Hello, I hope the English used in the following message is legible.

My name is Aleph Celis, I'm a graphic designer, took about five years using Inkscape on Windows for my projects.

The first consultation is about the speed of the software. I mention this because I find it curious that when I did I started to fill it with very slow computers (really poor), even so inkscape could run properly.
Anyway, I now have a computer with four processors and video card substantial, but the performance of software has had a negligible improvement, especially with real-time rendering, even if they occupy filter effects (like blur). I've done testing on other computers and are not significant changes.
Does anyone know how to improve this situation?



The second and final consultation is about the aesthetics of the software. Personally I have no major objections to the current GUI, but after the years I feel could be improved.
¿I can modify the icons or change the color of the interface gray?
Could they organize a worldwide contest for this? (I know it can be very difficult xD)
From my point of view the prizes are not a necessity, thanks in the credits would make amazing graphics improvements come from all over the world.


Forget to thank everybody who made ​​this project may evolve,




thanks in advance for your answers.

Welcome Aleph! And thanks for you comments

It's my understanding that Inkscape's performance is slightly better on Linux based operating systems. But performance has been an issue for quite some time. And work is underway on a new renderer, which is due with version 0.49. It's probably more than a year away though. But from what I've heard the new renderer is quite a lot faster, on all systems. I'm looking forward to it

We've had many, many messages asking for different choices for the interface icons and buttons! Having a contest is a great idea! But what I think would be the most awesome, would be a system of skins or themes. Then people could create all kinds of different themes/skins and offer them for downloading. Or individuals could even create their own personal theme/skin. To my understanding, this would take just a small bit of code, and approval by the developers. All this idea needs is someone who could write such code. Then I think the floodgates would open, and we'd have many theme/skins to choose from, in a very short time.

Even now, there have been a few different members draw up some possible replacements. You can probably find them by searching the forum. One of those is really recent, and might even still be on the 1st page of the index....actually I don't remember which subforum it's posted in, but still should be easy to find. I don't know how many may have been officially submitted to developers. And of course you're more than welcome to draw up new icons/buttons yourself!

All best

Edit
PS - I just had a thought to thank you for your polite comments. From time to time we get really rude complaints from people who expect us to change Inkscape, just because they are angry. They have not even taken the time to learn that we are not developers in this forum! So I appreciate your measured and polite response.

I also forgot to say that developers can be contacted on developers mailing list http://inkscape.org/mailing_lists.php?lang=en and bugs can be reported at Launchpad https://launchpad.net/inkscape. Oh, and there's a new Google group https://plus.google.com/u/0/108911244660285152681/posts

What? No "this is terrible software" post?

My take on this:

The render thing keeps me drooling the keyboard every time I read about it. The plan is to replace the current engine that draws the picture on the screen, with a new one that is FAST, Cairo? Wasn't it? That would, according to what I read, speed up the rendering of things with "many pixels", blur being the obvious.

As for the GUI, you can totally replace the icons for other set. AFAIK there's only one extra set with Tango looking icons. So my point is, it can be done, but I guess nobody is interested in creating a new set. The same goes for the colors. Inkscape is a GTK application, so you can change the theme using GTK, any GTK theme can be used with Inkscape. Here's a topic on the subject: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8618

The contest idea is actually very interesting, they already do this with the "about screen", so I can see some talented people participating in it just for the fame and glory.

Hi Aleph. In case you didn't already know there is a way to view your image with filters disabled (including blur) wich greatly speeds up rendering, at the expense of accuracy. Just select View > Display mode > No filters. In practice I prefer to use CTRL+5 (on the numeric keypad) to cycle through the three display modes.

What I'd love to see is a way to enable/disable filters for certain layers - that would allow for some flexibility in terms of keeping some elements accurately drawn, but speeding up the rendering of others.

As for the toolbars - I'd be happy if I could reorder the main tool buttons to put the ones I use together at the start, and the ones I never need together at the end. I hate to think how many times I've clicked on (which I never use) when I meant to click on just below it (which I use frequently).

Xav wrote:As for the toolbars - I'd be happy if I could reorder the main tool buttons to put the ones I use together at the start, and the ones I never need together at the end. I hate to think how many times I've clicked on (which I never use) when I meant to click on just below it (which I use frequently).

Xav, I'm shocked that someone I consider an Inkscape power user is still using the toolbox! I haven't seen that thing for so long - I just use the single letter shortcuts to access each tool. B for and P for ... one drawback of this of course is when they add new tools - which doesn't happen often - I wouldn't see them; the measure tool came as quite a surprise to me when it just popped up when i hit M instead of N for the node tool !

druban wrote:

Xav wrote:As for the toolbars - I'd be happy if I could reorder the main tool buttons to put the ones I use together at the start, and the ones I never need together at the end. I hate to think how many times I've clicked on (which I never use) when I meant to click on just below it (which I use frequently).

Xav, I'm shocked that someone I consider an Inkscape power user is still using the toolbox!

Ha ha! Power user indeed

I use plenty of keyboard shortcuts, but just never got used to using them for the main tools. The fact that they're distributed all over the keyboard means that I tend to mis-hit whilst sloppily trying to use them to the extent that I don't bother with them anymore.

But it's my co-cartoonist who is the really scary one when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. He doesn't use any. And I mean that most literally. He even uses the tool on the toolbar for zooming. Yet he manages to create far better artistic work than I ever could. This is one of his:

http://www.peppertop.com/greys/2010/05/ ... icers-log/

(although in a mock pique of jealousy, I did turn it into this: http://www.peppertop.com/greys/2011/04/lean-right/ )

Hi, thanks for responding.


Make a set of skins is something I had imagined, but I found it more complex than the competition because it would have to do an online system where the skins are stored, organized by the number of downloads and votes. It also would have to add some skins in any menu of the software so that users can access that are not related to the community.

The positive thing is that a contest would generate an aesthetic unit of the software, the same users could say it's best for them, voting for their favorites. One of the features that users could choose, would for example, the luminous power of the skins (not dazzled after long hours of work).

Another issue that I like that have cited is the subject of the shortcuts, usually a little complex, however I use some.
On this there is a digital painting software, called MyPaint. This software is very smart, if you position the mouse over the menu, then press the button you like and that key (for example the letter A) is the new key that when pressed activates the command. Of course that also includes the option to "return to default settings."

Honestly I'm interested in creating my own skin involved, or contributing ideas to the programmers (although surely have lots of work).

Inkscape for me is a very smart software, I say it properly. Surely you too have used many programs, including Illustrator, Xara Xtreme, Corel Draw.

Someone wants to convey the idea of ​​creating a competition for the skin? (As the render engine issue I am very clear that it is on the way )

If you tell me that my messages are understood (I guess you know this is google translate xDD ~ ~ ~ ~) I'll contact the developers, thanks to the information you gave me the user Brynn.

Just so you can see some of my work, I leave a link where you can see one of my illustrations (drawn initially on an iPod): http://www.disenoemergente.net/proyecto/robot-vector/

thanks for replying, luck !

Make a set of skins is something I had imagined, but I found it more complex than the competition because it would have to do an online system where the skins are stored, organized by the number of downloads and votes. It also would have to add some skins in any menu of the software so that users can access that are not related to the community.

In my experience, there are different ways of enabling a system with skins or themes. There may be options which are included with the software. Or as things often seem to work with open source software, skins/themes could be found by searching the internet. Any humble Inkscape user who has created their own skin might upload it to some file host or file sharing site, and provide a link to it (in a forum, such as this forum's Inkscape Resources subforum, for example) or maybe even share it at DeviantART, in their own Inkscape gallery.

The positive thing is that a contest would generate an aesthetic unit of the software, the same users could say it's best for them, voting for their favorites. One of the features that users could choose, would for example, the luminous power of the skins (not dazzled after long hours of work).

I like the idea of voting too. But even if the skin/theme wins that receives the most votes, I doubt seriously that such a contest could be won with even 50% of the vote. It still would be one single winning theme, satisfying less than half the users (probably much less than half).

If you have a chance, you might look at an internet security program called Sypbot Search & Destroy (Spybot S&D). There are several skins which come with the program, but you can find many more through their forum, that are made by motivated users.

I did look into the GTK themes that Uktrunie provided a link to. But I never was satisfied that I could do it safely. Even with excellent instructions, if something is a little bit above my understanding, I might be able to make it work, but not solve any problems it might cause. I just think we need something much more basic, and made specifically for Inkscape.

Make a set of skins is something I had imagined, but I found it more complex than the competition because it would have to do an online system where the skins are stored, organized by the number of downloads and votes. It also would have to add some skins in any menu of the software so that users can access that are not related to the community.

In my experience, there are different ways of enabling a system with skins or themes. There may be options which are included with the software. Or as things often seem to work with open source software, skins/themes could be found by searching the internet. Any humble Inkscape user who has created their own skin might upload it to some file host or file sharing site, and provide a link to it (in a forum, such as this forum's Inkscape Resources subforum, for example) or maybe even share it at DeviantART, in their own Inkscape gallery.

The positive thing is that a contest would generate an aesthetic unit of the software, the same users could say it's best for them, voting for their favorites. One of the features that users could choose, would for example, the luminous power of the skins (not dazzled after long hours of work).

I like the idea of voting too. But even if the skin/theme wins that receives the most votes, I doubt seriously that such a contest could be won with even 50% of the vote. It still would be one single winning theme, satisfying less than half the users (probably much less than half).

If you have a chance, you might look at an internet security program called Sypbot Search & Destroy (Spybot S&D). There are several skins which come with the program, but you can find many more through their forum, that are made by motivated users.

I did look into the GTK themes that Uktrunie provided a link to. But I never was satisfied that I could do it safely. Even with excellent instructions, if something is a little bit above my understanding, I might be able to make it work, but not solve any problems it might cause. I just think we need something much more basic, and made specifically for Inkscape.