I keep thinking how SVG is not being used to its full extent. Right now in Inkscape it is basically used as a static drawing format. It is fairly decent at this, however SVG can be used for so many other tasks. It can be dynamic, animated like Flash, is scalable to multiple devices, resolutions, aka profiles, and could be used for webpages. Once svg is enabled by default in browsers, it would be so cool to surf all svg websites! ASIDE: And, this would be a pretty easy task to fashion an SVG web browser from Inkscape’s codebase. I have thought often about making an Inkbrowse app like Inkview, slap some standard back, forward, reload, stop, home buttons and URL entry field, and then you have a nice all-svg web browser that could come with Inkscape. I think this could be done in a good half to full day of work no sweat…any takers? The main task would be to check out Inkscape’s handling of links/anchors. Bryce has added gnome-vfs support as a configure option so that SVGs can be loaded from the web, soooooo….connect it together!
With high definition displays that are around print resolutions of 300 DPI and increasing, SVG and other dynamic/adaptable formats are needed to scale all the way from phones up to high resolution cinema projections. And, while Inkscape is becoming a solid tool for editing static SVGs, I still keep thinking about how much more dynamic SVG usage could be. I think the reason this has not been pushed for is because of the lack of svg in browsers, or rather, a high demand from the userbase. Anyhow, I think it is important to remember while developing Inkscape and collecting static imagery for the Open Clip Art Library, that SVG can do so much more than just static imagery.
In other news, looks like JonCruz is doing some good work on Inkscape drag’n'drop and swatches. I implemented my dynamic swatch toolbar partially, but decided it is better use of my time to help GTKMM’ification rather than work on the old GUI which is going away soon, so I removed most of the UI for that toolbar and will contribute any extra cycles to GTKMM’ifications of that toolbar so that I can do it right and push forward the primary objective of this release cycle, GTKMM’ification. Man, you guys are going to get a stellar release of Inkscape when it drops!
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