Backlogs and Real Life

The last three months have been a bit crazy, with far too much "real life" hitting us upside the head. Things have finally settled in a bit so that I'll be able to get my head above water and surface again. Aside from diving head first at the new day job and surviving the holidays, much had happened in the tech world.

I still haven't had time to finish my writeup of SVG Open (partly since I accepted the new day job while I was attending it up in Mountain View). Then there was the Google Summer of Code Mentors' summit. Great things happened there. Then I had to prep for our visit to New Zealand as co-organizer for a Libre Graphics Day miniconf and as a speaker at the main linux.conf.au. Then we had SCALE8x come 'round where I presented yet another talk and then also run the Inkscape booth on the show floor. Toss in getting a new tech (adaptive UI) going, starting a new project with other CREATE guys, and doing battle across the board to help get proper CMYK support out for end users everywhere.

Whew!

On top of all that was work for Inkscape and trying to get new features solid for the next release, 0.48. Thankfully I was able to squeeze the time in to finish up the basic support and UI for per-document color/swatch palettes. This allows for basic colors to be stored as a set in a given document, but also for gradients to be included in that. One big thing that inclusion accomplishes is breaking down the artificial barriers software engineers have imposed on artists for far too long. Assets had been artificially separated by their *implementation*, without regard for how artists actually are used to working. This also enabled many workflow enhancements including making art recoloring easier, indicating which swatches are in use on the selected object, etc.

Work on the new input devices dialog also came through. Aside from more end users getting their hands on tablets and such, we had a push in that the ugly outdated GTK+ dialog is being removed. And just in the nick of time we had Krzysztof step up and investigate some of the win32 tablet bugs and get some insight on the problem with Aiptek and others showing up with broken names. I was able to help refine the fixups there wile getting them set to be reimplemented in the new dialog.

And then there is the basic work on adaptive UI. This is a very promising area, and is just beginning to show the tip of the iceberg. I'm implementing internals based in part on Michael Terry's work with INGIMP he has presented at LGM. Though 0.48 will only expose a tiny bit of what can go on, the support in Inkscape will give it some very useful functionality in even the near term. We're looking at only giving 0.48 a few set layout modes, but with some handy logic behind the scenes to assist users getting what they need without having to think as much.

Unfortunately, though, we were unable to find time to work in support for Wii remotes, joysticks, and the SpaceNavigator someone at LCA lent me. We are on track to get more in, and 0.49 might even see some of that. Some of this (like using guitar game controllers) might sound a bit silly. However there are some very interesting ways these can be worked in and give Inkscape some nice functionality for average users. And, of course, more hardware toys always makes the geeks happier.

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Libre Graphics Day Call for Papers

linux.conf.au 2010 is taking place in Wellington, New Zealand this year. It's a wonderful conference, with quite a lot going on. I was lucky enough to have a talk accepted this past conference, and it was a great experience. For next year's conference Donna Benjamin and I proposed putting on a mini version of the Libre Graphics Meeting for people who have not been fortunate to make one. It had been accepted, and we're in the final half of the CFP before it closes on Friday 25th September and we have to decide what to go with. Again, there is just one week left!

So, the mini Libre Graphics Day is on January 18th, and is planning to bring together programmers, artists, designers and just those interested in using graphics programs all together. If you are planning to attend linux.conf.au and you might have something to say or show, please consider submitting a talk or such. This does not have to be just about Inkscape, since GIMP, Scribus, Krita and many others have all been involved in LGM.

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Linux conf au one

Well, here it is. Another conference has come to a close, and it is time again to try to make sense of all the amazing things that were seen and discussed. Overall LCA was a great meet-up, although there was one big negative: there were so many good sessions to hit that it was impossible to not run into at least some scheduling conflicts. Of course the good news there is that the volunteers are working to get slides and video up for as many of the sessions that they were cleared to. One things are up, I'm sure I'll find even more to ponder.

Probably the first thing to hit is the topic I came down to speak on: Color Management. My presentation went pretty well, and I had a few people talk to me about it later (and that was despite being scheduled right next door to the Linux powered clarinet playing robot). Additionally Carl Worth introduced me to someone who has started poking around in Cairo, seeing about hooking in color management. We also got a chance to go over what's needed to get things hooked into Cairo and get some nice CMYK PDF output. The next step is to collect up some representative use cases so we can figure out exactly what the API changes will have to be supported. I'm going to be pestering the Scribus guys to see what they know of, but if anyone out there has any experience or needs of going to print, send off an email or comment so that we can be sure to cover things well.

Next up is extended input. I attended a talk by Peter Hutterer (of MPX) that went over a bit of the state of things and then the new changes that have been going in. Over the course of the conference I had ended up chatting with him a few times, and verified that I am on track with where I'm working on taking the new extended input support (good support will need to leverage D-Bus and HAL). He also had poked around for a couple of weeks with Wii remotes, but had since moved on. That actually was a fairly common story, and it seems that it's up to me to address the GUI and application levels.

And to keep things short for now, there's one last point I want to cover: technical drawing. Of people I talked to who were not using Inkscape or not using as much as they could, the most common question seemed to be with technical drawing. We could probably pick up a good usability boost and garner another user segment if we just tune up things to make technical drawing and diagramming better. Most of what we need to do is probably already well known to us. However, we could benefit from a quick review and a little refocusing. I think one person's question really summed up the viewpoint we need to use when looking into this: “So, will Inkscape let me finally move off of Xfig now?” The people we could help with that are probably using Xfig or Dia (or nothing yet) for simple charts, diagramming, home layout and the like. Perhaps focusing down on some casual use-cases like that will help us sight some low-laying fruit and get a jump up in this area.

As usual, I'll send out more info as I digest things and get them settled out in my head. In the mean time, feel free to ask about any specifics you might care about. Perhaps Peter or Andy or some of the other Inkscapers who were there might chime in also.

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Greetings from Tas and Tuz

Greetings from Tasmania!

Just dropping a quick note while I'm sitting here waiting for day 2 of the linux.conf.au miniconfs to kick off.

I'm just hanging out, and spent time already with my new friend Tuz. He helped me get the artwork for my slides tweaked up, and has taken over my room.

Things are going good here so far, and lot's of great people. I'll have more details come up, but in the meantime will try to get bits up on identica and twitter.

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