Hugh,
First off, I have to thank you for the many chances you give me to
respond to your concerns.
You are right, ivtools has the jaggies, both in software and web
pages. I've actually made plans to augment current capability with
some of the things customers of Adobe have come to expect, and have
made some headway in alpha-transparency, but to clone the
computerized air-brushing tools used by the graphic artist has never
been the goal of the project.
Instead it is a layered application framework for developing custom
graphical environments, with both direct-manipulation and textual
user interfaces (scripting). The drawing editors are an
advertisement for the deeper capabilities of the toolkit, and happen
to be useful in their own right (hint -- render idraw PostScript
using GhostScript at 2x to a netpbm format, then use pnmsmooth to
reduce to size -- voila -- anti-aliasing).
I am sorry you lost your class prep time attempting to build this
software. If you had told me of your particular Linux environment I
would have advised you to invest in installing FreeBSD or Debian
instead, environments where a binary copy of ivtools is available
with ease (only half-joking :}).
As for fundamental economics, I think we're even -- you got what you
paid for and I got free advice for what it's worth. Have a happier
time with the next bit of free software you pick up :-)
Scott Johnston
http://www.ivtools.org
http://vectorgraphics.foundries.sourceforge.net
http://www.advogato.org/person/sej
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> For now the ivtool's package has forfeited what I was willing to pay
>this week in "opportunity cost" (look it up). While the ivtools folks
>seem like they "get it", it's a "get it" from over a decade ago where
>just installing a 'free' software package is supposed to cost the end
>user a day.
>
> Maybe it's like climbing up the mountain to visit the Guru, it
>proves one is worthy.
>
> To Hell with that.
>
> I have serious work to do and ivtools in it's current state is just
>a distraction and was waste of my (precious) time this week.
>
> Note that I have said NOTHING about the tools them selves, they
>might be better then sliced bread, but if I loose all my class prep
>time to _just_ installing the dam stuff the cost is WAY too high.
>
> I am lead to think that if the install is such a total disaster that
>the rest can't be much better. The graphics on the web page also hint
>at a package out of the early days of computer graphics, ugly fonts,
>lots of jaggies, with glyphs, text and container boxes all
>overlapping.
>
> This is why folks us MS-shit and we in the Free & Open source
>community's are just ignored, or maybe laughed at most of the time.
>
> Scott and co, please LEARN this fundamental economics lesson. You
>have gotten quit a recommendation from Mr. Denker and it's sad to see
>that "reputation capital" squandered on stuff that can be fixed with a
>bit of elbow grease.
>
> I gotta go back to emacs outline mode an forget about doing graphs
>for my class, or boot MS-joy...
>
> ||ugh Daniel
> hugh_at_freeswan.org
>
> Systems Testing & Project mis-Management
> The Linux FreeS/WAN Project
> http://www.freeswan.org
>
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