Readit News logoReadit News
AdamBelis commented on Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor   hyvector.com... · Posted by u/jansan
jwmcglynn · 10 months ago
It's been a while since I tried Inkscape, but I downloaded it again to give honest feedback.

For context, I got started with Illustrator 9 as a teenager (this is making me feel dated, it was released in 2000), and I'm very familiar with the Illustrator UX and find it intuitive.

When using Inkscape, the UX just feels slightly off, things like:

- Weird keybindings, e.g. pressing Ctrl +/- does not zoom/unzoom

- The golden path feels buggy. When launching the window is for some reason cropped to the top 1/8th of the screen and needs to be resized, and the artboard is tiny.

- Usability issues, such as selecting paths does not show their outline, and the layers window doesn't show a preview of what's in each layer

- Exported SVGs are needlessly verbose. This looks like it has gotten better but is still there. For example, exporting an SVG with two gradients actually puts four gradients in the file (combining with inheritance).

I'm sure that spending more time with it would help, and Inkscape does seem quite powerful, but UX is a big factor when I adopt new tools and Inkscape is lacking there.

AdamBelis · 10 months ago
> Weird keybindings, e.g. pressing Ctrl +/- does not zoom/unzoom

if you prefer illustrator shorcut inksape offers it in welcome screen but maybe it would not hurt to also add that binding defoult is just +- without modifiers

> The golden path feels buggy. When launching the window is for some reason cropped to the top 1/8th of the screen and needs to be resized, and the artboard is tiny.

this is not true for new installs.

> Exported SVGs are needlessly verbose. This looks like it has gotten better but is still there. For example, exporting an SVG with two gradients actually puts four gradients in the file (combining with inheritance).

Inkscape extends SVG a lot so it can add more features. for exports just one of optimised svg export options inskcape offers

AdamBelis commented on Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor   hyvector.com... · Posted by u/jansan
squidbeak · 10 months ago
Inkscape's brilliant, but its niggles aren't trivial. Leaving transforms in the exported svg code has been pissing me off for years.
AdamBelis · 10 months ago
it can be set up not to do that and it si set up by default not to do that. If its possible (for some elements in specific scenaris it is not)
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
cuddlyogre · 3 years ago
You are correct. Sorry, it's been a while.

What I was actually needing at the time was an arbitrary box/lasso select. Does that exist?

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
Yes .. ish we have touch to select hold alth while dragging
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
ixxie · 3 years ago
Looks like a great release - kudos to the team. I grew up with Illustrator and use Inkscape exclusively since a few years. Overall I am quite happy with the features, the UI and the UX.

My main pain point is drawing vector curves. I cannot seem to get the intuition on how to rapidly draw curves, and it seems I need to switch tools to remove anchors and modify curvature. In Illustrator I used one tool and a few keyboard shortcuts and could trace fast.

Maybe it's just that I never fully learned the Inkscape way. It's a major issue since this is the main thing I want to do in Inkscape. Am I missing something?

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
imho this is sothing inskcape is lacking a lot and lots of needed features are hidden way too much. manly that if you want to create curve and tehn straight line you need to press Shifl+L

I made my proposal for improwing this wholl workflow still waiting for interested developer to implement it https://gitlab.com/inkscape/ux/-/issues/5

AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
wtarreau · 3 years ago
I'll try it. For me the best experience used to be with 0.92 and since then it has significantly degraded, with counter-intuitive things happening all the time in the UI. One of the operations I find the most complicated is to place circles at specific positions. I only know how to adjust their size and left position but as I'm using inkscape to design drill positions, it's a real pain for me to have to mentally subtract the radius and the line width. And in general, I find everything related to movements, alignments and such particularly difficult, to the point that generally you have to find a video showing a trick to proceed efficiently.
AdamBelis · 3 years ago
you dont need to do mental math you can chang your bbox calcuations to use geometry preferences- tools - bbox geometry
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
cuddlyogre · 3 years ago
I like this application. The major thing it is missing is a tool that lets you cut shapes arbitrarily. I know there is something akin to masking, but it leaves the original shape data in the file.

As an example. Say I wanted cut a semicircle out of a square.

If I'm missing something that already exists, let me know.

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
ytou can do that with boolean operations in path menu or with new shape buuilder tool
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
pxoe · 3 years ago
calligraphy pen remains unusable, after being made worse in pretty much every regard in 1.x. it's slow, quality of strokes is terrible, and it's been that way ever since 1.0 betas with zero improvement https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/1473#note_1128... welp, still using 0.92.5, where the pen is actually responsive and creates good results.
AdamBelis · 3 years ago
yeha it seems like upstrem bug . Inscape is porting to 1.4 so hopefully this will be addresed there
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
nicopappl · 3 years ago
Yes!

I use regularly Inkscape, and it has been a constant source of frustration. The UI is the exact opposite of how I expect things to work.

It's improving at breakneck speed though. 1.2 already solved some of my frustrations (the new interface for linecaps & line dots, amazing!)

Almost all the features in this release seem to solve a major frustration I had with Inkscape.

* The node deletion behavior, it was so annoying, how you delete a node on a straight line and suddenly you get some soup.

* The awful color palette. You had to manually edit text files to get your own palettes, couldn't edit them in Inkscape. I, in fact, never managed to create a custom palette. Pinned colors seem to solve this.

* Lasso selection. It was soo fiddly to select a group of nodes. One missclick and you had to start from scratch, clicking on the tinny controls.

* Multithreaded rendering. The single-threaded software renderer is a misery for complex projects, or just zooming in. Now Inkscape is going to be 12 times faster on my machine

* Font selection was utter garbage, the new UI seems promising

* Patterns was also a constant source of frustration, looks like this release improves it.

This is exciting. I'm looking forward to use this new release.

Now please give me a dialog for key rebinding, similar to Krita. And better key binding discoverability.

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
you still cannot create color pallets easily/user-friendly , we did not implemented this yet.

you can expect some performance gains but not really 12x it does not scale lineri .

you can edit SOME keyboard shortcuts in preference - Interface -keyboard .

Some (a lot) of actions are still not migrated to actions so you cannot change shortcuts easily. But this is ongoing process.

AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
Freak_NL · 3 years ago
A fun thing they show in the animations is how you can do basic arithmetic in the size fields. So if you've setup your document in millimetres (I do this for woodworking designs) and you have a shape with width 5mm you can do this:

    5.000 + 2mm
Or:

    5.000 + 0.2cm
I don't know when Inkscape started doing this, but I just gave it a go one day because it felt like something I would put in (and to their credit, they did).

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
its been there for a very long time
AdamBelis commented on Inkscape 1.3   inkscape.org/news/2023/07... · Posted by u/Reventlov
Hamcha · 3 years ago
As an Affinity Designer user, it's insane too see how close we went from only Illustrator having Shape Builder to both Designer and Inkscape releasing it so close together. It's super handy and happy to see it as an option everywhere now.

Honestly if they focused on cleaning up the UI I could see myself trying out Inkscape more seriously!

AdamBelis · 3 years ago
We are slowly working also on that

u/AdamBelis

KarmaCake day86February 6, 2022View Original