Try comparing to professional illustration programs [LWN.net]

Try comparing to professional illustration programs

Posted May 4, 2004 20:50 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (subscriber, #421)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to diagram editors

Unfortunately, last I checked (some months ago), most of these tools, including some others like Sketch that weren't mentioned, don't hold a candle to professional drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator or Deneba Canvas. Please, we need a real review, where you're not just drawing a couple of boxes with text (which was state-of-the-art about 30 years ago), written by someone who has used a good non-free program.

I tried for several hours to create a simple technical illustration of a bent fiber, going from one free package to another (I tried OpenOffice, SodiPodi, xfig, Kontour, Dia...), and I failed miserably to get anything close to what I wanted. It was probably possible, but just too hard. Then I went to Illustrator (which I had barely used before...I am used to Canvas) and was able to do it in a few minutes.

It's frustrating, because it almost seems like the authors of these programs have never used professional drawing software. Many of the programs are missing even the most basic things, like using the arrow keys to nudge objects. Perhaps some of the newer programs/versions are better, but this review gives me absolutely no insight into that question.

(Yes, I know the editor was reviewing "diagram editors," not just drawing packages, but in my mind that is just a euphemism for "primitive 1980 illustration task." Why must you set the bar so low?)

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Try comparing to professional illustration programs

Posted May 4, 2004 21:46 UTC (Tue) by dougm (subscriber, #4615) [Link]

(Yes, I know the editor was reviewing "diagram editors," not just drawing packages, but in my mind that is just a euphemism for "primitive 1980 illustration task." Why must you set the bar so low?)

Diagram editors are made for editing diagrams. Programs like Illustrator aren't, particularly--they're general-purpose tools. So if all you want to do is make a diagram, you benefit from the (relative) interface simplicity, bundled templates, and general suitedness of the tool to the task.

If "diagram editors" didn't fill a niche, Microsoft Visio would not be as popular as it is, and people would be using Canvas or Illustrator instead.

Try comparing Apples to Oranges

Posted May 5, 2004 22:05 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

Unfortunately, [...] most of these tools [...] don't hold a candle to professional drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator or Deneba Canvas.

Hmmn... Are you the sort of person who strolls into a hardware store and exclaims, "What the heck! I don't see watermellons on any of these shelves. Where are the watermellons? What a pathetic store this is! They don't even sell watermellons..."? Do you shake your fist at apple carts that don't contain enough oranges? Would you go to a web site for graphic artists and complain about the lack of Linux kernel coverage?

Well, here you are on a web site with an explict free software focus, reading an article (by someone who admits in the first sentence that he is not artistically inclined) that attempts to survey free software drawing tools for simple diagrams -- excuse me, primitive 1980 illustrations -- and all you can think to do is moan about the lack of whizzy proprietary graphic artist tools? Settle down for goodness sakes.

comparing to the best available proprietary software *is* apples to apples

Posted May 6, 2004 0:11 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link]

Well, here you are on a web site with an explict free software focus, reading an article (by someone who admits in the first sentence that he is not artistically inclined) that attempts to survey free software drawing tools for simple diagrams—excuse me, primitive 1980 illustrations—and all you can think to do is moan about the lack of whizzy proprietary graphic artist tools? Settle down for goodness sakes.

I'm not moaning about the lack of proprietary graphics programs—I'm moaning that I want to use a free drawing programs, but they all seem to be dramatically inferior to the proprietary stuff on other operating systems (even proprietary drawing programs from 10 years ago).

I'm still optimistic that this will change, but it won't as long as we compare only to other free-software programs on a platform (Unix) that traditionally hasn't had good graphics software (until MacOS X). Please, raise the bar!

comparing to the best available proprietary software *is* apples to apples

Posted May 13, 2004 18:25 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

> Please, raise the bar!

Query returned empty set (TM)