Hi all,<br><br>Sorry for delay in responding - just summer is a vocation season.<br>There are many issues were discussed therefore I split my answer on several points:<br><br>1. "sK1" name vs "Skencil" name.
<br><br>I think this question is not a main problem of the project. If editor will be useful and will have really practical features it will get own users community.<br><br>2. Community.<br><br>On this moment sK1 has own community, predominatingly Russian and Ukrainian community. And sK1 related threads on forums even popular than such flames as "Gimp vs Photoshop"
<br><br>Note: Russian community accounts "sK1" name more preferable.<br><br>2. Project components usage.<br><br>Unfortunately, Skencil, and relatively sK1, internal design is unperfect. Coding style has no accurate support of MVC pattern. For example, in model implementation (rectangle etc.) we can find lines like:
<br><br>AddCmd(....skpixmap...)<br><br>That is the model directly uses certain controller and view and we have mixed model-view-controller implementation. And such example isn't unique. Therefore even in command line mode Skencil requires and loads Xlib and Tk depended components. So, Skensil/sK1 should be deeply refactored to separate components code.
<br><br>3. Multiplatform task<br><br>Often people say "Skencil is almost pure Python code", i.e. "some small efforts" and we get truly multiplatform editor. But really Skencil has 3-language source code: Python, Tcl/Tk and C. Pure Tcl/Tk code is seldom, only several direct calls. But Skencil specific C modules are used almost in all packages. All model objects have C based representation and all drawing operation are also C based. The main modules are: paxmodule (Xlib based drawing) and sketchmodule (objects representation). Unfortunately on this level MVC pattern is broken also. These modules are crossdepended and funtctions use Xlib types everywhere. Therefore to achive real multiplatform feature we need reimplement these modules and may be reimplement a large part of Python-based code.
<br><br>We have started working upon this issue in our new project - UniConvertor (<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/uniconvertor">http://sourceforge.net/projects/uniconvertor</a>) which should substitute Xara's freezed Uber-Convertor. Project status is mature and current version is
1.0RC1. UniConvertor doesn't depend on Xlib functions or data types (Cairo binding is also removed) therefore the project is multiplatform. Release version will be equipped by multiplatform build script based on distutils (Skencil
setup.py is not multiplatform because it uses Python universal Makefile but not distutils build system). Of course, the most popular feature of the project is CDR file conversation into SVG format.<br><br>5. sK1 vs Inkscape
<br><br>Of course sK1 is not useful on this moment. The most problematic issue is a fonts handling. Also inherited Skencil document model is unperfect. For example gradient fill representation, text object, image object are primitive and often depend on Xlib possibilities. But sK1 really faster than Inskape (I talk about Cairo mode with antialiasing and alphachannel support), requires smaller system resources, supports real CMYK colors (and there is no problem adding color models like CMY, Lab etc.), generates CMYK-based postscript, has color managment and a good kit of native importers (for example, Inkscape team are waiting for UniConvertor release to utilize CDR importer). Modern tile-based GUI should look better on Win32 and MacOS X than ported GTK applications. More over for these platform special themes can be created using native widgets.
<br><br>Highly important task is multiplatforming, but we already have multiplatform engine mock-up which works on *nix, MacOS X and Win32. Unfortunately, this task requires almost complete reimplementation of Skencil derived code. We hope that the result will be presented on LGM 2008.
<br><br>So assuming we can say that sK1 has a chance to be better than Inkscape.<br><br>Sincerely,<br><br>Igor Novikov<br>sK1 Team<br><a href="http://sk1.sf.net">http://sk1.sf.net</a><br><br><br>