Ted Gould: SVG, Inkscape and Web Standards

I was lucky enough to be able to have an in-depth discussion with Ted Gould regarding the future of Inkscape and SVG. We spoke a bit about Inkscape's history, its future, and the role SVG will play in the web in coming years.






JMZ: Ted, you've been involved with SVG for some time. How did you first get involved with the SVG standard?


TG: I first started to work with SVG by contributing to Sodipodi, I'd have to say that I didn't really understand what it was at that time, I was more interested in vector drawing in general. But now I've grown to be quite the SVG advocate.


JMZ: I've noticed! Aside from members of the SVG working group @ W3C such as Chris Lilley, you're one of the more prominent names associated with this technology. Your work with SodiPodi is what led way to the Inkscape project. Exactly how did this transition happen?


TG: There were several developers that were working on Sodipodi who weren't able to get our patches into the mainline. Among other things, we figured that this might be because Lauris didn't have time to look through all the patches. We tried to put together a branch of Sodipodi to include the changes to make it easier for Lauris, this branch was called "hydra." When Lauris still wasn't merging the patches we suggested that we could make a hydra release so that users could get some of the patches, and he then suggested that we fork the project. And we did.


JMZ: So it would appear that this transition was due to interpersonal dynamics rather than lack of shared vision as some reports suggest.


TG: I would agree with that. Though, there was a certain amount of technical disagreement, but I believe that could have been overcome with a stronger social environment.


JMZ: Lets talk a bit about Inkscape. So in your view, how far has Inkscape come?


TG: Wow, amazingly far. I joke that Bryce wanted to see 100 downloads a day, which is true, but that's how we saw our little project in the world. It's come so far. And by no means is that my fault, it really comes down to all the contributions that we've gotten from tons of really excellent developers. Nothing we could have imagined when we started.


JMZ: Is Inkscape a contender in the professional graphic design tools arena?


TG: As far as professional use in some ways the question is moot, there are people who do use it as part of their jobs today. I think today it comes down to choice and what features specifically you need. We don't support things like color-managed printing, so if you need that you'll be choosing a different product. But, there are also people who use Inkscape for the design, and then move it into a product like Illustrator to finish off the color for printing. We have features they don't have and they have ones we don't. The key for us is moving beyond "what people know" as they are teaching Adobe products in almost every educational art program out there. Hopefully budget cuts will help us in that regard.


JMZ: Who are the top 5 code contributors to Inkscape?


TG: You know, it may sound like something I should say after winning the Superbowl, but it really is a team effort. I tried to think of a list, but the reality is that different people contribute at different times over different features. You can't choose. There are also libraries that we've included that are critical for a lot of users, things like potrace, libcoroco and lib2geom that aren't technically "Inkscape contributors" but have done a lot of work on the project indirectly.


JMZ: Aside from perhaps low-budget educational environments, have you noticed any particular commercial niches in which Inkscape found a home?


TG: I think that probably the biggest commercial area is website development and prototyping. I think that a lot of people are using it for mockups and design even if they aren't putting SVG on their websites. Which is a shame, but most of them cite IE compatibility as the reason they're not putting up SVG. I hope that'll change, if nothing else, to allow so that browsers who do support SVG will get the better, smaller graphics.


JMZ: I think at this point, SVG has been established as a stable and reliable graphic design interchange format. I think the important questions are whether SVG will become a publishing standard for the web (or perhaps mobile). In years past, Adobe was perhaps the most instrumental in positioning SVG as a possible alternative to Flash or even HTML, but abandoned those efforts after the Macromedia acquision. There is a noticable level of activity with SVG, as seen on the W3C site. What do you forsee for SVG as a web standard?


TG: The magic 8-ball says "try again later" right now. I think it is very possible to see SVG start to emerge as a publishing standard, but it's not at all clear that it will. It's close though, a "major project" might kick it over the edge. If someone like Google Maps would provide an SVG interface (which would look good and be cheaper for them to render) then I think many others would follow. There simply isn't that major player taking the lead which many web designers who want to use SVG can take to their management and sell them on it. Google, call me ;)




JMZ: Well I think you're referring to the situation where SVG is used in place of GIF or JPEG, but again, some were pushing for an SVG that would replace HTML. The possibilities for interactive SVG via javascript suggest some interesting potentials in the 'rich media' realm. Perhaps SVG will follow the same adoption pattern as CSS (Mozilla -> IE).


TG: I think the first step is to start using it in graphics, that's the position that can be taken while keeping a site that has bitmaps and is "legacy compatible." After that I think people will start to use it in new and exciting ways allowing for rich user experiences. Many have them have already been done in test beds and different implementations, so those following SVG wouldn't see them as new, but for users they'd be a "whole new world."


JMZ: Do you think it possible that SVG maintains a presence as a web standard without any serious commerical sponsorship?


TG: I don't know that a single major corporate sponsor is required. I think that the "X factor" here is the different browser vendors. They've already pushed to make HTML 5 happen, I think they could go after SVG next. This would give them good in-browser implementations for things like animations that can only really be done with Adobe's Flash plugin today. I don't think that they like the idea of having the future of the web being implemented as a plugin.


JMZ: Finally, what relevance does SVG and SVG Tiny have for mobile device developers?


TG: Honestly, I'm not sure. I love the idea, but the pragmatist in me says that the only thing that matters is what everyone else is doing. I'm not sure if buzzwords like 'the whole Internet' win out and the device manufacturers are back competing (or including) products like Moblin or Opera. Most of these devices are marketing driven and I don't think people are buying based on spec compliance (they use IE).From a content builder's perspective they don't care specifically as they are stuck with standards like the 'Firefox 1.5' version of the spec. They love the standards as an ideal, but anyone who's developed for the web realizes that it's an ideal.


JMZ: Yes, I think that anyone who has followed the SVG saga knows that a spec and its implementation are like husband and wife, you can't possibly consider one without the other. Any final remarks, Ted?




TG: I am excited about the position that SVG is in, but I think that it really needs content producers to start to push it. It's beyond what tools and specifications can do. While the lack of IE support makes things difficult Microsoft does listen to their marketing department, and if websites are looking worse on IE than Firefox, they'll take notice. And then we can realize our dream of a ubiquitous SVG web.








Inkscape is a GPL project built in C, C++ and Python. On average, Inkscape is downloaded more than 5000 times every day. With an Adobe CS license cost exceeding $1500 per CPU, you may want to give Inkscape a closer look.







Inkscape Sourceforge Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/


A Gallery of Artwork made with Inkscape: http://inkscape.deviantart.com/favourites/


More on Ted's transition from Sodipodi to Inkscape: http://gould.cx/ted/blog/2005/Sep/28


Ted Gould's Homepage: http://gould.cx/


The W3C Scalable Vector Graphics page: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/


Adobe's SVG Zone: http://www.adobe.com/svg/


SVG.org: http://www.svg.org/

Giving Comiqs A Try...

note: this applet appears to violate the security domain in both FF and IE...

on Phoenix Linux Users Group...

Many may ask... what goes on @ PLUG (Phoenix Linux Users Group)?



PLUG is a semi-formal group of Linux Enthusiasts based in the Phoenix area that has been in existence in various forms for over 10 years. There is no legal US entity associated with PLUG at this time. Some claim that there is a Steering Committee associated with PLUG, however the names of the members of this group have never been released to the public. There are several ways to interact with PLUG:

Mailing Lists. the main list is somewhat high traffic, although the volume does fluctuate quite a bit depending on the mood of various participants. It has all you could hope for in a Linux mailing list: technical questions and technical answers, cranky tech heads, various people sounding off about politics (myself included), bad spelling, distro wars, expositories on Bill Gates and the Anti-Christ, and much much more. What are you waiting for?! subscribe now, enter "MICROSOFT SUX" in the subject line, add a few lines of meaningless data, and hit 'Submit'!

Install Fest: this is a monthly meeting of the minds in the Phoenix area where skilled Linux technicians assist newbies in installing Linux on their PCs and getting various other things to work. You also get a healthy dose of anti-Micro$oft propaganda out of the whole deal.

Developer Meetings: I've been to a few of these and they mainly consist of retirees and other UNIX old-guard types talking about their experiences or their favorite software package. I do enjoy listening to older guys talk about the course of their careers, why? Because after retiring, they say exactly what they want- they've got nothing to gain or lose- so you tend to get a level of candor you would never find in the workforce. Perhaps the retiree-demographic of Phoenix accounts for the character of discourse on the PLUG mailing lists. I wouldn't expect million dollar business information here, but I found the people to be generally friendly, and they do try to keep things on topic. These meetings are divided into East Side and West Side. I've done a short presentation at one of these meetings once, I found the crowd to strike a happy medium between criticism and welcomeness.

Stammtisch: Get out your lederhosen its time to for a regex contest! I'm not really sure why we have German themed drinking night dedicated to Free Software in Phoenix, but I try not to ask too many questions. This meeting is an informal gathering of Linux people in the Phoenix area who enjoy alcoholic beverages.

so to give you the long and short of it... what can you get out of PLUG? I can't say you can expect much in terms of career development, to be completely frank I find a lot of the management structure to be somewhat unprofessional and counter-productive. For instance, they are a technical group and their web site is, shall we say, somewhat lacking. It has been hacked several times. It uses the default Drupal template. Without getting too much into their management problems, I don't see a lack of either energy or talent, but rather the ability to delegate tasks and create incentives- basic management problems. This kind of situation tends to typify technical groups like this, so I don't necessary blame them for their shortcomings. On the positive side: the people are friendly and if you're a geek, you may be able to locate some buddies to play video games with.

some pics of PLUG meetings, mainly by Alan Dayley- whose input and effort I do greatly appreciate. the photo above is by Alan Dayley (see Flickr for CC license).