Nervous, Adobe? It took 16 years, but open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape now works properly on macOS
- Reference: 1588774513
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/06/inkscape_v1/
- Source link:
Inkscape can be seen as an alternative to commercial products such as Adobe Illustrator or Serif Affinity Designer – though unlike Inkscape, neither of those run on Linux. The native format of Inkscape is [1]SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), the web standard.
We took a look at the release candidate [2]last month . The release has been three years in the making, and comes more than 16 years after the first tentative release in 2003. A member of the development team, Marc Jeanmougin, told us that the long development time was because "it's just volunteer work", combined with technical challenges related to the migration from GNOME's GTK+ library 2 to GTK 3.
Many improvements, including HiDPI support, come as part of this transition. The team has also worked on performance, especially on complex SVG objects that have a large number of nodes.
Inkscape 1.0 is most significant for Mac users. Previous releases for macOS required a compatibility component called XQuartz, which enables applications designed for the X windowing system to run on macOS Quartz, part of Apple's Core Graphics framework. This is no longer required and Inkscape 1.0 is now a native macOS application – though it is not all good news. The [3]announcement noted: "This latest version is labelled as 'preview', which means that additional improvements are scheduled for the next versions."
Bitmaps, transformations, palettes and font-work
There are numerous new features, including a Trace Bitmap dialog that lets you convert bitmap images into vector drawings. There are many new or improved Live Path Effects, which apply transformations to existing drawing objects, and the user interface for this is updated, with a search option and the ability to mark specific effects as favourites.
In freestyle drawings you can mirror and rotate the canvas. Pen support is improved with pressure-sensitive effects. Some new features are aimed at those making technical drawings, including grid alignment, path length indicators, a tool to measure segments, and a Fillet/Chamfer tool for precise corner rounding.
Other highlights include new palettes and gradients, alignment tools, simplified line height settings, and templates for different screen sizes. A powerful feature called variable font support lets you manipulate font properties with sliding scales, according to what is supported by that specific font. Flowed text now works when rendered in a web browser, which in previous Inkscape versions "was not compatible with browsers, and rendered as 'black boxes' or was just missing", [4]the docs stated .
There is a detailed look at the specifications and new features [5]here .
The Inkscape extension API has changed and now supports Python 3, which is [6]just as well . The updates mean that most existing extensions have to be updated to work with the new version.
"Not all third-party extensions have been brought forward to be compatible yet," the team said, so this will be an issue for those upgrading.
Inkscape 1.0 seems polished and professional. Adobe, which sells Illustrator on a subscription basis starting at £19 (if you inhale the rest of the [7]Creative Cloud ), will likely not be worried, but apart from the cost saving there are advantages in simpler applications that are relatively lightweight and easy to learn, as well as running well on Linux. ®
Sponsored: [8]Choosing A Low-Code Vendor
[1] https://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/
[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/14/16_years_inkscape_v1/
[3] https://inkscape.org/news/2020/05/04/introducing-inkscape-10/
[4] https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0#flowed-text
[5] https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0
[6] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/21/the_final_python_2_release/
[7] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/13/adobe_q4_2019/
[8] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8579/choosing-a-low-code-vendor?td=wptl1936
Re: "starting at £19"
Subscriptions are more for businesses than home users. Even if I pay money for an application I strongly prefer the traditional purchase model. I can upgrade as I need to/want to and I am not getting nickeled and dimed to death.
It's wonderful to see some real competition out there, but it's still going to have the three main issues that GIMP et al have faced for years
1) Cost doesn't matter when it's the company, not you paying for it.
2) Inertia is a powerful thing in business. No matter how good product B is, if the company has been using product A for the last few years, they're not going to change unless they have absolutely no choice.
3) People are lazy and afraid of change. Unless a rival product works 100% exactly click-for-click like the current system, people won't want to use it. When trying to show somebody how easy a Linux desktop is to use, all it takes it for a button to be labelled "Accept" instead of "Okay" and they go scurrying back to their Windows system because "It's too complicated" and they "Don't understand". Yes, there will be a certain amount of learning involved, but they conveniently forget the hours and days and weeks of training it took to learn Photoshop/Illustrator/Windows. They didn't learn THAT in one afternoon either.
Who cares about business?
This sort of stuff brings useful, powerful software to anyone that wants to use it regardless of the depth of their pocket. If children grow up using it they'll be advocates for it in their work environments and for most normal people, this, Libre Office, Thunderbird and others are good enough.
As for Adobe's subscription model, it's been a boon, have you seen the number of alternatives to Adobe product who're making a big thing out being non subscription alternatives to Adobe. It looks like they've generated an entirely new industry :-)
Some companies have at least seen sense and offer free, un-crippled, non commercial versions. But not Adobe. Yet.
Inkscape has it better than GIMP
Photoshop is far more embedded than Illustrator, though. It is much easier to convince people to try Inkscape. Photoshop is basically a verb.
> Inertia is a powerful thing. People are lazy and afraid of change.
That's why you need the everyone uses Inkscape, it's the default for vector drawing approach. You will get nowhere with the inferior replacement for program X mindset. And around here it's true that basically everyone uses Inkscape. Some creative types may do some weird things on their Macs. But it has always been so (and is not going to change), so they don't matter.
"2) Inertia is a powerful thing in business. No matter how good product B is, if the company has been using product A for the last few years, they're not going to change unless they have absolutely no choice.
3) People are lazy and afraid of change. Unless a rival product works 100% exactly click-for-click ..."
This is not true as I can point you to a great example. Some of the most set in their ways types are Graphic Designers. They must be given whatever high-res billion colour gamut matched monitors, ridiculous amounts of RAM that they'll never touch, and whatever platform they choose (Always a Mac of course). In many organisations they are they only ones outside of the executive suites that are granted these requests. They won't change from what they've always used.
And so it was in the early 2000s when Quark Xpress ruled the roost. It was used by every graphic designer, every print house, every teaching college. Any one who did anything with page layout used it. The issue with Quark is they'd properly rested on their laurels and although the core graphics engine ad colour matching was good things like unlimited undos did not exist. Either you save continuously or you had 4 undo levels to back track - and with graphic design trying something out and back tracking is done quite regularly. There were loads of other stupid things Quark did but there was no way anyone was going to ditch it. It was synonymous with Graphic Design.
But at the end of the millenium Adobe announced InDesign. It complemented their other widely used products, photoshop and illustrator. A few people started trying out trials of InDesign, and readily saw that a modern application that had used modern features and really useful ideas and design language was way ahead of Quark. Sure the core colour separations and some high-end graphic features weren't there, but then again hadn't the print shop just sorted that out most of the time anyway? Print shops started installing it as customers started enquiring about it. That allowed Graphic Designers to install it and send the files natively (or even as print-ready PDFs). Within a few short years Quark ha been replaced as the de-facto page layout program and InDesign went from strength to strength.
Then Adobe decided that everyone needed a subscription, became greedy pissed off a load of aspiring designers and it's now time that products like Inkscape and others became good enough to replace Adobe's crown and allow choice back in the industry again.
1) Cost doesn't matter when it's the company, not you paying for it.
...
3) ... Unless a rival product works 100% exactly click-for-click like the current system, people won't want to use it. ...
Linus Tech Tips did a video on going to Adobe alternative products to save their $10k/year licensing for Adobe, only a week or 2 ago. I've [1]linked to the summary at the end of the video.
But, basically, their editors reckon that the alternative products were 90% as good as the entire poroduction pipeline of Adobe products. And they have 7 editors, paying about $420k a year for them. 90% as good means $42k loss of productivity, which would have to be covered by either making less vidoes (reduced revenue) or hiring another editor, which means more cost - more wages, more equipment, more office space, etc.
Also, since it is a creative industry, collaborating with others, you can't expect other organisations you do business with to "... not everybody out there in the great wider world has the tech savy, or the willingness to deal with your snowflake file format ..."
[1] https://youtu.be/L9VysWRHPdI?t=625
Another option
Affinity Designer seems to be a good Illustrator alternative.
The price is reasonable.
Adobe T's & C's
"to read the Terms of Use, you must agree to the Terms of Use"
https://boingboing.net/2020/05/05/adobe-to-read-the-terms-of-us.html
"It took 16 years, but open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape now works properly on macOS"
"Happy 1.0 to the fruits of volunteer labour"
Not bad, 16 years is obviously very fast in the software world. It has been 30+ years and Adobe has still failed to manage to port Illustrator to open platforms.
Volunteer labour is obviously more effective.
Reminds me of CorelDRAW
Like CorelDRAW on the PC, still great software but AFAIK it still doesn't run on iOS.
"starting at £19"
£19.97 per month (annual plan) is not a trivial amount for hobbyists/amateurs. On the upside if you pay the whole year in advance you get a £1.22 discount. Inkscape does look attractive all of a sudden.