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Vector programs? and the better os

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Gillian Densmore

Vector programs? and the better os

Greetings fellow technomancers,

Yes illustrator may have a place in vector graphics. I should like to define 'Vector Graphics': as graphics tool set that's bad ass enough for text to be extremly smooth and crisp from as small as a postal stamp to as big as a truck.

Personally my quip with illustrator is it's over the top- for somestuff. (like sending certain younglings a reminder note).

Has anyone used the others? Xara has claims about being lite on it's feet. Corell has roots in drawing.

For those of you into making a better OS.

I just ask that what ever else you come up as a feature for it. That a feature is not consuming insane amounts of ram, or HD space.

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Vector programs? and the better os

On 11/23/13 10:57 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

Has anyone used the others?

I like Inkscape, which is open source. That said, I have no artistic ability, so my expectations may be different than yours. It is capable with it comes to manipulating large SVG files, and technical diagrams, and that sort of thing.

On a Mac, it's installable via Macports. X11 based.

Marcus

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Steve Smith

Re: Vector programs? and the better os

In reply to this post by Gillian Densmore

Gil -

Didn't a certain "oldling" speak to you in PostScript at the breakfast table throughout the 1980's?

I think you should respond to his next reminder sent as an Illustrator file with:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%Creator: [Gillian Densmore - by hand]
/Times-Roman findfont 32 scalefont setfont 100 200 translate 37.5 rotate 2 1 scale newpath 0 0 moveto
(Thanks Dad!) true charpath 0.5 setlinewidth 0.4 setgray stroke
%%EOF

I say, kill two birds with one stone.... build a time machine, go back to the late 1980's and make sure that the Network extensible Window System certain "oldlings" (who shall not be named) were working on at the time succeeded and *became* the Window System of choice, and in fact, in the spirit of "the Network is the Computer", become the tip of the iceberg of a true Network Operating System.

And don't let him distract you with talk of JavaScript running in "the browser" it is pure misdirection ;^)... PostScript is somewhat like the Sanskrit of Technomancers, nearly any spell or divination can be uttered in it. Be careful, however, not to cause a Snow Crash!

- Steve


Greetings fellow technomancers,

Yes illustrator may have a place in vector graphics. I should like to define 'Vector Graphics': as graphics tool set that's bad ass enough for text to be extremly smooth and crisp from as small as a postal stamp to as big as a truck.

Personally my quip with illustrator is it's over the top- for somestuff. (like sending certain younglings a reminder note).

Has anyone used the others? Xara has claims about being lite on it's feet. Corell has roots in drawing.

For those of you into making a better OS.

I just ask that what ever else you come up as a feature for it. That a feature is not consuming insane amounts of ram, or HD space.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Stephen Guerin

Re: Vector programs? and the better os

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

I think you should respond to his next reminder sent as an Illustrator file with:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%Creator: [Gillian Densmore - by hand]
/Times-Roman findfont 32 scalefont setfont 100 200 translate 37.5 rotate 2 1 scale newpath 0 0 moveto
(Thanks Dad!) true charpath 0.5 setlinewidth 0.4 setgray stroke
%%EOF

Steve, it's all ball bearings and SVG these days.

Gil, you can also take a look at a svg-edit as a browser-based editor: http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.6/editor/svg-editor.html. You can send your dad this:

<defs>

</radialGradient>

</radialGradient>

</radialGradient>

</radialGradient>

</defs>

<g>

<title>Layer 1</title>

<text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" x="470" y="40" id="svg_1" font-size="24" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">Browser is</text>

<text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="314" y="422" id="svg_20" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">On top: Rony Sebok, Susan Kare. Middle row: Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Owen Densmore.</text>

<text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="313" y="443" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve" id="svg_23">Bottom row: Jerome Coonen, Bruce Horn, Steve Capps, Larry Kenyon.</text>

<text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="303" y="464" id="svg_24" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">In front: Donn Denman, Tracy Kenyon, Patti Kenyon</text>

<text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.95" x="316" y="396" id="svg_25" font-size="18" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve" font-weight="bold">Macintosh Team: photographed for 1984 Rolling Stone</text>

</g>

</svg>

Arlo Barnes

Re: [WedTech] Vector programs? and the better os

In reply to this post by Gillian Densmore

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Greetings fellow technomancers,

Yes illustrator may have a place in vector graphics. I should like to define 'Vector Graphics': as graphics tool set that's bad ass enough for text to be extremely smooth and crisp from as small as a postal stamp to as big as a truck.

Personally my quip with illustrator is it's over the top for some stuff. (like sending certain younglings a reminder note).
Has anyone used the others? Xara has claims about being lite on it's feet. Corel has roots in drawing.

For those of you into making a better OS.
I just ask that whatever else you come up as a feature for it. That a feature is not consuming insane amounts of ram, or HD space.

Ah, misread 'Illustrator' as 'Inkscape' and was going to ask you to specify what problems you had with it. Like Marcus, I too recommend Inkscape and find to be fairly light (depending of course on how modern / laptop- or desktop-like the system you are running is), and although I certainly am not testing it's boundaries quality-wise it seems professional vector artists are split between Inkscape and Illustrator (which may be a workflow thing, Adobe-style versus free/open-style, more than anything else) so it seems they are mostly happy with it's power. I have heard of one or two things that AI does that INX does not (but not anything that is not somewhat obscure); I think it goes the other way too, though, and INX certainly is a better value based on how much it costs (nothing). There is a good community for support at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user.

I would define vector graphics as mathematically-encoded rather than bitmap-encoded images. In SVG, VML, and proprietary spinoffs, that usually means just beziers (cubic and quartic? Unless there is support for arbitrary degree) and some primitives like line segments (which are just degenerate beziers anyway) and [portions of] ellipses. Being shapes rather than sets of points (pixels), they are infinitely scalable, as you say. A less emphasized but perhaps even more important result is that they are also more easily semanticized. And as SG says, SVG is a near-universal browser standard now (one of the only [the only?] image formats that you can 'view source' on). I have a small hobby of sending random people well-vectorized versions of their vexel-like images, to their (alternately) excitement and consternation.

What kind of application did you need a vector graphics editor for?

Final note: this trick was useful for me to quickly see SG's pasted SVG:
(Note: This demonstration will not be helpful to those with text-only email clients. Sorry.)
<img src="data:image/svg+xml,<svg width="640" height="480" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><defs><radialGradient id="svg_12" spreadMethod="pad"><stop stop-color="#ffffff" offset="0"/><stop stop-color="#000000" offset="1"/></radialGradient><radialGradient id="svg_16" spreadMethod="pad" cx="0.5" cy="0.5" r="0.5"><stop stop-color="#ffffff" offset="0"/><stop stop-color="#9e9e9e" stop-opacity="0.99609" offset="1"/></radialGradient><radialGradient id="svg_17" spreadMethod="pad" cx="0.5" cy="0.5" r="0.5"><stop stop-color="#ffffff" offset="0"/><stop stop-color="#9e9e9e" stop-opacity="0.99609" offset="1"/></radialGradient><radialGradient id="svg_27" spreadMethod="pad" cx="0.5" cy="0.5" r="0.5"><stop stop-color="#ffffff" offset="0"/><stop stop-color="#fff7cc" stop-opacity="0.99219" offset="1"/></radialGradient></defs><g><title>Layer 1</title><image x="73" y="49" width="480" height="315" id="svg_9" xlink:href="http://www.folklore.org/projects/Macintosh/gallery/pyramid.jpg"/><image x="95.84821" y="130.30357" width="51.59883" height="90.16232" id="svg_8" opacity="0.7" xlink:href="http://redfish.com/images/redfishLogo.gif" transform="rotate(-4.87252 121.648 175.385)"/><path fill="url(#svg_27)" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.95" d="m386.85999,20.48517l0,0c0,-8.53314 8.86374,-15.45168 19.79642,-15.45168l8.99902,0l0,0l43.1926,0l80.98621,0c5.24963,0 10.28485,1.62766 13.9986,4.52579c3.71185,2.89763 5.79791,6.82811 5.79791,10.92589l0,38.62916l0,0l0,23.17749l0,0c0,8.53413 -8.86365,15.45166 -19.79651,15.45166l-80.98621,0l-56.42551,39.29003l13.23291,-39.29003l-8.99902,0c-10.93268,0 -19.79642,-6.91753 -19.79642,-15.45166l0,0l0,-23.17749l0,0l0,-38.62916z" id="svg_13" stroke="#000000"/><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" x="470" y="40" id="svg_1" font-size="24" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">Browser is</text><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="469" y="73" id="svg_18" font-size="24" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">the NeW (O)S</text><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="314" y="422" id="svg_20" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">On top: Rony Sebok, Susan Kare. Middle row: Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Owen Densmore.</text><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="313" y="443" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve" id="svg_23">Bottom row: Jerome Coonen, Bruce Horn, Steve Capps, Larry Kenyon.</text><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.75" x="303" y="464" id="svg_24" font-size="14" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve">In front: Donn Denman, Tracy Kenyon, Patti Kenyon</text><text fill="#000000" stroke="#000000" stroke-width="0" stroke-dasharray="null" stroke-linejoin="null" stroke-linecap="null" opacity="0.95" x="316" y="396" id="svg_25" font-size="18" font-family="serif" text-anchor="middle" xml:space="preserve" font-weight="bold">Macintosh Team: photographed for 1984 Rolling Stone</text></g></svg>" alt="Inline image 1">

-Arlo

Russell Standish-2

Re: [WedTech] Vector programs? and the better os

On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 03:46:10PM -0700, Arlo Barnes wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Gillian Densmore
> <[hidden email]>wrote:
>
> > Greetings fellow technomancers,
> > Yes illustrator may have a place in vector graphics. I should like to
> > define 'Vector Graphics': as graphics tool set that's bad ass enough for
> > text to be extremely smooth and crisp from as small as a postal stamp to as
> > big as a truck.
> > Personally my quip with illustrator is it's over the top for some stuff.
> > (like sending certain younglings a reminder note).
> > Has anyone used the others? Xara has claims about being lite on it's feet.
> > Corel has roots in drawing.
> > For those of you into making a better OS.
> > I just ask that whatever else you come up as a feature for it. That a
> > feature is not consuming insane amounts of ram, or HD space.
> >
>
> Ah, misread 'Illustrator' as 'Inkscape' and was going to ask you to
> specify what problems you had with it. Like Marcus, I too recommend
> Inkscape and find to be fairly light (depending of course on how modern /
> laptop- or desktop-like the system you are running is), and although I
> certainly am not testing it's boundaries quality-wise it seems professional
> vector artists are split between Inkscape and Illustrator (which may be a
> workflow thing, Adobe-style versus free/open-style, more than anything
> else) so it seems they are mostly happy with it's power. I have heard of
> one or two things that AI does that INX does not (but not anything that is
> not somewhat obscure); I think it goes the other way too, though, and INX
> certainly is a better value based on how much it costs (nothing). There is
> a good community for support at
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user.
>
> I would define vector graphics as mathematically-encoded rather than
> bitmap-encoded images. In SVG, VML, and proprietary spinoffs, that usually
> means just beziers (cubic and quartic? Unless there is support for
> arbitrary degree) and some primitives like line segments (which are just
> degenerate beziers anyway) and [portions of] ellipses. Being shapes rather
> than sets of points (pixels), they are infinitely scalable, as you say. A
> less emphasized but perhaps even more important result is that they are
> also more easily semanticized. And as SG says, SVG is a near-universal
> browser standard now (one of the only [the only?] image formats that you
> can 'view source' on). I have a small hobby of sending random people
> well-vectorized versions of their
> vexel<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexel>-like
> images, to their (alternately) excitement and consternation.
>
> What kind of application did you need a vector graphics editor for?
>
> Final note: this trick <http://tavmjong.free.fr/blog/?p=280> was useful for
> me to quickly see SG's pasted SVG:
> (Note: This demonstration will not be helpful to those with text-only email
> clients. Sorry.)
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
> -Arlo

No need to apologise. As a text-based email reader, I had no problem
in copy/pasting your included link and trying out the trick mentioned
(works in Seamonkey). You did the right thing.

The problems come from people sending HTML-only email (if sent without
the correct MIME type, it is unreadable, if with, then it invokes lynx
to render the HTML, but embedded links are virtually useless).

The only way I have worked out to handle such poorly behaved emails is
to save the text of the email as an HTML document, and then open it in
a browser - needless to say I will only do that if extremely
interested in the content, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Thanks for the post - I will try out Inkscape sometime next year, when
I look to integrate SVG into my current project.

Cheers

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [hidden email]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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