[Clipart] Basic Principles

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, David Illsley wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Is there a list of basic principles somewhere?
> If so, can someone point me at it and ignore the rest of this mail.
> Otherwise...

We did discuss some basic principles, but didn't write them up.  Your
list looks like it captures what we discussed, so looks like what we
should start from.

> I've written out some of mine. Probably all are controvertial to some 
> people so to avoid prolonged discussions every time someone new happens 
> along I think a list like the one below with a set of explanations of 
> why would be helpful.

Yes, in Inkscape we found it very useful to establish the basic
principles up front, so it was clear what the boundaries were for the
box the project lived in.  This made it clear for new users/developers
what to expect of the project, to help them decide if it was what they
were after.
 
> I don't know whether people would prefer to discuss something like this 
> by e-mail, wiki or irc?

I tend to advocate multi-medium discussions - i.e., if you have a good
discussion on IRC, also put a mention of it into email for those not
there.  If things get decided or really useful information comes up,
then put it into wiki so it's easy for future participants to find and
refer to later.  Basically, the more communication, the better.

> Basic set of assumptions:
> 
> 1. For the moment SVG should be the only format accepted as the base 
> format to keep things simple.
> 
> 2. There is no fundamental objection to the project providing bitmap 
> versions of SVG images if there are requests and help to do this.
> 
> 3. There is no fundamental objection to the project providing non-svg 
> vector format versions of SVG images if there are requests and help to 
> do this.
> 
> 4. In order to allow the widest useage of the images the only 
> acceptable "license" is release to the public domain.
> 
> 5. To simplify submissions for this project, submissions must be 
> creative commons "Public Domain Dedicated"
> 
> 6. The project will use XMP to mark all downloadable SVG files with 
> appropriate licensing information (See creativecommons.org)
> 
> 7. All files will be named according to an as yet to be decided method
> 
> 8. The method should take into account that file contents should be 
> easily recogniosable from the name.
> 
> 9. The project aims to have rich metadata for all of its files

And probably the most important principle is that the project strives to
provide clipart for as wide a range of software applications as
feasible.  For example, we want to avoid using application-specific SVG
or esoteric SVG features that are available only in a small number of
applications.  

Bryce