[CREATE] Create projects (was: LGM 2010 Website)

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Mittwoch, 7. Oktober 2009 23:27:25 schrieb Yuval Levy:
> Christoph Schäfer wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch, 7. Oktober 2009 08:33:26 schrieb Alexandre Prokoudine:
> >> Does Scribus import SVG flawlessly?
> >
> > No, and you know why.
>
> I don't. would you care to enlighten me?

Scribus is primarily designed for creating print-ready PDF and PostScript 
files, which means, among others, that it doesn't have to support the whole 
SVG standard (e.g. the animation part).

Moreover, it's not only important to get graphics into Scribus without issues, 
but also to export them reliably. Features like transparency in SVG _may_ be 
relatively easy to import, but difficult to export, as they require an 
advanced transparency flattener that will work with colour management. This 
is a huge development task.

Finally, some SVG features that should be imported are simply not supported by 
the Scribus graphics engine. It will take a major rewrite to get this done, 
and it will be done, but for the time being we prefer not to break existing 
documents. There's only so much that can be done at a time by a small 
development team.

The difference between Inkscape and Scribus is that the former has been 
written around the SVG format, and therefore has less issues with the 
implementation of SVG features. Scribus uses a PostScript graphics model, 
which makes it a bit harder to create 100% compatibility.

And of course there are other and even more important formats used in print 
workflows that Scribus has to support as well.

>
> As a simple user I find it bizarre that when specs are publicly
> available; and Free implementations are available too; that it is not
> the same implementation used in all tools. Isn't this easier to do than
> trying to change UI toolkit?

No, see above.

>
> > How easy is it to use a program that's not part of a
> > certain vendor's portfolio, but actually more suited to the task in a
> > workflow?
>
> Being part of the portfolio and having unified UI is mostly eye candy.

Well I think it's more than that, but certainly not a top priority.

>
> Being able to pass smoothly files through the different steps in the
> workflow is much more important.

True.

>
> File format support as precognized by Alexandre; and multi-platform
> support.
>
> Ideally *all* file formats: existing and not yet invented; standardized
> and work in progress; obsolete and current; encrypted; approved;
> disapproved; and anything else I forgot. Same for platforms.

Ideally, yes. Go ask Quark or Corel for specs of their file formats ;)


Cheers,

Christoph