rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

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!

My paper got accepted to SVGOPEN in Enschede, Netherlands. So, hopefully I can get the fees waived or paid for by donations to that conference. I couldn’t make it last year in JAPAN, even though I happened to be 3 hours away in Korea, yet had no money to attend I really need to get out there and preach about the Open Clip Art Library and find some more soldiers.

I also submitted a short course / hackathon for Open Clip Art Library to show people how easy it is to write tools for OCAL and also how to make artwork, embed metadata and submit it to the library. I haven’t heard about this being accepted yet, but I would like to get NICU and others in the area to SVGOPEN if possible to help with that.

Also, I guess I should ramp getting contacts in Europe and seek out some other places to speak. If I’m going to make this trip, then I should hit some other places to make it cost-effective. If anyone has any ideas, please email me. I’d really like to get over to Bucharest to meet up with some contacts. I would like to visit new media centers like MAMA Media and Bootlab in Berlin. I’ve done streaming events with them in the past, but have never visited.

My head icon for the planet site is forthcoming. Nicu did a great job making it from the headshot on my site, but I had to do the vector-based plastic surgery to make myself look 2005 rather than last year’s jon. Time to do my taxes and then work on some more on contract work, then off to swim and test out my new swimming/shorts/speedo shorts (not the men’s underwear variety).

Whoa, it is nice to have a quick way to post.

Scale is ramping up for a full development cycle. Please submit your PDFs to the project by APRIL 30th to get printed up and distributed in various conceptual and academic circles.

Scale has had some downtime thanks to its location at UCSD, so I think it might need to be moved to another location, put onto an open source project server like freedesktop.org, or get hosted professionally (although there is not much reason to have to have your own project server now with so many free ones out there). Maybe there is a way to get it hosted by some open content sites. If anyone has any ideas, please post here or email me about.