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Inkscape is prime for having its Blender moment - the moment where freeing energy 10 years ago pays off and beats the closed source software. I use Inkscape for

Inkscape is prime for having its Blender moment - the moment where freeing energy 10 years ago pays off and beats the closed source software. I use Inkscape for laser cutting and vector graphics and it’s getting better every year. Still a tad of polish and I’ll be happy!

wellanyway 3y ago
A lot of polish.
- hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago
  I don't think it needs that much polish. I love that it's performant and doesn't crash all the time like Adobe Illustrator. I've been using it for just about 20 years now and I think they've stated true to the core capabilities without adding to much bloat. If I were to define software quality as a combination of performance and stability, all Adobe products have been in steep decline over the past two decades. Inkscape is still missing a few key features for printing so I do my work in Inkscape then bring it into Illustrator before printing.
  - wellanyway 3y ago
    There's something about open source UI apps that just screams amateurs. It's actually a fascinating topic, I wish I could put a finger on it and tell specifically what I don't like. Inkscape just feels and looks... slightly off.
juujian 3y ago
Yup, so much better than 2-3 years ago. Now if only I could get Times New Roman properly installed on Linux so I could import pdfs properly...
- prmoustache 3y ago
  What is so complicated? There have been install helper available for years: https://mscorefonts2.sourceforge.net/ https://mscorefonts2.sourceforge.net/ Additionnally you can extract them from the windows installer iso.
  - gtk40 3y ago
    Over a decade ago (I think around ~2010) when I was in high school I had an English teacher who required Times New Roman for a paper. I got marked off because while I had installed Times New Roman, I had a word processor which had silently replaced another serif font as Times New Roman when I selected it. To be fair I think it was one of the Bitstream fonts that looked a bit larger than Times New Roman at the same size.
    - juujian 3y ago
      Interesting, I wonder if something like that is happening to me. The TNR install seems to have worked, but some of the Sans fonts looks wonky, not sure if its Arial or something else. From what I gather, Inkscape takes the name of the font and then uses the font with the most similar name. But from what I can tell, many pdf files have partially embedded fonts with wonky names. If I had word available atm, I would check the pdfs against that --- I have to admit, word's pdf import function is pretty impressive at times --- just to see what fonts exactly come out looking funky.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      > when I was in high school I had an English teacher who required Times New Roman for a paper. I got marked off Isn't this... stupid?
      - koshersalt 3y ago
        Usually it’s meant to prevent kids from changing fonts to make a shorter paper fit the page length requirements.
        3y ago
rendaw 3y ago
Inkscape needs to decide whether it wants to be just an SVG editor or a full vector editor. It dumps tons of junk in the SVG and has pretty poor tools for managing the SVG hierarchy (resorting to text editing for some things), but at the same time they've used the excuse of being an SVG editor to avoid implementing things like path thickness and mesh gradients for years (yes, there's a path effect extension now but it's hugely buggy).
- url00 3y ago
  Not that it’s a particularly good workflow, but there is a series of advanced save options that can produce much better SVGs that are very clean without all the inkscape cruft. Might be worth checking out.
  - hansvm 3y ago
    Link please?
    - url00 3y ago
      Hmm it's apparently hard to find information about the feature, at least from a quick Google. This SO post at least talks about it: https://superuser.com/questions/1256265/how-to-export-an-minified-optimized-svg-from-inkscape https://superuser.com/questions/1256265/how-to-export-an-min... I've used it myself plenty of times for my personal website with good results.
  - osener 3y ago
    I always save as normal and put the output through https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/ https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/
jszymborski 3y ago
The 1.0 UI refresh and the sundry bug fixes that came with it (especially to Text) have already made Inkscape 100x more usable for me.
brnaftr361 3y ago
I wish they would copy-paste Blender's UI, shortcuts, and some of the logic. Things like edit mode in Blender versus node edit in Inkscape, so I don't accidentally click on another path. There are several operations that don't have hotkeys, like layer/path visibility... They've sorta moved in the UI direction with modifiers in the dev build. As it's currently tooled it can't be set up to align with Blender, really at all, which is really annoying. The box zoom for example frequently trips me up, but that's inconveniently my muscle-memory for panning.
- jwagenet 3y ago
  I wish they would copy-paste Illustrator’s ui and shortcuts, or have an Illustrator mode. This applies to Gimp v Photoshop too. Many people are coming from Adobe layouts and shortcuts. For example, I find using path tools much slower in Inkscape and gimp, and not just because the shortcuts are different.
  - jerojero 3y ago
    Pretty sure this is not possible due to patenting issues. It's not that they wouldn't want to do things in a similar way, it's that they can't.
    - kyleee 3y ago
      Sounds like it would be ideal to implement as a plugin, that way third parties could maintain it and remain at an arm’s length from the main software entity
    - jwagenet 3y ago
      I’m skeptical that shortcuts and button layouts are patentable. I understand that the underlying behavior may be. All major mechanical cad platforms basically have the same tool ribbons and sketching functionality.
- whizzter 3y ago
  Please no, whilst Blender has gotten better recently... A: It's still far from as intuitive as other 3d programs B: Blender is a full featured 3d suite with animation,etc so modes makes sense, Inkscape is more of a single-use tool. Been a while since I used Inkscape but from memory accidental selection does ring a bell, might be more focused ways to make usage smoother (many tools will go back to a selection via an undo, does Inkscape do this?).

wellanyway 3y ago

A lot of polish.

hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago
I don't think it needs that much polish. I love that it's performant and doesn't crash all the time like Adobe Illustrator. I've been using it for just about 20 years now and I think they've stated true to the core capabilities without adding to much bloat. If I were to define software quality as a combination of performance and stability, all Adobe products have been in steep decline over the past two decades. Inkscape is still missing a few key features for printing so I do my work in Inkscape then bring it into Illustrator before printing.
- wellanyway 3y ago
  There's something about open source UI apps that just screams amateurs. It's actually a fascinating topic, I wish I could put a finger on it and tell specifically what I don't like. Inkscape just feels and looks... slightly off.

juujian 3y ago

Yup, so much better than 2-3 years ago. Now if only I could get Times New Roman properly installed on Linux so I could import pdfs properly...

prmoustache 3y ago
What is so complicated? There have been install helper available for years: https://mscorefonts2.sourceforge.net/ https://mscorefonts2.sourceforge.net/ Additionnally you can extract them from the windows installer iso.
- gtk40 3y ago
  Over a decade ago (I think around ~2010) when I was in high school I had an English teacher who required Times New Roman for a paper. I got marked off because while I had installed Times New Roman, I had a word processor which had silently replaced another serif font as Times New Roman when I selected it. To be fair I think it was one of the Bitstream fonts that looked a bit larger than Times New Roman at the same size.
  - juujian 3y ago
    Interesting, I wonder if something like that is happening to me. The TNR install seems to have worked, but some of the Sans fonts looks wonky, not sure if its Arial or something else. From what I gather, Inkscape takes the name of the font and then uses the font with the most similar name. But from what I can tell, many pdf files have partially embedded fonts with wonky names. If I had word available atm, I would check the pdfs against that --- I have to admit, word's pdf import function is pretty impressive at times --- just to see what fonts exactly come out looking funky.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    > when I was in high school I had an English teacher who required Times New Roman for a paper. I got marked off Isn't this... stupid?
    - koshersalt 3y ago
      Usually it’s meant to prevent kids from changing fonts to make a shorter paper fit the page length requirements.
      - 3y ago

rendaw 3y ago

Inkscape needs to decide whether it wants to be just an SVG editor or a full vector editor. It dumps tons of junk in the SVG and has pretty poor tools for managing the SVG hierarchy (resorting to text editing for some things), but at the same time they've used the excuse of being an SVG editor to avoid implementing things like path thickness and mesh gradients for years (yes, there's a path effect extension now but it's hugely buggy).

url00 3y ago
Not that it’s a particularly good workflow, but there is a series of advanced save options that can produce much better SVGs that are very clean without all the inkscape cruft. Might be worth checking out.
- hansvm 3y ago
  Link please?
  - url00 3y ago
    Hmm it's apparently hard to find information about the feature, at least from a quick Google. This SO post at least talks about it: https://superuser.com/questions/1256265/how-to-export-an-minified-optimized-svg-from-inkscape https://superuser.com/questions/1256265/how-to-export-an-min... I've used it myself plenty of times for my personal website with good results.
- osener 3y ago
  I always save as normal and put the output through https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/ https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/

jszymborski 3y ago

The 1.0 UI refresh and the sundry bug fixes that came with it (especially to Text) have already made Inkscape 100x more usable for me.

brnaftr361 3y ago

I wish they would copy-paste Blender's UI, shortcuts, and some of the logic. Things like edit mode in Blender versus node edit in Inkscape, so I don't accidentally click on another path. There are several operations that don't have hotkeys, like layer/path visibility... They've sorta moved in the UI direction with modifiers in the dev build. As it's currently tooled it can't be set up to align with Blender, really at all, which is really annoying. The box zoom for example frequently trips me up, but that's inconveniently my muscle-memory for panning.

jwagenet 3y ago
I wish they would copy-paste Illustrator’s ui and shortcuts, or have an Illustrator mode. This applies to Gimp v Photoshop too. Many people are coming from Adobe layouts and shortcuts. For example, I find using path tools much slower in Inkscape and gimp, and not just because the shortcuts are different.
- jerojero 3y ago
  Pretty sure this is not possible due to patenting issues. It's not that they wouldn't want to do things in a similar way, it's that they can't.
  - kyleee 3y ago
    Sounds like it would be ideal to implement as a plugin, that way third parties could maintain it and remain at an arm’s length from the main software entity
  - jwagenet 3y ago
    I’m skeptical that shortcuts and button layouts are patentable. I understand that the underlying behavior may be. All major mechanical cad platforms basically have the same tool ribbons and sketching functionality.
whizzter 3y ago
Please no, whilst Blender has gotten better recently... A: It's still far from as intuitive as other 3d programs B: Blender is a full featured 3d suite with animation,etc so modes makes sense, Inkscape is more of a single-use tool. Been a while since I used Inkscape but from memory accidental selection does ring a bell, might be more focused ways to make usage smoother (many tools will go back to a selection via an undo, does Inkscape do this?).