
Inkscape Moves to GitLab - dabber
https://inkscape.org/en/news/2017/06/10/inkscape-moves-gitlab/
======
lucideer
I used to use Inkscape constantly on Windows & Linux, and really like it. I
found the UI intuitive and it did absolutely everything I asked of it.

Which is why the XQuartz/&c. user experience on macOS really really surprised
me. It's absolutely unusable. Inkscape for macOS basically may was well not
exist as far as my experience with it goes.

Are there other comparable GTK+ apps that work well under macOS or is this a
common story?

~~~
jvm
I ran into this issue and ended up using Affinity Designer. I was pleasantly
surprised, it's actually quite comparable to Adobe Illustrator. It's not open
source but at $50 much more reasonable than Adobe.

~~~
canadaduane
Affinity Designer development seems to have stalled. There are many requests
for features that have been accepted but untouched for a year or two. My
current showstopper: export to DXF.

~~~
yAak
I don't feel that "stalled" this is correct at all. They had a massive feature
update via 1.5 in Oct. and 1.6 entered customer beta in May.

They just haven't shipped your preferred feature.

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luord
Every time a project moves to GitLab or GitHub it is great news; I find them
much easier to contribute to. It's specially goo news when it's gitlab, it's
just an all-around awesome service.

~~~
rvern
It's really bad news when it's GitHub, as far as I'm concerned (Python...).
Self-hosted GitLab or Phabricator is great news (GNOME,[1] Wikimedia[2]).

[1]:
[https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure...](https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure/)

[2]:
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabrica...](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator)

~~~
yzmtf2008
Why so much hate for GitHub? My general experience with them has been positive
:)

~~~
pawadu
I don't think it is hate, more that people have learned to not put all their
eggs in the same basket. Ask any Firebase user what they feel about this.

Also, the more players we have the less proprietary web interfaces for things
like issues and PR will dominate.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> I don't think it is hate, more that people have learned to not put all their
> eggs in the same basket.

But git isn't putting all your eggs in one basket. It's a distributed version
control system. GitHub is one way to access your source but it doesn't have to
be the _only_ one. That's purely a choice made by folks.

If you want to put your eggs into many baskets then great! But that doesn't
prevent you from using GitHub at all.

~~~
qb45
For a dumb git host GH is passable, the problem is with their additional
features which many projects use. If/when GH goes the way of the dodo they
will be at the mercy of 3rd parties' ability to scrap and import this stuff.

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benwilber0
> During the decision about which platform would host our git repositories, we
> discounted staying on Launchpad itself as its git support was very weak
> compared to other platforms and the project doesn't appear to be actively
> developed.

How in the heck did Canonical squander such an incredible opportunity to be
the _de facto_ standard for Ubuntu/FOSS code hosting by letting Launchpad
stale so badly?

They freaking built it into their distribution of apt with PPA shortcuts, etc.

Unbelievable.

~~~
rectang
Code hosting services are never forever. Sourceforge aged and fell from grace.
Google Code shut down. Github's time will pass as well.

~~~
taeric
Sourceforge fell from grace due to ads. Google Code just went the way of many
of Google's side projects. (Also, I don't recall it being that heavily used.
Just my memory?)

I'll confess that I feel that github will eventually wane. But, I can't say
why I think that right off. When they run out of money? Start failing at the
hosting portion of what they do in favor of other things?

~~~
shakna
> Sourceforge fell from grace due to ads.

Not just ads. Bundling malware into installers of popular projects.

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mintplant
I can't find a link to their GitLab instance/repositories. Where is it?

~~~
TranquilMarmot
[https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape](https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape)

~~~
winteriscoming
I couldn't find it either. Neither on their project pages nor that specific
blog article and not even the "Search" option (where I searched for inkscape)
on the gitlab.com/ site.

Thanks TranquilMarmot for posting the link to the repo.

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riffic
Self-hosted GitLab, or gitlab.com? Would a link in the article to the repo be
too hard?

~~~
shakna
[https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape](https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape)

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codebam
I really hope other FOSS projects take the same initiative

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rejschaap
I am very curious how many devs will stop and how many will start contributing
because of this move.

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akerro
Now just please make use of
[https://hosted.weblate.org/](https://hosted.weblate.org/) for translations

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rishidevkota
:)

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na85
I really want to learn to use inkscape well, but just can't grok the
interface. It's a sad symptom shared by many open-source projects.

They seem to want to differentiate themselves as (e.g. "not photoshop" in
gimp's case) but seem to equate that with "ignoring good ui/ux design".

~~~
thegeomaster
This is what I used to think, but reflecting on my usage of these tools lately
has shaken my belief. Here's my theory, illustrated on a personal example:

I've been using Photoshop for a long time, and I've learned a lot of its
shortcuts and intricacies. Basically, when I want to accomplish something in
Photoshop, I already have an idea on how I'll go about it, using the
functionality that's available. But GIMP, on the other hand, never really
clicked for me. I find it very unintuitive and limiting, and it's a huge pain
to have to do something in GIMP when Photoshop's not readily available. I've
convinced myself that this is because GIMP has a much inferior UX and is
orders of magnitude more limiting than PS (at least the subset of their
features I use in my day-to-day usage).

On the other hand, since my light vector editing needs have been satisfied by
Photoshop for a long time, I haven't really learned Illustrator. Recently, for
various reasons, I've had to do some heavier-than-usual vector editing stuff,
but still nothing requiring more than simple Beziers, fills and strokes, so
I've been doing it in Inkscape since it's just been handy. After some time, I
decided to try and use Illustrator, figuring it'd be like a whole new world.
And then, surprisingly, I realized I don't really like it. The interface was
illogical and not in line with my mental model at all. I struggled to complete
basic tasks, and finally gave up and did the job in Inkscape. Basically, it
was very reminiscent of the Photoshop―GIMP situation.

So my conclusion is that the tools and their UX are very powerful in giving me
a mental model of a task, and significantly more so than I would have
imagined. So it might not be 100% true to say that the UX in these tools is
inferior. It's just so different from what we're used to that we have a very,
very hard time separating the "different" from "worse" in our heads.

~~~
joshvm
GIMP also has some weird omissions. You can't lock a layer so that it won't
move, for instance. This is apparently coming in the unstable branch, but it
boggles my mind that this wasn't a feature from day one. There is also
'anchor' but that doesn't seem to mean what anchor means in just about any
other CAD/Graphics application.

The expected behaviour in Photoshop is that if you drag-move, you only move
the selected layer. It seems like in GIMP if you drag-move, you drag the
highest layer that has a painted pixel under your cursor. There are probably
situations where this saves time, but more often I try and drag some text
around and I end up moving a background layer by mistake.

I often find myself using Inkscape to save time, it's intuitive enough and it
works well.

~~~
etatoby
Drag layer under pointer and Drag selected layer are two options of the move
tool. You will find them in the tool properties pane.

All in all, I've always found Gimp more intuitive and easy to use than
Photoshop, probably because I learned it first!

