Inkscape popularity

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Revision as of 00:29, 12 February 2007 by DavidHOzAu (talk | contribs) (rm redundant restatement of article title)
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The idea of this is mostly about helping Inkscape and other open-source apps being more popular in the professional and academic graphic design world.

The needed is getting help from arts/design and engineering universities, associations (like, design-related studios, offset printing companies, etc., the most worldwidely as possible.

Getting contact from both arts/design and engineering worlds would provide us to get the best features and intensive testing (specially on the speed and accuracy we need from this kind of application)

What also would help on Inkcape popularity is making it more visible from graphic design related magazines, like Eye (, Communication Arts (, U&LC (, Emigre (, DotDotDot, etc.

Comments and helps on this task is hugely welcome!

How to attract graphic design professionals: Prioritise the UI

  • Clarity and usability. If Freehand and Illustrator do things a certain way in terms of layout or terminology then so should Inkscape - unless it is seriously sub-optimal.
I agree, except that Illustrator ways are indeed often suboptimal, especially in the context of Inkscape. Anyway, please make specific proposals. --bb
  • The default keyboard shortcuts should be the same as the industry leaders. Reduce clutter and look at the UI trends Adobe are pushing. They have a lot of historical baggage to accomodate which Inkscape doesn't so we can get there quicker and cleaner. Another point.
See my comment in your RFE on this. --bb
  • Apps with hundreds of floating pallettes look unprofessional (Gimp?). Make those pallettes dockable and lockable. Keep tech terminlogy off of the interface (tranform matrices??).
Agree, making dialogs dockable and reducing their number is always on our TODO. As for transform matrix, it's used in a single place - where you can _edit_ that matrix. It's a feature for those who need it and knows what to do about it. --bb

(I'll eventually edit this rant and move it to a more appropriate place.)