[Clipart] Wiki Progress Update

[Alan Horkan]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, ryan lerch wrote:

[...]

> * Patricia also made the SVG tools page (
> http://www.openclipart.org/wiki/index.php/SVG_Tools) nice and pretty with
> tables and colours, rather than the boring list that it was previously....

I have a few problems witht that page.  How much of a problem depends on
what the goals of OpenClipart are.

Is promoting an the SVG standard or promoting Free and Open Source
Software more important to Openclipart?  You can of course do both but
only optimize for one thing so priorities need to be made clearer so we
can all work from the same plan.

http://www.openclipart.org/wiki/index.php/SVG_Tools
"#  Mozilla Firefox [...] SVG already implemented. The best solution!"

I understand people want to promote their favourite browser but that is a
very subjective description.

In terms of best rendering of SVG the Adobe and Batik viewers have always
been highly rated by the Inkscape developers.  Unless things have changed
dramatically recently Firefox does not have the best rendering compared to
other viewers.  In the long run Firefox+SVG has the potential to offer a
much more tightly integrated platform but for now that is only wishful
thinking.  There may be various things Firefox is best at but SVG and
openclipart do

The selection of software listed seems rather an odd mix, Openoffice
having particularly poor SVG support.  A cross link to the Inkscape Wiki
would provide a much more extensive list of drawing software and SVG
software, including a lot of proprietary software (which ties back to my
earlier question asking what is really being promoted).  Maybe it would be
best to recommend only Inkscape as the recommended editor and direct users
to the longer list in the Inkscape wiki if they are looking for other
alternatives.  Notably neither Adobe Illustrator nor Opera are mentioned.
Opera had SVG support long before Firefox but it is fairly normal for
Opera to be unintentionally left out of consideration.



Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

P.S.  In theory I should be able to just edit the wiki but in practice
revert wars are messy, especially if people aren't clear what the plan is.
Also Patricia has clearly put a lot of work in and I'd much rather get
opinions before changing her work without which I wouldnt have noticed
the page.