Hi everyone.

I wanted to get answer for question that bother me for years now.
And the question is very reasonable, I think, - why is Inkscape growing so slowly? Looking at other open-source projects like Blender and GIMP which evolve really quickly (especially Blender - that's a heck of a giant now!) and seeing Inkscape not having major updates for months and years makes me feel frustrated. I love Inkscape because it's very easy to use. But I really hate it's working speed - it lags horribly and working with it becomes a real pain as drawing gets more complicated (or with blurs). That's the only reason I've been looking for other vector software. Illustrator is horrible and expensive, Corel DRAW is 'meh', Xara is pretty good but not what I want. The only program which made me feel happy is Serif DrawPlus - it has plenty of features and it works smoothly. But it has some problems of it's own. That's a different story.

Inkscape is being used by A LOT of people. It has a great base of users.
So, again - why is Inkscape being developed so slowly? Bad funding? Not enough people working at project? Too difficult to understand (vectors, maths and stuff)? I really don't get it and I want to know the reason for this.
I know about the transfer to Cairo engine, but it takes too long IMO. Is there any approximate date for next release of Inkscape which will have it? At least some kind of unstable beta build to see the work done? I use Windows and I'm not a programmer, so I guess I won't be able to compile code on my own...

I'm sorry if what I wrote here was any offensive. I appreciate the effort being put into development. I just need to know.

pozdn9k wrote:Looking at other open-source projects like GIMP which evolve really quickly

Worst exemple ever.

pozdn9k wrote:I know about the transfer to Cairo engine, but it takes too long IMO

Gimp stalled for years because (still incomplete) gegl migration

pozdn9k wrote: At least some kind of unstable beta build to see the work done?

The download page http://inkscape.org/download/ links to precompiled dev version => http://www.oss-marketplace.com/index.ph ... versionen/

pozdn9k wrote:But I really hate it's working speed - it lags horribly and working with it becomes a real pain as drawing gets more complicated (or with blurs)

Try to play with the settings in edit/preferences/rendering (add more threads, lower the quality)

pozdn9k wrote:
Inkscape is being used by A LOT of people. It has a great base of users.
So, again - why is Inkscape being developed so slowly? Bad funding? Not enough people working at project? Too difficult to understand (vectors, maths and stuff)? I really don't get it and I want to know the reason for this.

Hello,

I have to say that I think the same. Looking at here:

https://launchpad.net/inkscape/+series
I see that some versions take more time than others in being released.

There are non-official releases of the [I think] 0.49, with more features, at least for windows. Just search at http://inkscape.org/download/

this is usually done because of QA, many bugs that cause the new version to be delayed. Having a fix date will expose users to critical bugs that will generate a lot of frustration.

i would however look for release cycles and targets.

Hi there,

sorry for not knowing but was any of these answers by a developer?
Because it would interest me too if there can be anything done to speed things up.
Krita does kickstarters and stuff...

(GIMP really was a very bad example - they are as slow as... inks...)
Night and Day
GIMP and Blender

The Inkscape project is working on setting up a system for 'Funded development', see https://inkscape.org/en/support-us/ and linked pages.

If you would rather invest time and own work into Inkscape instead of money, then contact us on the mailing list telling us what kind of work you would like to do.

This sounds interesting.

Does anybody have any example of a project that's using this model right now? I'm wandering if it works, typical monetary values for "hired guns", success rates, you know, statistics to be able to form an opinion.

Google seems ignorant about this model.

Uktrunie wrote:This sounds interesting.

Does anybody have any example of a project that's using this model right now? I'm wandering if it works, typical monetary values for "hired guns", success rates, you know, statistics to be able to form an opinion.

Google seems ignorant about this model.

Krita. That's all I know

its because we're all doing it in our spare time, and life gets in the way. Little things like getting married and having kids mean you have less time to dedicate to things like coding inkscape. The team evolves as people come and go, but the new ones have to get up to speed and learn the ins and outs. There has been pretty much no funded development (ignoring summer of code) and we dont have any corporate backing (some projects get developers funded by organisations that use the software)

I sort of want this program to speed up a little bit in development, but on the bright side, I think it is getting closer and closer to expensive products with each updates. In fact, I think Inkscape is closer to Illustrator than Paint.Net to Photoshop. You literally have to download many filters for Paint.Net to even bother with the program, or otherwise I think you're better off using Photoshop or other commercial products. Right now, Adobe's prices kinda motivates me to support the development of Inkscape, and their subscription model puts me away from their products for good. I'm doing what I can to try to communicate with Inkscape developers.

Right now, I'm thinking that updates at some point after .92, I think Inkscape should really get started on utilizing Gradient Mesh for things like Stroke, and allow one to convert paths to Gradient Mesh. That would seriously improve Inkscape to a tremendous degree. I think that would make a lot of people consider swapping to Inkscape. And yes, I know Inkscape needs to work on gradient mesh support. Right now, Inkscape Gradient mesh is awful to use. There isn't any way to make the gradient mesh continuous for starter, and it has bugs.

Part of the issue with that is getting it into the svg spec. We got bit by implementing a feature that was meant to be about to be supported before.(flow text)

I know that the goal of Inkscape is to be SVG-compatible but could that also be a hindering factor for Inkscape's progress? My guess is that SVG-export is not the main reason why so many people choose Inkscape. Personally I have been using Inkscape professionally for the last five years but since switching to a Mac computer my frustration with it has been growing steadily.

What I love about Inkscape is it's workflow; editing paths comes so natural compared to Illustrator, and since editing paths is what vector graphics is all about I can live without most of Illustrator's filters and functions. Maybe it's time to create a fork of illustrator where SVG-compatibility isn't the main focus? Where the basic needs for professional work has top priority - such as real layers, layer modes, multiple art boards and where the horrendous SVG-filters can be replaced by something sensible.

I don't think that's a possibility considering that Inkscape was forked from Sodipodi precisely because said project was moving from standard SVG to a none standard format (if I recall correctly).

And yes, SVG as a standard, seems to be moving very slow too. Which is strange because I has been growing in popularity quite a bit in later years.

Its possible if you found some people who wanted to, but afaik theres not a desire to in the main project.