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Comment by somethingsome | Hacker News Reader

What's the problem with inkscape? It has some bugs, but otherwise it works quite well

Inkscape is a vector editor that can export to SVG, but that's a bit different than an editor specifically for the SVG file type.

I've often found myself wanting to edit SVG code directly while viewing the result. This maybe not the most common approach, but sometimes you want to be be dealing with specifics that relate to the fact that you're working with an actual SVG file, and not just a vector image.

Isn't inkscape's native data format SVG?

https://inkscape.org/en/develop/about-svg/

> The Inkscape project does not only use SVG as its native file format, it also takes part in the further development and refinement of SVG features by delegating a representative to the W3C SVG Working Group.

It's more of just their personal classification of the software than anything in my reading.

That said, Inkscape can default to save in SVG, can actively contribute to the SVG standard, but still be / come across as primarily a vector image editor.

What is missing for you to call it an svg editor? Like, you can even inspect and modify the raw svg tree directly from the UI while you edit your document in inkscape.

I think you can use the XML editor in the edit menu to directly edit the SVG in inkscape

for what it's worth, if you click on an element and hit ctrl-shift-x you'll get the underlying svg code and you can edit it directly as you wish

It's been a while since I tried Inkscape, but I downloaded it again to give honest feedback.

For context, I got started with Illustrator 9 as a teenager (this is making me feel dated, it was released in 2000), and I'm very familiar with the Illustrator UX and find it intuitive.

When using Inkscape, the UX just feels slightly off, things like:

- Weird keybindings, e.g. pressing Ctrl +/- does not zoom/unzoom

- The golden path feels buggy. When launching the window is for some reason cropped to the top 1/8th of the screen and needs to be resized, and the artboard is tiny.

- Usability issues, such as selecting paths does not show their outline, and the layers window doesn't show a preview of what's in each layer

- Exported SVGs are needlessly verbose. This looks like it has gotten better but is still there. For example, exporting an SVG with two gradients actually puts four gradients in the file (combining with inheritance).

I'm sure that spending more time with it would help, and Inkscape does seem quite powerful, but UX is a big factor when I adopt new tools and Inkscape is lacking there.

> Weird keybindings, e.g. pressing Ctrl +/- does not zoom/unzoom

if you prefer illustrator shorcut inksape offers it in welcome screen but maybe it would not hurt to also add that binding defoult is just +- without modifiers

> The golden path feels buggy. When launching the window is for some reason cropped to the top 1/8th of the screen and needs to be resized, and the artboard is tiny.

this is not true for new installs.

> Exported SVGs are needlessly verbose. This looks like it has gotten better but is still there. For example, exporting an SVG with two gradients actually puts four gradients in the file (combining with inheritance).

Inkscape extends SVG a lot so it can add more features. for exports just one of optimised svg export options inskcape offers

Inkscape's brilliant, but its niggles aren't trivial. Leaving transforms in the exported svg code has been pissing me off for years.

it can be set up not to do that and it si set up by default not to do that. If its possible (for some elements in specific scenaris it is not)

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