Is Inkscape not tested on major platforms before it is released?

The following screenshot is taken on Windows Vista Ultimate.
If you look at the menu bar, the selected item is just white.
It may not seem a big issue to a programmer compared with drawing a line correctly. In reality, it is an almost equally important issue for Inkscape to be accepted as a successful, complete product. I'd suggest recruiting an HCI (Human Computer Interaction) computer scientist, a cognitive scientist, or a QA (Quality Assurance) manager.

Explanations like "uh oh, it's actually an underlying library issue." does not work. End users do not really care. They should not. I'm looking forward to seeing Inkscape's reaching maturity and better organized development cycles.

Welcome to the boards jonhansnilsson. As you may not know this forum is for inkscape users and not developers. I can understand your concern regarding using inkscape on the Vista OS. I think that you would be better served if you questions and concerns regarding the look of inkscape on your operating system was address to the developers ( inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net)

jonhansnilsson wrote:Is Inkscape not tested on major platforms before it is released?

The following screenshot is taken on Windows Vista Ultimate.
If you look at the menu bar, the selected item is just white.
It may not seem a big issue to a programmer compared with drawing a line correctly. In reality, it is an almost equally important issue for Inkscape to be accepted as a successful, complete product. I'd suggest recruiting an HCI (Human Computer Interaction) computer scientist, a cognitive scientist, or a QA (Quality Assurance) manager.

Its tested on the platforms we have develepors on, its that simple. Currently I dont believe any of us have a machine with Vista on it.
As for recruiting HCI or QA people, this is an open source project, its not quite as simple as I need an XYZ, lets recruit one. You work with the people who volunteer their time, on the hardware they have available. UI is an extremely important issue to us, and we work very hard to make it intuitive, and consistant across the platforms we ship binaries for. The fact that Microsoft have made a new OS version that so spectacularly breaks so much software thats written for APIs that should be compatible is not really down to the thrid party devs is it?

jonhansnilsson wrote:Explanations like "uh oh, it's actually an underlying library issue." does not work. End users do not really care. They should not. I'm looking forward to seeing Inkscape's reaching maturity and better organized development cycles.

More accurate reason would be that vista breaks stuff, cos microsoft did a crap job on maintaining backwards compatability. Maybe they should recruit a few more QA people...
Incidentally, your screenshot doesnt work here.

I agree that my post would be more appropriate for the developer's mailing list.

The next post had a good point about backward compatibility. In my humble opinion, backward compatibility is a big burden in most software development situations. It would create a hell for complex systems like Windows. Ozzie of MS even said their future depends on fighting/managing complexity (paraphrased).

It is understandable that a program is tested only on the platforms volunteer developers have available. I also think it's a matter of focus. Self imposed questions would be a great check-and-balance tool such as "where do we want to go with this project?" "Are we just looking for a happy accident? or are we determined to make drawing easier?", "Are we happy for this to remain as a fun, pet project?"

Nonetheless, I think Inkscape is a great project. I'm not a fan of big mouths. Certainly, I would not want to become one. Can't do it now. But when time is right, I'd love to pitch in.

By the way, that would be really funny if my own screenshot did not work when I am talking about quality assurance. LOL. Maybe I'd need my own QA effort or team to make sure my posts are viewable by a large audience. LOL.

Explanations like "uh oh, it's actually an underlying library issue." does not work. End users do not really care. They should not. I'm looking forward to seeing Inkscape's reaching maturity and better organized development cycles.

I'm looking forward to when Vista reaches maturity.

By the way, My wife had Vista Ultimate for exactly 3 weeks before she dumped it and went back to her WinXP/Ubuntu dual-boot. Vista was money well spent (<- sarcasm).

I don't find Vista so bad. I can appreciate that developers may not like it because they have change their code. But as a user, I would prefer MS didn't inlcude backwards compatiability. Who wants a modern OS that suffers from all the problems of the past OSes - not to mention the bloat. The only problem I've had with Vista is getting proper video card drivers and I blame the hardware manufacturer for that.

jonhansnilsson wrote:The following screenshot is taken on Windows Vista Ultimate.
If you look at the menu bar, the selected item is just white.

By the way, this problem is actually a GTK+ problem, and was fixed in GTK+ in April (bug 392015). The last stable release of Inkscape was in March, and so had no chance of including the fix.

heathenx wrote:

Explanations like "uh oh, it's actually an underlying library issue." does not work. End users do not really care. They should not. I'm looking forward to seeing Inkscape's reaching maturity and better organized development cycles.

I'm looking forward to when Vista reaches maturity.

By the way, My wife had Vista Ultimate for exactly 3 weeks before she dumped it and went back to her WinXP/Ubuntu dual-boot. Vista was money well spent (<- sarcasm).

I'm impressed. Your wife must be a power user. She uses linux, huh?
I didn't bother installing Windows Vista on my wife's computer because there are some applications that are not verified on Vista.

It is an unfortunate situation that the compatibility is hurt in Vista. But it needed to be done at some point. Security needed to be overhauled and graphic engines were due as well. I'm actually surprised how many applications works within the new security model. They changed the model to closed by default from default open.

I think they are going through a gradual transition to clean up their messy APIs and neaten them up using .NET CLI, effectively finishing up some of the things Java set out to do.

Perhaps Windows should stop releasing unfinished OSes. I too use an XP/Ubunutu Linux dual boot. To be truthful I go to the windows side maybe once a week.. and that's being generous.

Vista is the issue as far as I can tell since Inkscape is not the only program to not work well in Vista. I wonder if your post would seem less aggressive if you did some research to see if it is indeed the OpenSource Inkscape or the unfinished OS that is causing the issue.

i have 2 questions and a comment:

when was vista released?
when was inkscape 0.45.1 released?

and

the dev version of inkscape no longer has the menu text colour issue under vista...