[Skencil-users] Join forces for skencil1/sK1? (was: sK1)

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Igor,

thanks for forwarding the messages. The level of quotes got lost
a little bit, but I do not think it is important. :)

> Gtk or Qt don't provide low level access to fonts which is needed for
> vector editor.

They do not? I don't know. I would hope they would provide it.
As for typesetting texts, the libraries should be suitable I guess,
but for converting fonts into curves to do special effects
low level access is needed, I agree.

> We think FreeType binding should  be used  any way like in Scribus or
> Inkscape.

It would provide the low level bindings, I guess.
The big problems for most users of Skencil 0.6 with Tcl/tk is
that handling fonts was so difficult.
Many users just would want to install a few additional fonts.

I wrote:
> > I am also copying Bernhard (H.) as he probably will be interested in the
> > discussion as well and he knows most of the reasons why he wanted to move
> > to GTK (and GNOME originally if I remember).

Bernhard (H.) will be back this monday...

> We thought that moving to Gtk was due to be closer to enterprise Linux
> solutions. May be this our opinion is wrong...

He wanted to cooperate more with the GNOME developers and also use more
of their libraries. libart turned out to not be the best choice
and I cannot say how good pango currently is.
Again this is the font handling problem mentioned above.

> I tried installing Skencil 0.7 trunk from repository, but build is failed
> because packageconfig (.pc files) on MDK 2007 is not the same as expected by
> install script.
> Of course, I can manually reconfigure these files, but regular users will
> not be able to make such hacks.

True. Currently 0.7 SVN trunk is not ready to be released as a tarball.
Usually we would make packages for Mandriva, Debian and others,
so that regular users would not have to deal with these kind of problems.

Can you tell us on what you needed to change to build Skencil on Mandriva 
2007? (Best on skencil-devel.)

> System Gtk/Gnome binding links Skencil development to Gtk/Gnome life cycle.
> It's also not a good feature.

The plan to get more benefit out from this might indeed not have worked out.
At least there now is a history. I am really interested in what Bernhard has
to say about this.

> If at all, installation process should be simplified like Inkscape
> autopackages (which also
> have some problems: latest v0.44 autopackage can not be installed on
> MDK2005 due to Gtk
> incompatibility). Installation problem is very important, because regular
> users should be able
> quickly and simply upgrade vector editor, like CorelDRAW or Adobe
> Illustrator under Win32.

I completly agree and installation is important. I have not tried
Inkscape's autopackages. Do they allow installation of development snapshots?
I mean: What would be the difference of having spec files for Mandriva RPMs?

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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