fill. selct object an chose color from pallet down or click on color in info bar that wil open fill and stroke panel

mproud 5y ago

Yeah, about two years ago I was trying different vector-based apps. Started with Sketch, tried Inkscape, but ended up with Affinity Designer too. The UI feels much better, and it’s far more stable. One small gripe I have is that it doesn’t support many transforms in SVG without rasterizing them, where Inkscape often does.

lostgame 5y ago

Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender (haven’t tried since it’s 2.X release, but since this was true for decades, just roll with it) - have long had one thing in common that completely ruins any chance of seriously using the software for anything meaningful, for many; many people - and that - of course - is the UI/UX. And I will deflect immediately the ‘well if you don’t like it, contribute’ to state - I’ve actually tried, in the past. I was involved with the GIMP coding community for a while post high school, because I actually do know that under this awful, counter-intuitive and ugly as all living hell software, there is actually great image rendering and editing code under there. I’m not sure if it’s changed, I really hope it has - because it majorly turned me off of contributing to FOSS projects since - but the community was extremely hostile, at least to me - and; more importantly - nobody seemed to care about the work I was doing or wanted to do with regards to overhauling the UI/UX. It clearly wasn’t a priority for the rest of the team. We need a dedicated team of 3-4 people to overhaul the awful useless mess of a UI/UX that a lot of these FOSS creative apps have - and it just never seems to come together, so the apps never get to a usable state in their UI/UX, so they never get as many people using them as they need to, so they never grow enough to find the team they need to in order to fix it. I’ve been following this shit for 20 years, and at this point I’ve just given up on GIMP/Inkscape. Unfortunately these particular projects seem to be run by people who just do not prioritize these things. I know just as well as the next back end coder that the functionality matters most. But this ‘function over form’ mentality for 20 years - in GIMP’s case - has led to one very ugly and counter-intuitive piece of software that could literally rival Photoshop if only it the team could change its mentality/philosophy a bit. I’ve considered forking it to make something ‘usable’, but the thing is, I’d like to really help with the issue in the main app itself!

indrora 5y ago
Inkscape has had the same basic UI for about a decade. I just upgraded this week on my machines to 1.1.2 after using 0.96 for a long while, and I felt at home still. Inkscape's UI hasn't changed much because there's really no other UI for SVG stuff. Look at Adobe Illustrator and you'll see that modulo some very small differences, there's a lot of the same UI in the same place or nearly the same place. What has seriously improved in Inkscape over the last decade is definitely performance. Every release, I see major perf improvements. Blender and GIMP have both had major UI overhauls, but Blender has seen the largest. in 2019, Blender threw out their old UI and built a whole fresh one for 2.80. 2.80's UI absolutely brought it up to the same par that a lot of professional tools are at now. I will also mention that Blender is being used __In Industry__. In 2019, Ubisoft began tossing money into the funding pool & is using it internally for their animation: https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund/ https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-developm... & there's a few places it's been confirmed to be in use over in the Techways course on blender: https://techways.online/courses/blender/lessons/blender-basics/topic/blender-uses/ https://techways.online/courses/blender/lessons/blender-basi... But to your point about community: Something I had to learn long ago was that all projects, open source or not, push against "Change for Change's Sake." Several attempts had been made at updating Blender's overall look and feel but with mixed reception, even from within. The best way to get something done in any part of a well established ecosystem is to rally some friends, get a good proof of concept working, and present it. This is how three major changes in Linux have been done: Lennart Poettering, as much as you might disagree with him, stood up and said "Sound on linux sucks because you have to do a bunch of ioctl shit. Let's make a good API and a sound server to go along with it so you get all the advantages of modern audio routing". He then stood up again and said "you know what, sysV init sucks too, let's make something that handles the configuration for the vast majority of the peripherals on a system and the services that depend on those peripherals." The fact of the matter is that most Open Source is maintained in the spare time between meetings and shifts flipping burgers: * Lots of FOSS projects are one person maintained, in their spare time, more and more by people working dead end hourly jobs like retail. Seriously. * The big ones out of companies are probably maintained by zero people full time.