[Skencil-users] Join forces for skencil1/sK1?

[Igor Novikov]

Hi Bernhard,

Sorry for delay in responding, I just have overtime on primary work.

>Skencil has been more or less dormant for the last few years
>and a cooperation or merger with sK1 would revitalize it.

Yes, you are right, Skencil requires intensive reanimation. As you can see
on SF, the project has stable activity in downloading, but often Skencil is
downloaded as "additional backend" for Inkscape, to parse ai files in
command
line mode. It isn't a best role. In Ubuntu/Kubuntu (according to
distrowatch.com,
the most popular Linux desktop distributives) repository you can find only
Sketch 0.6.15 package, but after installation application crashes
(uncompatible
default Tcl/Tk). May be this package is used as Inkscape backend only.

>It also seems to me that the goals of the sK1 project, i.e. developing a
general
>purpose vector drawing program that can be used for more than SVG
>editing, are close to what I wanted Skecil to become when I started the
>project[1].

As I mentioned in previous messages, the most perspective target is a
CorelDRAW users group. So sK1 should be the same all-purpose editor as
CorelDRAW.

>The first thing one notices when doing a diff is that you reformatted the
Python
>code to use tabs for indentation.  I could have understood all spaces, but
tabs,
>yuck :-)

On my opinion, "all tabs" is better than mixed identation with tabs and
spaces,
which is observed as in 0.6.x and in 0.7 Skencil branches. Tab identation,
at least using Tab key, is widely used (WingIDE, IDEA, Kate etc.), so it is
a valid
code formatting.

>Looking closer, it seems you haven't ported any of the bugfixes I made
>in the 0.6 branch since the fork.  That's a bit unfortunate because they
>address some important things like compatibility with newer Python
>versions.

Naturally, I know this issue, but this task is not urgent, because sK1
distributed as
a bandle with own Python copy. Enduser doesn't appreciate such efforts, but
other
sK1 UI and engine issues are more imortant.

>Having worked with neither, I can't say anything about their technical
>advantages and disadvantages, but antigrain 2.5 is free software under
>the GPL, if I'm not mistaken:
>http://www.antigrain.com/license/index.html

As you can read on the page: "Anti-Grain Geometry distribution package
includes
General Polygon Clipper (GPC) by Alan Murta. GPC has a different kind of
license
that allows you to use Alan's work for free only in non-commercial
software."
It seems GPL and GPC are not compartible licenses.

>> To achieve antialiasing effect canvas usage (AggDraw, libart, tkZinc
etc.)
>> is not a good way, because usually these canvas widgets have own internal
>> model. On my opinion the simplest way is additional renderer which can be
>> dynamically switched.

>That sounds like the way it's done in Skencil 0.7, too :-)

Yes, similar but not the same implemetation. Xlib and Cairo engines can work
in
mixed mode. Also Cairo can provide hardware acceleration using quartz
backend.
In general view as sK1 and Skencil 0.7 now have modern engines, so the main
differences will be in application usability.

>I haven't found the time yet to look at the new code, though.

Preview code is old. This branch was freezed at May, 2006 and used only for
new UI
demonstration. Of course, you can find many improvements and bugfixes, but
in summer preview all these changes were made for UI only. Package structure
was
almost the same as in Skencil.

During last months sK1 source code was deeply refactored. Now all widgets
are
Tile-based (Ttk:: namespace), many packages are reorganized and
restructured,
heavy-weight classes like MainWindow are refactored to decrease size.
C-based modules are extended to support Cairo engine and LittleCMS color
managment.
We plan to expose our SVN after release.

>Well, there have been tarball development releases, but it's not ready
>for endusers.

I can installed Skencil 0.7 on MDK2007 from trunk due to knowledge of
Skencil
internal structure; such task is not for regular Linux users. But
installation
script can be updated - it's not a problem. It would be great if you release

Skencil 0.7. I don't like Gimp similar interface but there are many Gnome
users
which believe that "it's a single true way" :). So Skencil 0.7 should be
popular
in Gnome community.


Sincerely,

Igor Novikov
sK1 Team
http://sk1.sf.net
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