Inkscape

On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:44:31 -0700, MenTaLguY wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Jun 2007 16:03:06 +0000 (UTC), Jim Henderson
> <hendersj@...> wrote:
>> Hackers blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order
>> to try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in
>> irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.
> 
> Although this isn't really directly related to your point, one of the
> issues with forums is that, while most of the Inkscape developers do
> read the inkscape-user mailing list, most of us aren't able to keep up
> with forums.
> 
> That's the main reason I'd prefer the "official" Inkscape forum to be an
> interface to the mailing list over other approaches, even though I
> certainly do appreciate the benefits of "real" forums (e.g. being able
> to post inline images as examples, more robust threading, etc.).

Agreed - I have nearly 200 newsgroups that I currently track, and when 
dealing with that many groups, a consistent interface is the only way I 
personally can get anything done at all.  If I had to go from web site to 
web site to check all the stuff I follow, I'd never get any work done 
during the day (many of the groups pertain directly to my job).

The POV-Ray community model is another great example of how this type of 
thing can (and should) work - they've got a web interface to an NNTP 
server; they've got binaries groups where inline image posting is 
permitted (though it's not a hard enforcement in other groups - I'm not 
sure why people think NNTP can't handle inline images, it certainly 
can).  news.povray.org is usable both with a news reader as well as the 
web interface - those who might benefit from seeing how someone else has 
set this up might wander over and have a look.

Jim

On 6/1/07, MenTaLguY <mental@...> wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2007 16:03:06 +0000 (UTC), Jim Henderson <hendersj@...> wrote:
> > Hackers blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order to
> > try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in
> > irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.
>
> Although this isn't really directly related to your point, one of the issues with forums is that, while most of the Inkscape developers do read the inkscape-user mailing list, most of us aren't able to keep up with forums.
>

I think that the mailing lists are doing an excellent job on the
techinical side, but they arent generating a users community in terms
of art particularly well. I dont think that having all the devs
reading all the forum is necessary for a forum once we start talking
about it in the context of art rather than technical support.
I think if they were done right, and kept pretty focused, then forums
could be a good way to grow the creative aspect of the community, and
could help tie together and stimulate some of the excellent work that
has been going on with the youtube screencast tutorials etc.
Very much feel they should be something that compiments the mailing
list rather than replaces, as I'd see them performing a dfferent role.


> That's the main reason I'd prefer the "official" Inkscape forum to be an interface to the mailing list over other approaches, even though I certainly do appreciate the benefits of "real" forums (e.g. being able to post inline images as examples, more robust threading, etc.).
>
> -mental
>

On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> The POV-Ray community model is another great example of how this  
> type of
> thing can (and should) work - they've got a web interface to an NNTP
> server; they've got binaries groups where inline image posting is
> permitted (though it's not a hard enforcement in other groups - I'm  
> not
> sure why people think NNTP can't handle inline images, it certainly
> can).  news.povray.org is usable both with a news reader as well as  
> the
> web interface - those who might benefit from seeing how someone  
> else has
> set this up might wander over and have a look.

I'm definitely a strong supporter of this, and second the idea of POV- 
Ray as a good example.

In fact once you remove the multi-server distribution (as POV-Ray  
does, since their groups are private), it does boil down to being  
about the technical equivalent of a mailing list. The limitations  
people see, I believe, arise from shortcomings in the mail software  
they use. I happen to get a very nice, threaded view of the inkscape  
mailing lists, in-line images and all, since I'm using a decent  
client (Apple's mail app), but for those others a pass through NNTP  
and a front-end like POV-Ray has could be very useful.

*But* I think the main goal is to not fragment the different  
discussion groups. If some people participate in a given discussion  
via mail, and some via NNTP and some via a web front-end, but all are  
discussing things together then we gain the most. It is in  
artificially splitting a discussion just to allow for different  
access methods that we would end up losing.

On 6/2/07, Jon A. Cruz <jon@...> wrote:
>
> On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>
> The POV-Ray community model is another great example of how this type of
>
> thing can (and should) work - they've got a web interface to an NNTP
>
> server; they've got binaries groups where inline image posting is
>
> permitted (though it's not a hard enforcement in other groups - I'm not
>
> sure why people think NNTP can't handle inline images, it certainly
>
> can).  news.povray.org is usable both with a news reader as well as the
>
> web interface - those who might benefit from seeing how someone else has
>
> set this up might wander over and have a look.
> I'm definitely a strong supporter of this, and second the idea of POV-Ray as
> a good example.
>
> In fact once you remove the multi-server distribution (as POV-Ray does,
> since their groups are private), it does boil down to being about the
> technical equivalent of a mailing list. The limitations people see, I
> believe, arise from shortcomings in the mail software they use. I happen to
> get a very nice, threaded view of the inkscape mailing lists, in-line images
> and all, since I'm using a decent client (Apple's mail app), but for those
> others a pass through NNTP and a front-end like POV-Ray has could be very
> useful.
>
> *But* I think the main goal is to not fragment the different discussion
> groups. If some people participate in a given discussion via mail, and some
> via NNTP and some via a web front-end, but all are discussing things
> together then we gain the most. It is in artificially splitting a discussion
> just to allow for different access methods that we would end up losing.
>
>

at the end of the day, of all the art sites I've come across, not one
of them uses a mailing list as an interface, I know every time we have
this discussion y'all bring up the POVray site, but to my eyes its
rather like how I found POVray itself, technically capable of doing
the job but not exactly user friendly or pretty.
you cant sticky a post full of tutorials on a mail list, you cant go
back and edit so that the first post always has the latest version of
your wip. Fundamentally tho theres a mindset involved. I dont know
about other people but I wouldnt make the kind of short, looks good
comments in response to an email that I might drop on a forum.
Deviantart is a good step in the right direction in terms of art
community, except its very much set up to show off finished peices,
and unless you put a watch on everyone in the community then you have
to proactively look for things to comment on. If you had a decent
forum then that wouldnt be the case.
I think something with a Gallery section and a WIP section that
encouraged some display and gave a focal point for the teaching side
of the community could be a good thing.

Just my 2c

Sim

On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:15:59 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:

> *But* I think the main goal is to not fragment the different discussion
> groups. If some people participate in a given discussion via mail, and
> some via NNTP and some via a web front-end, but all are discussing
> things together then we gain the most. It is in artificially splitting a
> discussion just to allow for different access methods that we would end
> up losing.

Well stated; this is what I was driving at, but this is a much more 
succinct way of putting it than I did. :-)

Jim

On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:09:53 +0100, john cliff wrote:

> at the end of the day, of all the art sites I've come across, not one of
> them uses a mailing list as an interface, I know every time we have this
> discussion y'all bring up the POVray site, but to my eyes its rather
> like how I found POVray itself, technically capable of doing the job but
> not exactly user friendly or pretty. you cant sticky a post full of
> tutorials on a mail list, you cant go back and edit so that the first
> post always has the latest version of your wip. 

That's what a Wiki is for.  One of the things that many of these online 
"bulletin board" packages do is they do one thing fairly well, and add a 
bunch of other unrelated features to it.  The result, while it works for 
some, looks to me like trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

For collaborative content creation (which is what a tutorial developed in 
this way is), a forum isn't the right tool for the job.  You want 
something that can be modified in a flexible manner, and that's what a 
Wiki is designed to do.

Similarly, I see developers of Mediawiki adding "talk" or "discussion" 
pages to their Wikis, but wikis are free-form content development tools, 
and not suited to threaded discussion.  There are efforts to put threaded 
messaging into Mediawiki, but it's simply not the right tool for the 
job.  That's what a forum or newsgroup is used for.

It is possible to *integrate* these different technologies without 
sacrificing compatibility.  This is rarely done, and that it is results 
in the fragmentation of community that I'm talking about.

I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job at hand instead 
of trying to band-aid something that's not suited for the job into 
something that can work.  That's also precisely why, while it's possible 
to include images inline in mailing list posts or newsgroup postings, I 
post my images to a photo album and post a link in the mailing list.  For 
one thing, I can put higher resolution images in a photo album (not that 
there's a restriction to posting size on many lists or groups) and I 
won't piss off the group because now they have a 5 MB image to download.  
With mailing lists (in particular), this results in a terrible waste of 
space and bandwidth - anyone who's participated on a list and had someone 
decide to send a 500 MB attachment will know the pain endured through 
that process.

Jim

On 6/2/07, Jim Henderson <hendersj@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:09:53 +0100, john cliff wrote:
>
> > at the end of the day, of all the art sites I've come across, not one of
> > them uses a mailing list as an interface, I know every time we have this
> > discussion y'all bring up the POVray site, but to my eyes its rather
> > like how I found POVray itself, technically capable of doing the job but
> > not exactly user friendly or pretty. you cant sticky a post full of
> > tutorials on a mail list, you cant go back and edit so that the first
> > post always has the latest version of your wip.
>
> That's what a Wiki is for.  One of the things that many of these online
> "bulletin board" packages do is they do one thing fairly well, and add a
> bunch of other unrelated features to it.  The result, while it works for
> some, looks to me like trying to use the wrong tool for the job.
>

Thats all well and good, but if the 'right tool' isnt being looked at
then it doesnt matter if its the right tool. You can have as many
wikis as you want, but if jo blogs the user doesnt know to look there,
all your going to end up with is a bunch of people asking in the mail
list/ forum.
And I wouldnt want absolutely anyone editing the post about my wip,
dont mind them commenting, but thats a different thing.

> For collaborative content creation (which is what a tutorial developed in
> this way is), a forum isn't the right tool for the job.  You want
> something that can be modified in a flexible manner, and that's what a
> Wiki is designed to do.
>

That depends on how your collaborating. If you want an everyone mucks
in with no overall control approach, you want a wiki. if you simply
want feedback on what is essentialy one persons creation, that their
remaining in control of, I'd go with a forum still.

> Similarly, I see developers of Mediawiki adding "talk" or "discussion"
> pages to their Wikis, but wikis are free-form content development tools,
> and not suited to threaded discussion.  There are efforts to put threaded
> messaging into Mediawiki, but it's simply not the right tool for the
> job.  That's what a forum or newsgroup is used for.
>
> It is possible to *integrate* these different technologies without
> sacrificing compatibility.  This is rarely done, and that it is results
> in the fragmentation of community that I'm talking about.
>
> I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job at hand instead
> of trying to band-aid something that's not suited for the job into
> something that can work.  That's also precisely why, while it's possible
> to include images inline in mailing list posts or newsgroup postings, I
> post my images to a photo album and post a link in the mailing list.  For
> one thing, I can put higher resolution images in a photo album (not that
> there's a restriction to posting size on many lists or groups) and I
> won't piss off the group because now they have a 5 MB image to download.
> With mailing lists (in particular), this results in a terrible waste of
> space and bandwidth - anyone who's participated on a list and had someone
> decide to send a 500 MB attachment will know the pain endured through
> that process.
>
> Jim
>
>

I'm confused, thats half the point I was trying to make that you
argued against that you've just come back and agreed with. Mailing
lists arent suited to multimedia intensive discussions where not
everyone wants to see everything. A forum doesnt stop it being inline,
but at the same time doesnt overburden everyone with the need to
download everything.

On Jun 2, 2007, at 9:09 AM, john cliff wrote:

> at the end of the day, of all the art sites I've come across, not one
> of them uses a mailing list as an interface, I know every time we have
> this discussion y'all bring up the POVray site, but to my eyes its
> rather like how I found POVray itself, technically capable of doing
> the job but not exactly user friendly or pretty.

But you miss the main point.

Although you don't happen to find the interface particularly pretty,  
it is far more than sufficient and has allowed an artistic community  
to flourish. The functionality of most forums is there, and people  
didn't need to make it prettier once they hit the sufficient level  
where artistic discussion and use hit critical mass.

Consider a website with dancing flash animation all over. Pretty when  
you first see it, but once you try to navigate and all your browser  
controls are nonfunctional and your typing and cursor are heavily  
lagged from 100% CPU load, functional simplicity starts to show a bit  
more promising. (And, yes, I've hit that problem with forums I've  
checked out now and then)

On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:25:58 +0100, john cliff wrote:

> Thats all well and good, but if the 'right tool' isnt being looked at
> then it doesnt matter if its the right tool. You can have as many wikis
> as you want, but if jo blogs the user doesnt know to look there, all
> your going to end up with is a bunch of people asking in the mail list/
> forum.

That's why a central repository of links to various community resources 
is needed - a centralized pointer, if you will.  This is how I direct my 
communities to forums/newsgroups, wikis, and other resources (downloads).

> And I wouldnt want absolutely anyone editing the post about my wip, dont
> mind them commenting, but thats a different thing.

Sure, so use a blog for that.  That's what this "sticky forum post" is 
really being used as, so rather than manipulate a piece of software 
(threaded discussions) to do something it wasn't particularly designed to 
do (collaborative creation), using the right tool for the job is the 
right thing to do, IMHO.  Point people at it from the centralized 
resource locater (a sort of "service location" resource, if you will) so 
they can find it.

> That depends on how your collaborating. If you want an everyone mucks in
> with no overall control approach, you want a wiki. if you simply want
> feedback on what is essentialy one persons creation, that their
> remaining in control of, I'd go with a forum still.

Again, I'd consider a blog the right tool for that.  I know people who 
write fiction who use this as a tool, and it's quite successful for that 
purpose.

> I'm confused, thats half the point I was trying to make that you argued
> against that you've just come back and agreed with. Mailing lists arent
> suited to multimedia intensive discussions where not everyone wants to
> see everything. A forum doesnt stop it being inline, but at the same
> time doesnt overburden everyone with the need to download everything.

And for those who work disconnected (as I do), or who participate in many 
different areas, let them figure out how to do this in the time they 
have?  Again, I have almost 200 newsgroups I read (this mailing list is 
one of the ones I read via gmane, a list server to NNTP gateway), and if 
I had to go to each resource separately or process all this information 
online (instead of, say, on an airplane, which I have done in the past as 
I used to travel a lot), I'd never be able to participate in well over 
half of them.

Mailing lists can work for "multimedia intensive discussions" - just look 
at the POVRay groups to see an example.  The point is, I can avoid 
downloading large attachments if people link to, say, a Flickr account 
rather than include the content in the messages.  Bandwidth-friendly, 
able to read the content offline, and include multimedia.  It works very 
effectively for that.

There's nothing to prevent, say, someone creating a web-based forum that 
pulls the remote images inline for those who like that type of 
presentation.  A good community, IMHO, does not *exclude* people because 
of their choice of access to the community.  It's not always easy to 
accommodate everyone (and every small minority shouldn't be a primary 
consideration, also), but given the traffic this list/group sees, I don't 
see how it benefits the Inkscape community at large to fragment through a 
*duplication* of existing discussion areas just because someone doesn't 
like the way it's presented.  It's more efficient and better for the 
community to talk about *integration* rather than spinning off, which is 
what it seemed some were advocating.

Does that clarify what I'm saying?

Jim

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:25:58 +0100, john cliff wrote:
>
>   
>> Thats all well and good, but if the 'right tool' isnt being looked at
>> then it doesnt matter if its the right tool. You can have as many wikis
>> as you want, but if jo blogs the user doesnt know to look there, all
>> your going to end up with is a bunch of people asking in the mail list/
>> forum.
>>     
>
> That's why a central repository of links to various community resources 
> is needed - a centralized pointer, if you will.  This is how I direct my 
> communities to forums/newsgroups, wikis, and other resources (downloads).
>   

Could be /one /approach to look at this, to pre-define (to the degree
to which this is possible) what the various resources (mailing list,
wiki, and (possibly) a blog are being used for?

My suggestion:

*- Wiki* for tutorials, links to other online resources (maybe to
ImageMagick for processing exported bitmaps, to give but one
example),

*- Blog *for things like: Hey-I.just-did-this-cool-image-what-do-you-
think type of stuff,

*- the* *mailing list* for everything else (maybe with a short, friendly
reminder: Please, take a look at the wiki first before posting to
the list ;-).

Greetings,

Claus

-- 
Home Page        - http://home.arcor.de/ccyrny/            [in English]
graf-o-matic 2.0 - http://grafomatic01.twoday.net/         [in German]

Gimp brushes, as you perhaps well know, are bitmap based and quite limited.  You can make
dynamically resizable brushes in the brush editor, but they are still limited as to
shape.

But what if there were a way to make "brushes" that could be resized, rotated, and
otherwise manipulated however you wanted?

Enter Inkscape.

I am a moderator on Gimptalk.com.  I have seen a lot of requests lately for vector
brushes. Well...vector simply means a more or less simple shape made with paths.

And what is (imho) the best way to do paths? Inkscape! Lots more options and control than
Gimp.

So, what you do is you design your brushes in Inkscape.

Once you have the path done in Inkscape, you save it out and import it into Gimp. Make
sure that before you do, you put the path in the upper left corner of the Inkscape
canvas.  When Gimp imports them, that is where they will show up.  Put them anywhere else
and you may have a hard time finding them, since Gimp can actually import them outside
the canvas area.

Once you have the path there, you can use the transform tools to move, scale, rotate,
shear, flip, and even use the perspective tool on them. Yes that's right on the PATH by
itself, not by turning the path into a selection and filling it with something, then
manipulating the resulting image.

So what good is that?

Well, instead of a brushes dialog, just have a Gimp .xcf file open with nothing but paths
in it. Just like the layers dialog, you can drag and drop paths in between images and it
copies the path into the image. From there, you scale/manipulate it accordingly. This is
perhaps more cumbersome than using brushes, but then it is also more flexible as well,
since with a conventional Gimp brush, you are limited by however the brush designer
designed the brush. With this method, you can make your "brush" fit the canvas and image
you are working on.

Now lets take it a step further....what if you want an "oddball" brush, that isn't a
vector? I haven't tried this...but it should work. Make a bitmap in Gimp, better if it is
high contrast, import it into Inkscape and run Path>Trace Bitmap on it. You may have to
clean up some extra control nodes, but once you have a path, you can again, scale it up
or down, whatever. Import your creation into Gimp and you are good to go.

Even then...if you want to turn one of these path images into a regular brush, it is
pretty easy to do so, just make a grayscale image of it on a white layer, select it and
do Script-Fu>Selection>Selection to Brush.

Distribution of these "brushes" would simply be a matter of uploading a zipped .xcf file
somewhere. You download the file, extract it, open it, then just drag the path you want
to use into the image you are working on.

Anyway...I thought I would just throw this out there.

Here is a resource to illustrate what I am talking about, an .xcf file with four vector
paths created using Inkscape and imported into Gimp. You can open this, drag them into
whatever image you are working on and then use the transform tools to size and locate
them where you want. When you are ready, turn them into selections and bucket fill. or
you can make them into regular brushes.

http://www.box.net/shared/24mryjd5dv


       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search 
that gives answers, not web links. 
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Jon A. Cruz wrote:
> 
> Although you don't happen to find the interface particularly pretty,  
> it is far more than sufficient and has allowed an artistic community  
> to flourish. The functionality of most forums is there, and people  
> didn't need to make it prettier once they hit the sufficient level  
> where artistic discussion and use hit critical mass.
> 

The POV-Ray community is perhaps not a fair comparison.  Yes, it's huge, but
I suspect it's been around for over ten years, a time when newsgroups was as
popular as websites.  Most people who use the internet today would not even
know what a newsgroup is.  And unless they worked in a large organisation
they may never have been exposed to a mailing list.  But if they've used the
internet then you can be pretty sure they've accessed a webpage and after
not to long they will have been exposed to forums.

To suggest Inkscape doesn't need a forum is closing the door in the face of
many potential users.

Will it dilute the current Inkscape community and pool of knowledge?  Maybe
- but that sounds a little doomsday-ish to me.  In most situations people
are finding Inkscape info via Google, so there is little difference if the
info is on wiki.inkscape or forum.inkscape provided it can be found.

And with the amount of rubbish usually posted on a forum, there will always
be a place for a Wiki that compiles the useful stuff.

You have to ask the question, does the mailing list ensure Inkscape is
capturing the biggest audiance?  I would suggest by only using a mailing
list it's restricting the audiance.
-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/forum--tf3787962.html#a10934510
Sent from the Inkscape - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 6/2/07, Jon A. Cruz <jon@...> wrote:
>
> On Jun 2, 2007, at 9:09 AM, john cliff wrote:
>
>
> at the end of the day, of all the art sites I've come across, not one
>
> of them uses a mailing list as an interface, I know every time we have
>
> this discussion y'all bring up the POVray site, but to my eyes its
>
> rather like how I found POVray itself, technically capable of doing
>
> the job but not exactly user friendly or pretty.
> But you miss the main point.
>
> Although you don't happen to find the interface particularly pretty, it is
> far more than sufficient and has allowed an artistic community to flourish.
> The functionality of most forums is there, and people didn't need to make it
> prettier once they hit the sufficient level where artistic discussion and
> use hit critical mass.

I think your missing the point too. Its a pretty safe bet that the
cross section of people using POVray is probably quite different than
those using inkscape.
We have had over a quarter of a million downloads of the 0.45.1
windows exe from sourceforge now, a large percentage of those probably
arent all that technical,
are used to forums for interacting on this sort of thing, and wouldnt
know what a wiki was. (they'd probably say isnt that the encylopedia
thingy?)


>
> Consider a website with dancing flash animation all over.

I'm not suggesting we have something with dancing flash animations,
I'm suggesting we dont have something thats butt ugly, and has mail
headers between every post. its an artistic community, how about some
sense of style and design?

>Pretty when you
> first see it, but once you try to navigate and all your browser controls are
> nonfunctional and your typing and cursor are heavily lagged from 100% CPU
> load, functional simplicity starts to show a bit more promising. (And, yes,
> I've hit that problem with forums I've checked out now and then)

You can make the same sort of arguements about mailing lists if you
want to play devils advocate. They take forever to download when
someone posts big attachments that your not interested in seeing, and
you end up waiting for ages and wasting bandwidth....
Theres bad examples of everything out there if you look hard enough.

Forums for community: good idea. See Blender's forums.

Just saying. I like the list, but miss a forum.


/d

On 6/2/07, Jim Henderson <hendersj@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:25:58 +0100, john cliff wrote:
>
> > Thats all well and good, but if the 'right tool' isnt being looked at
> > then it doesnt matter if its the right tool. You can have as many wikis
> > as you want, but if jo blogs the user doesnt know to look there, all
> > your going to end up with is a bunch of people asking in the mail list/
> > forum.
>
> That's why a central repository of links to various community resources
> is needed - a centralized pointer, if you will.  This is how I direct my
> communities to forums/newsgroups, wikis, and other resources (downloads).
>
> > And I wouldnt want absolutely anyone editing the post about my wip, dont
> > mind them commenting, but thats a different thing.
>
> Sure, so use a blog for that.  That's what this "sticky forum post" is
> really being used as, so rather than manipulate a piece of software
> (threaded discussions) to do something it wasn't particularly designed to
> do (collaborative creation), using the right tool for the job is the
> right thing to do, IMHO.  Point people at it from the centralized
> resource locater (a sort of "service location" resource, if you will) so
> they can find it.
>
> > That depends on how your collaborating. If you want an everyone mucks in
> > with no overall control approach, you want a wiki. if you simply want
> > feedback on what is essentialy one persons creation, that their
> > remaining in control of, I'd go with a forum still.
>
> Again, I'd consider a blog the right tool for that.  I know people who
> write fiction who use this as a tool, and it's quite successful for that
> purpose.
>

Your missing my point entirely. A blog is the right kind of tool, but
has the big downside that people have to find it. And a planet isnt
the answer either, because thats then limited to the people who've
been added to the aggregation list. A forum gives you one central
point, that you can find all the different relevant discussions, has a
low barrier for entry, and encourages discussion.
You say you know people who use this as a tool, but thats just the
point, you have to know their there, or they need to be linked from
somewhere (ie someone else has to have found them first)

> > I'm confused, thats half the point I was trying to make that you argued
> > against that you've just come back and agreed with. Mailing lists arent
> > suited to multimedia intensive discussions where not everyone wants to
> > see everything. A forum doesnt stop it being inline, but at the same
> > time doesnt overburden everyone with the need to download everything.
>
> And for those who work disconnected (as I do), or who participate in many
> different areas, let them figure out how to do this in the time they
> have?  Again, I have almost 200 newsgroups I read (this mailing list is
> one of the ones I read via gmane, a list server to NNTP gateway), and if
> I had to go to each resource separately or process all this information
> online (instead of, say, on an airplane, which I have done in the past as
> I used to travel a lot), I'd never be able to participate in well over
> half of them.
>

You can never cater for everyone, its about looking at a target
audience and aiming to cater to them as best you can. Theres gonna be
edge cases for everything.

> Mailing lists can work for "multimedia intensive discussions" - just look
> at the POVRay groups to see an example.  The point is, I can avoid
> downloading large attachments if people link to, say, a Flickr account
> rather than include the content in the messages.  Bandwidth-friendly,
> able to read the content offline, and include multimedia.  It works very
> effectively for that.
>

Looking at the POVray groups yesterday they werent actualluy all that
multimedia intensive by the standards of a lot of the places i hang
out. (admittedly it was a pretty brief skim, so I could have been
unlucky with my sampling.)

> There's nothing to prevent, say, someone creating a web-based forum that
> pulls the remote images inline for those who like that type of
> presentation.  A good community, IMHO, does not *exclude* people because
> of their choice of access to the community.  It's not always easy to
> accommodate everyone (and every small minority shouldn't be a primary
> consideration, also), but given the traffic this list/group sees, I don't
> see how it benefits the Inkscape community at large to fragment through a
> *duplication* of existing discussion areas just because someone doesn't
> like the way it's presented.  It's more efficient and better for the
> community to talk about *integration* rather than spinning off, which is
> what it seemed some were advocating.
>

I said before and I'll say again, I'm not talking about fragmenting
the discussion this list sees, because we see very little creative
commentry on here. I'm talking about trying to stimulate some new
discussion. Jack of all trades, master of none is the phrase that
springs to mind. why do lots of things badly, or cater to lots of
people needs badly, when you can do a good job for a focused area?
I'd guess our user numbers are well into 6 figures judging by the
download figures for 0.45.1 yet we have little to no creative
community going on here, clearly a list is not working as an interface
for that kind of discussion/community building.
You say "a good community does not *exclude* people because of their
choice of access to the community" I'd say we're probably excluding a
lot of people by the interface we provide currently.

> Does that clarify what I'm saying?
>
> Jim
>
>

I understand where your coming from, I just dont agree :)

Cheers

Sim

For as long as I can remember the majority of the traffic on the
Inkscape-user list has been discussion between users and developers.
This discussion was necessarily techinical. In just the past few weeks
there has been a noticeable outgrowth of user to user discussion. This
is a great sign. Our community is growing in new directions. Fantastic.

Now, I'm pretty anti-forum myself. I've tried a few forum only
communities and they just didn't fit. I like mailing lists better
because I can aggregate all the traffic into a single place, sort into
folders and see where there is new content and how much all with a
single click! With forums I have to visit one website per forum and then
drop down into the subforums just to see if any discissions I'm
interested have new traffic. (Side note, I love that we have such a
diverse cross section of the community participating actively in IRC. So
cool to pop in the channel and get and give realtime answers and
realtime feedback. Love it!) I've seen communities that do all their
developer-developer communication in forums and private email, that
model really aggravates me. I've also seen non techinical communities
that have tried to start all their members in a mailing list. I really
think that any time a large group of nontechincal users is required to
search for preexisting content in a different place than where they
would normally interact with new content, you will find a huge disaster
as the same questions get beaten into the ground time and time again.

We've had a number of user requests for a forum for a while now. There
are a few users who are happy with the current lists and don't think
change is necessary. I think most of the devs have no strong oppinion.
As an Inkscape developer, I really like to see users gain more and more
techinical skills with inkscape and get sucked into the Inkscape-devel
list. But I'm ready to admit that now is the time to let the debate of
relative merits of various community discussion tools fade into the
background. Let's debate the merits of various forum software packages. :-)

Aaron Spike

On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 09:27:59 +0100, john cliff wrote:

> I think your missing the point too. Its a pretty safe bet that the cross
> section of people using POVray is probably quite different than those
> using inkscape.

Actually, you'd be surprised then.  There are a bunch of people with no 
technical background at all who use POV-Ray in conjunction with things 
like Wings3D, Blender, Inkscape, and Moray.  You don't have to be a 
technogeek to be able to use POV-Ray.

> are used to forums for interacting on this sort of thing, and wouldnt
> know what a wiki was. (they'd probably say isnt that the encylopedia
> thingy?)

And the answer is "yes, that's an example of a Wiki.  Ours is similar, 
but contains information about Inkscape instead".

We shouldn't assume that the average end user is too stupid to figure 
things out if we give them good pointers to the resources.  They are, 
after all, figuring out how to use Inkscape. ;-)

Jim

On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:55:59 -0700, microUgly wrote:

> The POV-Ray community is perhaps not a fair comparison.  Yes, it's huge,
> but I suspect it's been around for over ten years, a time when
> newsgroups was as popular as websites.  Most people who use the internet
> today would not even know what a newsgroup is.  And unless they worked
> in a large organisation they may never have been exposed to a mailing
> list.  But if they've used the internet then you can be pretty sure
> they've accessed a webpage and after not to long they will have been
> exposed to forums.
> 
> To suggest Inkscape doesn't need a forum is closing the door in the face
> of many potential users.

You're missing my point (at least):  Don't create a *separate* forum, 
create one that works as a gateway to the existing stuff.  vBulletin, for 
example, provides a "forum" experience to those who want that type of 
thing, and can gate things to an NNTP backend for those who want that.

It doesn't have to be an either-or discussion.

Jim

On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 09:58:50 +0100, john cliff wrote:

> Your missing my point entirely. A blog is the right kind of tool, but
> has the big downside that people have to find it. 

Not if there's a resource page that points to it.  That's the point.

> And a planet isnt the
> answer either, because thats then limited to the people who've been
> added to the aggregation list. A forum gives you one central point, that
> you can find all the different relevant discussions, has a low barrier
> for entry, and encourages discussion. You say you know people who use
> this as a tool, but thats just the point, you have to know their there,
> or they need to be linked from somewhere (ie someone else has to have
> found them first)

There are lots of ways to make people aware of such a thing.  That's the 
"power of the internet" (if you will) - it's possible to tie things 
together and link them.

> You can never cater for everyone, its about looking at a target audience
> and aiming to cater to them as best you can. Theres gonna be edge cases
> for everything.

Sure, but arguably you're discussing the possible "elimination" of an 
"edge case" in a mailing list that is composed primarily of people who 
are IN that use case scenario.

> Looking at the POVray groups yesterday they werent actualluy all that
> multimedia intensive by the standards of a lot of the places i hang out.
> (admittedly it was a pretty brief skim, so I could have been unlucky
> with my sampling.)

You'd have to have looked in the binaries groups in particular, because 
the community's rules state that that's where images get posted rather 
than to the other groups.  The web interface on news.povray.org actually 
enforces that for people posting from that interface - the buttons for 
attaching an image don't even appear in the non-binary groups.

The newsgroups also provide pointers to a number of other resources - as 
does the povray.org website.  In this example, the website is the central 
repository of pointers.  Such a list has to be maintained, of course, but 
if someone volunteers to do that and does keep things up to date, that 
becomes a very valuable resource.

> I said before and I'll say again, I'm not talking about fragmenting the
> discussion this list sees, because we see very little creative commentry
> on here. I'm talking about trying to stimulate some new discussion. Jack
> of all trades, master of none is the phrase that springs to mind. why do
> lots of things badly, or cater to lots of people needs badly, when you
> can do a good job for a focused area? I'd guess our user numbers are
> well into 6 figures judging by the download figures for 0.45.1 yet we
> have little to no creative community going on here, clearly a list is
> not working as an interface for that kind of discussion/community
> building. You say "a good community does not *exclude* people because of
> their choice of access to the community" I'd say we're probably
> excluding a lot of people by the interface we provide currently.

And so my point is that we should consider the existing community while 
we look to grow the community.  We do that by using an integrated 
solution rather than a series of disconnected "island" solutions.

Providing a web-based forum ALONE is not a good idea, IMHO.  Providing a 
web-based forum that interfaces to mailing lists, NNTP servers, etc - 
that's a good idea.  Creating additional specialized forums is a good 
idea (I've not advocated using inkscape-user for EVERYTHING, and if 
that's the impression I gave, I apologise, that's absolutely NOT what I'm 
saying), but doing so away from the existing infrastructure and providing 
an inconsistent interface creates an issue for those who have chosen to 
use the lists and/or NNTP interfaces.

Again using povray.org as an example, they use an NNTP server.  Many, 
many people use it (as evidenced by the traffic in the off-topic group - 
that group is not available in the web interface), but there are many 
people who use the web interface *exclusively* because the don't want to 
use NNTP, or don't know how.  They have a CHOICE of accessing using a web-
based forum or NNTP.

There are a few solutions that solve this issue of providing multiple 
interfaces - there's vBulletin (which I mentioned before), there's 
FUDforum (which I've set up - it duplicates the message base rather than 
providing a native NNTP client, and there are pros and cons to doing 
that).  There's gmane.org (which gates the list server to the NNTP 
server).

Creating a solution that provides a web interface, NNTP interface, and 
mail list interface is not impossible by combining a couple of these.  
You get a mailing list set up, gate it to NNTP with gmane, and provide a 
web-based frontend with vBulletin for FUDForum that points to the gmane 
server.  Bingo, you've solved the problem for all three classifications 
of users.

Jim

Aaron Spike-2 wrote:
> 
> But I'm ready to admit that now is the time to let the debate of
> relative merits of various community discussion tools fade into the
> background. Let's debate the merits of various forum software packages.
> :-)
> 

I kinda got keen for a challenge and created an independant, and obviously
unofficial, forum specifically for Inkscape users -
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/

There's been a lot passionate debate about forums and my venture isn't
intended to ruffle peoples feathers.  I'm just looking for a hobby, really -
and I'm more than happy to use it to promote any other communities (official
or not) that might appear.


-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/forum--tf3787962.html#a10944015
Sent from the Inkscape - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Dear all,

I'm a new (and very enthousiastic) user of Inkscape. Recently, I have 
moved all my fonts to the windows 'fonts' directory. However, It seemd 
that Inkscape did not recognize the new fonts. I could read from various 
topics that removing the font-cache file might resolve this porblem. I 
followed this procedure, but the problems remains. Is there anyone who 
could further advise me? I'm using Vista, could this cause any trouble?

Many thanks in advance.

Henk-Jan

I searched and searched for an Inkscape forum but couldnt find one on the
net, I find mailing lists confusing as well, I think that someone who knows
how to do it should create a forum for this awesome program. 


dniezby wrote:
> 
> Are there any forums for support or is it only this mailing list. 
> Mailing lists are sooooo hard to follow and messages are all over the
> place.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express
> Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take
> control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now.
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> _______________________________________________
> Inkscape-user mailing list
> Inkscape-user@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
> 
> 

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/forum--tf3787962.html#a11113840
Sent from the Inkscape - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Try http://inkscapeforum.com/ its only a young forum, but its
interaction so far from the past few weeks is promising...



On 6/14/07, chacmool <jav58@...> wrote:
>
> I searched and searched for an Inkscape forum but couldnt find one on the
> net, I find mailing lists confusing as well, I think that someone who knows
> how to do it should create a forum for this awesome program.
>
>
> dniezby wrote:
> >
> > Are there any forums for support or is it only this mailing list.
> > Mailing lists are sooooo hard to follow and messages are all over the
> > place.
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express
> > Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take
> > control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now.
> > http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/
> > _______________________________________________
> > Inkscape-user mailing list
> > Inkscape-user@...
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
> >
> >
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/forum--tf3787962.html#a11113840
> Sent from the Inkscape - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express
> Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take
> control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now.
> http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/
> _______________________________________________
> Inkscape-user mailing list
> Inkscape-user@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
>

On Thursday 14 June 2007 00:52, chacmool wrote:
> I searched and searched for an Inkscape forum but couldnt find one
> on the net, I find mailing lists confusing as well, I think that
> someone who knows how to do it should create a forum for this
> awesome program.

OK I joined the list; I receive mail from the list; I direct it to a 
special folder for Inkscape; when I see that new mail has arrived
I read it.  And smetimes I reply to an email I see there. 

What confuses you about mailing lists? 

-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexing and Typesetting
Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
Satisfaction guaranteed. 
http://wexfordpress.com