Penpot: Open-source design and prototyping platform | Hacker News Reader

Penpot: Open-source design and prototyping platform

github.com

256 pointslastdong37 comments

I interviewed Pablo, the founder of this project, for my podcast - he's a super interesting guy and I'm going to plug the link!

https://flagsmith.com/podcast/pablo-muzquiz-penpot/

This is cool, and a very polished effort!

The fact that it's open source makes me hopeful that someday it will be extended with other code generation options such as React, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, etc. It would be amazing to have something that's like the "Blender of UI design."

Yes! I mean, Blender is such a beacon for us... we feel tiny in comparison but it's nice to read "The Blender of UI design" as much as "the open source Figma killer" :)

More info at https://penpot.app/

Needs a bigger community. I know this project but still use Figma because in Figma I can simply use pre-created Elements from e.g. Ionic or Angular Material

Thanks for your insight, very good point. I found some templates here https://penpot.app/libraries-templates.html, although it’s amazing how Figma grew and how the strong the community is when comes to templates and sharing pre-created elements, hopefully Penpot will grow as strong

I think a Figma importer would be the killer feature for penpot.

Yeah - and it seems there is already a task for that: https://tree.taiga.io/project/penpot/us/1469

I admire this, tried it and it's very good. I even had a feature suggestion accepted for development.

But for some reason, unlike most tools I use, I don't actually care or have an issue with Figma not being open source.

Therefore: Figma works well, has a vibrant plugin ecosystem, lots of 3rd party design assets, can be used on any platform and in 4 years I've never needed to pay for it....

So tbh I can't find the motivation to jump ship to something else.

Hi Steve! That's fine, the motivations we had to build Penpot won't probably overlap with a lot of people's own interests. We do believe that the design process is very quickly taking over a critical part of innovation and design+code conversations and it terrifies us that open source doesn't have a say there. We think we can bring a better community ethos to design tools, how they're built and what level of vendor lock-in they pursue. Recent changes in Figma pricing has skyrocketed monthly bills for the vast majority of companies and teams (big and small). Not only that, they have been neglected RTL support for years (top5 request ever) because they have other priorities (Penpot added RTL support a month later its Alpha launch). My background is in Physics and Computer Science and I'm your typical nerdy dev now turned into CEO but I have come to appreciate how important is that design tools are free and open for everyone. I'm also a believer in designops and bringing designers closer to the development process, I think Penpot can achieve that better than others thanks to the open source tech community.

Discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28587009

So, this is like "opinionated Inkscape"?

Open source Figma

thanks, that helps :)

Can I self-host without a signup?

Looks like it, and it doesn't look too complicated.

https://help.penpot.app/technical-guide/getting-started/

Thanks for sharing! What is Penpot business model?

Seems to be from the same team as https://www.taiga.io/

So, probably open core, self hosted with paid SAAS.

My first thought as well. I haven't tried it, but the images look very polished. Assuming it does what they says, building that isn't free.

Kaleidos CEO here (Taiga+Penpot). It's not free at all but we want to make sure we have an honest and sustainable business model. We made stupid mistakes with Taiga a few years ago (a bad mix between an open source product and a proprietary SaaS style pricing. We have enough resources to make sure we can build great tools first without being obsessed about charging but Taiga would be straightforward. Penpot is different, though, because it is the first design&prototype tool that's open source and we are not sure what business model would make sense. Open Core focusing on great self-hosted and SaaS options plus Tax-the-rich for premium features doesn't sound too bad but, yet still, we are not entirely sure. For the time being this is not a pressing matter but the team and resources that Taiga and Penpot require are not trivial. I mean, look at the challenges that Penpot is addressing... no wonder there are only a handful of tools like this, they are extremely challenging to build. Furthermore, we want to make sure Penpot is the designers' tool of choice also for devs once they get to respect the design process.

It can not export to css / html / some kind of component - why not?

Just rechecked - I can not find a way to export to something that can be useful in web frontend develoment, besides svg. No CSS, no component for any framework, no html.

I must be blind or I am not getting it - why would anybody publish an UI prototyping tool that can not export to anything useful in UI development?

So this is like a copy of Inkscape with less features that will make your laptop fan move faster? It´s like the most important feature is missing.

Very confusing.

An exporter / compiler from svg -> components / html / css would be great to have instead, so we can just continue to use Inkscape (which leaves my CPU at low temperatures, too).

Hi! It's called hand-off mode and you get css/html + SVG for every element in the canvas. You can see an example here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9tkKqlKGStGYAXLazDLKzIO75o...

UI design and prototyping. Let's save the hardware designers about thirty frustrating clicks.

My first reaction to "Design and Prototyping" was asking "Of what?".

There's a tendency here to assume all words refer to software. I've seen people referring to software tests as "harnesses". No, fucker, I make test harnesses. With wire and terminals and a crimper. The result is a physical wiring harness, so called because it has wires bundled and routed according to their function, the literal definition of a harness. It connects to the device under test so we can test it.

My optimism that software people will put the word "software" on words they borrow from other things that still exist, never fails to bite me in HN headlines.

Sorry, you seem to have some kind of reason for believing a hardware test harness is more valid than a software test harness? Can you explain? Aren’t both just two types of harnesses?

Also a bit amusing since harness is obviously a term borrowed from something else that does already exist. I hope you’re always clear to say “hardware test harness” in case any equestrians are nearby and start ranting about hardware devs never being clear!

Grab any dictionary. Look up "harness".

Okay: https://i.imgur.com/lxTI85d.png (New Oxford American)

Now what?

Speaking of that, equestrians actually love saying the word "racing" like they own the motherfucker

What thirty things did you click? The screenshot at the submitted URL seems pretty clear, even though I agree it should call itself 'UI design and prototyping' or similar.

Getting the usual snark but I've used it and liked it very much. Powerful, flexible, great ui, well thought out

Not that I disagree that it’s a useful program but it feels strange to congratulate it being “well thought out” when it seems to be a clone of Figma.

Which in turn is a clone of Sketch.

I still miss Adobe Fireworks...

it’s such a shame that Adobe did so little with it

Partly what attracted me was the open-sourceness of it, usually a requirement for all things here on HN. I’ve only dabbled in Figma but it seemed significantly different to me in ui?

True, "it seems to be" but it's not. We have taken established standards found on other tools (Figma is one of them) because we wanted to make sure the learning curve was superflat. At the same time we're building a "code meets design" approach that is very different. SVG as native format already tells you that we favour open standards instead of conceding to our private representation/storage abstraction. I wonder, whenever Figma finally adopts RTL support, will people say "oh, the copied Penpot there"? grin. The same way Taiga has its own personality, Penpot will steadily design (pun intended) its own path and diverge more and more from established design tools. The fact that the design tool market is so tiny doesn't help either, TBH, but this is one the issues we're trying to fix with Penpot.

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