[tdf-discuss] Vector/Raster Graphics Editing (was: UI proposal)

Hi Marc, all,

I'm splitting this thread because the "UI proposal" is really about
Mirek's Citrus UI.

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Marc Paré <marc@marcpare.com> wrote:
> Le 2010-10-22 15:42, Ian a écrit :
> [...]
> > Touching up photos IMHO might have surpassed design work but is that
> > really educationally desirable? Look at how often we need to communicate
> > graphically. Draw diagrams in science, simple plans such as layout of a
> > room or garden. I'd say the reason we teach bit map editing is because
> > it is superficially easy, Windows only comes with such tools and
> > teachers generally don't have the design skills themselves. Neither of
> > these reasons is particularly sound educationally.
>
> Totally in agreement with all of this, which we have heard for the last 20
> years or so in educational circles. Unfortunately, what it all boils down to
> is if the masses will pick the cool photo editing software suite or the
> suite with the vector graphics suite that may not suit their needs. I
> believe also boils down to the philosophy behind the LibO suite.

Oh, what I'd do for an open source equivalent to Fireworks! The same
tools, interface and application are used for both raster and vector
editing, and it's a seamless experience. If LibreOffice could have a
similar (but more simple) approach, it would make a huge difference -
imagine having competent raster and vector editing functionality in
the document program itself! It's already implemented to a limited
extent (i.e., LibreOffice works with both vector and raster objects),
but would need serious work.

> > [...]
> > If LibO had a standard and openly published svg engine (and Inkscape
> > already has it) just think of the possibilities. You can already access
> > many vector routines in Inkscape from scripted commands so a longer term
> > goal would be to make a LibO UI that fit the svg engine and documented
> > it so third parties could write applets that could access the routines
> > for specific tasks. eg rendering charts and graphs as svg files to
> > export from Calc.
>
> Well then this speaks to the philosophy behind the suite. Are we to "sell"
> the product to the masses based on these set of tools (honestly, in
> educational circles, a vector writing tool would be a big sell) or do we
> keep Draw and push it as a popular photo-retouching software that the masses
> will enjoy.
>
> By the same token, are photo-retouching tools available in Inkscape?

Good question. Can anyone chime in regarding the storage of raster
graphics in the SVG format (i.e., how efficient is it?)

Regards,
Ivan.

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