TedPage

Last night I decided to make it so that all Inkscape's menus could be configurable with an XML file. There was a lot of discussion on the list about it, and it didn't seem that hard, so I just did it. I'm not entirely sure that it makes any sense what so ever. But, as you can see below, people have the power to make Inkscape completely unusable. Hopefully it will be used for good instead of evil.

Some issues remain. It doesn't make much sense (nor work well) to merge the skeleton of the menus file into the user's current menu configuration. Preferences uses this so that when a new preference is added, all users get it quickly. But, currently, if someone adds a new menu item for a feature not all users will get it as the menus are not merged. This is not a good thing.

Also, the lookup of the verbs is a linear search for each verb. That's just plain painful. All the ids of the verbs need to be placed in hash table, probably the numerical lookup could be deprecated if that was the case too. That would definitely reduce code size in getting rid of a huge enum.

Overall, I'm not sure that configurable menus is a good thing. Yes, users will be able to make their menus look the way that they want. But, that also makes documentation virtually impossible. I'm not sure if it's a feature that makes Inkscape easier or harder to use. It will though, make looking at proposals for menu structures much easier.

posted on Sat, 30 Jul 2005 at 19:53 | permanent link

With the new Inkscape release we got a link on Slashdot, which meant a lot of downloads and traffic to our site. I was disappointed with the comments on Slashdot, effectively lowering my esteem for the site even more. Most weren't useful (not saying that the average user on Slashdot knows enough about graphics to make a good comment) and many were antagonistic. What I found most interesting though was the makeup of the downloads, assuming most are from a pro-Linux site like Slashdot.

Downloads	Platform
38,000	Windows
8,000	Mac OS X
3,000	Source package
1,000	Autopackage

There is over 3 times the downloads of Windows packages as all the other listed platforms combined. Now, Linux users can get the program from their distribution, but it still would lead us to conclude that most of the Inkscape users are Windows users. Which is odd, because most of the developers are not.

I was also surprised by how many people downloaded the Autopackage file. It's nice to see a project trying to make Linux easier to use catch on. Software installation is a common complaint by users and software packagers combined, and they're taking it head on!

We own a special thanks to SourceForge and their mirrors as we've used over 600GB of bandwidth in the last 3 days from downloads alone. It's a crazy amount of bandwidth, and something that we could definitely not afford on our own.

posted on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 at 20:36 | permanent link

I'm happy to say that Inkscape 0.42 has been packaged and tagged, and now has enough binaries available to announce. You can download it, read the release notes or check out screenshots of all the cool new features. But, probably playing with it is best. Fun new features for everyone.

Now, for more development, and watching my new favorite graph. It is an hourly update on how many people have downloaded the 0.42 release. Very cool new feature of the new Sourceforge statistics system.

posted on Tue, 26 Jul 2005 at 14:36 | permanent link

That was the subject line of some spam that I received this morning. I couldn't help but notice how prophetic it was.

posted on Mon, 25 Jul 2005 at 12:30 | permanent link

I was reading Technology Review and they were covering up-and-coming technologies like they regularly do. This got me thinking: Am I technologically behind? Am I going to be the guy who can't program his VCR in the future? Here's some of the technologies that I haven't embraced that seem to be taking the world by storm:

• Text messaging -- perhaps I'm just cheep, but this is too expensive. For the most part, I'll either IM someone or call them. Perhaps send an e-mail. I think it could be useful, but with the cost I've never really gotten involved.
• Podcasting -- I have a portable music player, but I don't listen to podcasts. Mostly this is because I never plug it into my computer except when I get a new CD. Plus, most of the time my computer is asleep when I'm not using it -- it's not downloading MP3s. Sure, KCRW has some really great stuff, but with a 35 hour battery life I never plug my music player into anything more than once every couple weeks.
• Cell phone camera -- I admit it, my cell phone doesn't have a camera. While I have found a couple of situations where I thought it might be useful, I'm just not excited about going out to get a camera in my cell phone. This is probably mostly because I'm a graphics snob and can't take the idea of having a plastic lens on my camera, but I still don't have one.

In many ways I couldn't really care less about many of these things. They may catch on in time, they may not. Perhaps, one day, I'll be unable to imagine living with out them. As a technologist today, I have to wonder if not embracing these emerging technologies is putting me on the fast track to obsolescence. Bring on the Beta VCR!

posted on Mon, 25 Jul 2005 at 02:44 | permanent link

While I'm not the most sensitive guy, I can honestly say that I'm removing sensitivity from Inkscape. I finally finished some code to make it so that verbs can be marked sensitive or not on a global or document basis. This makes it so that we can finally make unavailable menu items that are impossible in a given state.

"Previous Effect" is a good example of this as you can't have a previous effect if you've never run one. I realize that this isn't a new GUI feature by any stretch of the imagination, but it now works in Inkscape too!

This is part of my global plan to make Effects insensitive when there isn't anything selected that they can work on. So if an effect only works on paths, and you don't have one selected, it would be insensitive. Hopefully this will help users understand when an Effect might not work instead of having nothing happen.

posted on Fri, 22 Jul 2005 at 01:23 | permanent link

You should download Inkscape 0.42 pre3 and test, test, test. There is a good chance that this will be the last prerelease of Inkscape 0.42, so it is very important that any release critical bugs are found. If you find one, you can report Inkscape bugs here. If you use binaries, more will be available as packagers start to make them, check back.

posted on Fri, 22 Jul 2005 at 01:15 | permanent link

I'm not sure if this link has gone around, and the data collection period might be over, but I found this interesting. It is a survey on bloggers by MIT where they ask a bunch of questions about your blog, and how you communicate online in general. They have about 50,000 entries and they do live graphs of your data versus the survey. The survey engine that they use (I think they built it themselves) is really nice, I wish they'd distribute that!

One thing I found depressing about the results is how few people use Jabber. I really want it to take over the world, but it definitely isn't there yet.

posted on Wed, 20 Jul 2005 at 20:01 | permanent link

Catching up on my news I found a couple of gems on Gizmodo. There is a urinal that sends medical results to your cell phone which means that there is now a urinal with more processing power than my first computer. And, a game of soccer that can be played in the urinal, so much better than pocket pool. This collection of links has to be juxtaposed against the classic etched fly as a target in a urinal and the urinal.net top 10 list.

Wow, and who says the Internet isn't making our world a better place?

posted on Wed, 20 Jul 2005 at 02:02 | permanent link

The Inkscape release has been delayed. There are a few reasons for this, but I find the funniest is that we're missing the about screen. There was a contest on DeviantArt for the about screen which generated some really impressive results. One was selected, but we still don't have the SVG to put in the release. Funny, probably the only software release held up by the about box.

I have to admit that in some way I like long freezes of the codebase. When the code thaws so many cool features get added. Of course, this means that I spend most of the time compiling after that, but it is very much worth it.

posted on Tue, 19 Jul 2005 at 12:52 | permanent link

We're finally starting to close in on an Inkscape release. There is now a third prerelease online, with several binaries to play with. We'll probably have one more prerelease before the hard freeze, but things are converging nicely. I think I might have even fixed my last critical bug. Amazing new features, if you haven't already, check out the screenshots.

This is also a good chance to mention that there is now a Planet Inkscape. There is now a place where you can get all the news and chatter from the Inkscape developers regarding, well, any crazy thing they want to talk about. This is very good, and a good companion to Planet Open Clipart.

Speaking of the Open Clipart Library, it is just amazing. The project now has thousands of Public Domain graphics, with more being added everyday. It is really crazy. When we started the project, all I really wanted was for open source presentations to look less ugly -- but now the project is so much more than that. I think that it is wonderful!

Okay, that's enough Google spamming for today <smile>

posted on Thu, 14 Jul 2005 at 02:25 | permanent link

In the wake of the bombings in London, there were several interesting essays at World Changing. One that I found particularly interesting was called: The Democratization of History. It talks about each of us carrying enough equipment (a cell phone) to be a historian, and perhaps history will come more out of these accounts rather than official records in the future. This is interesting, and is even more interesting with sites like Wikipedia where history is being written outside of mainstream academia. Our common definition of truth seems to be changing, though it's hard to say if it is becoming more or less accurate.

What I found most interesting is when you think that most of the pictures shown from the bombing in London are from people who were there, because they got there first. There is no way for a news team to respond faster than someone who is involved in the event itself. So, as we've looked for how blogs are going to destroy the main stream media, perhaps we've looked the wrong direction. Instead of changing how people get their news, perhaps they'll change how news is gathered. Instead of having reporters the evening news will send out lawyers to buy up content rights from the people there. Perhaps we're destroying Dan Rather instead of CBS.

posted on Mon, 11 Jul 2005 at 13:31 | permanent link

I've started to use Bloglines to keep track of all my RSS feeds. The big reason for this is that I couldn't figure out another way to keep track of what I've read on multiple machines. Yeah, they had to share a file somewhere, but there seems to be no standard for that. What I really need is an RSS to IMAP translator, then I can just use a mail client. But, I'm relatively happy with Bloglines.

I've always said that I would never give my attention to web services. I don't want a web based contact manager or e-mail. The big reason for this is that there is no way to get your data out, you're locked into their service. I understand why they do this, but it is frustrating to me as a user. I might as well use Word. Bloglines doesn't do this, you can see all my feeds if you want, and you can even download them as OPML[1] if you so like. This makes me happy, hurray for Bloglines.

posted on Mon, 11 Jul 2005 at 13:31 | permanent link

William Gibson has an article on how user's interact with music. (link from World Changing) He makes the point that people are no longer listening to music, they are interacting and making their own music from it.

Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.

While in the article he is talking about music, I can't help but thinking about RSS.

Today, there is a page for the RSS feeds from the New York Times. I never thought that would happen. RSS allows the reader to make the news site that they want, taking bits and pieces from every other site on the net. It is tailored for what they're interested in, and it happens automatically, without intervention besides the initial configuration. Wow, remixed information feeds.

It seems to me that people just want the ability to control what is given to them. After just celebrating Independence Day in the US this could really be thought of as people wanting Freedom, Freedom of Choice. Whether it be government, music or news people don't want to take what they are given by a despot. Are we talking about blogging as "the new media" when it is just a incarnation of the same movements that people had hundreds of years ago?

posted on Wed, 06 Jul 2005 at 17:42 | permanent link

Last night I was watching the Deep Impact mission on NASA TV, awesome to watch as they shot a washing machine towards a rock at a velocity of 6 miles per second. As the pictures were coming back you could hear one of the engineers in the background say: "If that doesn't make the front page, something is very wrong." I laughed at the time, because I think that we all realize that something is wrong with the media today.

That didn't mean that I wasn't excited to look at the front page of the LA Times this morning to see what they did put on the front page. As far as I can tell, Deep Impact didn't even make the paper this morning. Yeah, something is very wrong -- and we wonder why kids aren't interested in being scientists.

Update: The story did make the front page on the July 5^th issue of the LA Times. Perhaps I'm a touch too cynical.

posted on Tue, 05 Jul 2005 at 02:25 | permanent link

I've never really understood why Open Source advocates get angry at the BSA. They seem to me to be the people who encourage more people to use Open Source than anyone else. Anyone who's been through a BSA audit, wants nothing to do with proprietary software again.

I've always held the belief that software pirates stop a significant portion of the population from adopting Open Source, they have no idea how much software costs. Today I read a blog entry from fERDI entitled: Zen and the Art of Inkscape. You can imagine why I found the article interesting. While I enjoyed the Inkscape ego-stroking, I especially found this section interesting:

Is hope fading? Not really. Not if Microsoft continues their raids. When software copy control policy is successfully enforced (which by the way the Warnet raids look likely to be sooner rather than later), then most computer users in Indonesia would have no choice than to go open source. Nobody can afford commercial software here.

It quickly sums up my thoughts. While I don't want to see people in the developing world hurt, putting them on a path to sustainability would almost definitely help them in the long run. Go BSA!

posted on Fri, 01 Jul 2005 at 18:21 | permanent link

I just finished reading Mineko Iwasaki's Geisha, A Life and I found it enthralling. It was much better than the other bargain book I bought. For me, a book can be judged by how far I get in my bus ride before I look up to figure out if I need to get off, this book would engross me for easily 30-40 minutes at a time.

An autobiography by Iwasaki-san, it tells the story from her childhood to the time when she retired from being a Geisha (at 29). Her story talks of the difficulties in becoming an object of Japanese beauty, and what she gave up to get there. This all coming from a shy but determined girl, starting at age 5. She was forced to leave her parents and enter a world where etiquette reins over a veiled competition to get to the top. She was the top. Often considered one of the best geikos, perhaps ever.

She wrote the book to give us, the reader, a look into an intricate part of Japanese aristocratic life. And, to defend the honor of all geishas, constantly proclaiming that they are not prostitutes. One of the arguments that she uses against that is that she was already making $500K a year, so why would she sell sex for money? Well, that doesn't take into account that she was the highest paid Geisha in Gion, I'm sure that there were many who made less than her. Also, Gion was one of the most respected districts, geisha all over Japan most likely make significantly less than her. But, that being said, the job of a geisha is not to be a prostitute -- whether some girls are less savory on the side, is unrelated to what their job is.

The story itself is relatively flat, something I liked, but I'm sure that others would not. It feels like she is really telling the story, not making her role seem more glamorous, the bad guys more devious, or try to tell a moral in the story. Not to say the life she lived was not glamorous, but the story feels like a real life. I kept wanting her father (who made kimono fabric) to be making all the fabric for her kimonos. It would have been a neat way to tie the story together. But, it didn't happen (or she didn't know that it did, he apparently made some of the finest fabric, and she wore the best kimonos, so it is likely that she wore his fabric at some point), so it wasn't in the story.

I also really enjoyed the translation to English. It was a wonderful balance of using the Japanese words, but explaining what they meant. Also, I felt like there was more description of the topics that Americans would know less about -- which was helpful in understanding the story. I think that it really brought a story about Japan to an audience that doesn't understand Japan.

Overall, I liked it. I tend to enjoy thinks from Japan and the Orient, so I am perhaps biased. I still feel it is an interesting story about a culture that is very foreign, but beautiful.

posted on Fri, 01 Jul 2005 at 18:05 | permanent link