By the way, getting slightly off topic, will the two forums merge in a year time? If not, maybe I better start mirroring this topic there?
Frankly noone seems interested in using filters in inkscape. Probably I better off draw anything, but semi-finished material.
No one seems to know about the new forum. I guess I missed the last board meeting being sick. And I haven't looked up the transcript to find out if it was discussed.
But the bottom line is that the project has no server which can hold the new forum. Devs don't want to have the forum on a different host from the website. The current host of the website apparently has no interest in hosting a forum. Devs don't want to move to a new host, or seriously investigate self-hosting, or take any action at all, at least up until now. It's just in limbo!
Personally, I'd rather have it on a different host, temporarily, until the server situation can be ironed out. But I'm ready to push a little harder than I have been up til now. I mean, I didn't want to offend anyone, not being all that experienced with community development. But this is seriously ridiculous, by now. I'm losing my patience, and I'll probably start to push harder for some action, now.
I did have a comment from doctormo (Martin) at the last board meeting I attended, about wanting to investigate a Django forum again. He did manage to get more space for the website, and I think he wants to try and put a new forum on it. But to me, the website is still too slow. And adding a forum would just make it slower, and the forum would be slow too. And I don't think the forum community, who are accustomed to decent speed, would tolerate it for very long. And as we've seen, things move very slowly sometimes. What I mean is that even if we put a new forum on the website, with an agreement for better speed "soon". "Soon" might never come. People would get frustrated and eventually someone would start up a decent php forum again. And then we'd be back where we started.
Well anyway, I can't speak to how much interest there is in filter use. I do think you've done an amazing job with all the filters you've been making!! They really are so much better than some of the ones that are packed with Inkscape! If I were to make any other comments besides that, it would be to maybe try to make a single filter which would be flexible enough to provide all the variations that you've been providing by the packs of filters. So instead of a pack of filters with all the subtle variations, a single filter which can be varied using the Filter Editor, might be easier for people to use. Maybe include a few notes which ways it could be edited to produce the variations (like in a readme file or something).
As for starting a topic on IF for your filters, I'm just not sure. I think the whole forum issue is up in the air, almost as much as it was in the beginning. (We haven't been able to contact Courtney again either, although we haven't really tried lately. I don't know why bother, until we have a server to put the backup on.) I might be getting a new server soon. And if I do....well, there are a lot of "ifs", but at least it would be a place to put the backup.) (I was close to getting the backup on my current server, but when it came right down to doing it, my host balked. But I suspect I'd have better luck with a different host.)
Whatever happens, I still intend to make sure that all 3 of these forums (including ICD) are combined into one. (as long as we don't loose touch with Courtney again) So that nothing posted in any of the forums will be lost. (Although a lot of ICD might end up in read-only mode. And also some various pruning to bring IF up to more current needs.) Realistically, they probably can't be combined all at once, because they are on 2 different software. So one would have to be converted. But it should be fairly easy to find someone to do the conversion on a one-time basis. It just won't happen all at once.
Well, in the end, it's up to you. But starting to mirror your topic on 2 forums, will just be one more thing to fix, when they finally are all merged. I would leave it as is, for now. But it's up to you.
