Oh my goodness, the export settings… everything about this app… so minimalist, so beautiful… this should be in case studies for free/open usability.
And those little touches… notice how the curve that the selected Bézier control point is affecting is highlighted in purple. And you can simply pull along there to shape the curve instead of manipulating the control point handles.
Just beautiful.
And, finally (there’s so much more but I’ll stop raving now and get back to work), the web-related features, like a built-in accessibility and scripting panel and access to the SVG source, styling, etc.
If you’re creating illustrations for the web (or, heck, in general) and you’re not using this absolute gem of an app, you’re missing out :)
Correction: the app itself doesn’t appear to be free/open (which is fine, it’s still an indie app and that definitely counts) although the interface library and some other components appear to be.
I also just wrote an email to the author to both praise him for making what is one of the most gorgeous apps I’ve seen in a long while and to ask what his plans are for the future.
I‘d love to see, for example, some EU funding being used to contribute this to the commons.
Ah, so the business model is that the app is sold on the Mac App Store and it’s free everywhere else. I’m totally cool with this.
Could still be open sourced under AGPL (like Better was) but I’m more than happy to see an indie developer making a living from an excellent app they’ve made.
@aral
Alas, we can't use anything but open/commons software. We work in collaborative networks where everybody needs to be able to use all of the software (if they want) or it will hurt the network.
@bhaugen I don’t understand… it’s free on free/open systems. So if you cannot use anything but open/commons software, you should be fine as everyone should be running Linux or some other free/open OS where they can use it for free. If someone is running macOS, which is where they have to pay for it, they’ve already violated your pledge to not use anything but open/commons software.
@aral Thanks, sorry I misunderstood myself. If it's free on Linux. that's good. Better would be open to modification and extension. I'll keep looking and see if I can figure that out...
@aral Just discovered this little gem yesterday (and, consequently, did a search here on Mastodon that led me to your post) - how is it this difficult to find an app like this, when the "total addressable market" is basically everybody who has a computer, and isn't a professional graphics artist...?
@aral Robin Hood/20, awesome !
@aral It's a bit more discriminatory. If you open the page with Safari, the only option is to buy the app. No editor. If you open the page with Chrome, it shows. That's kinda harsh, IMHO. Browser is browser. A website shouldn't reduce functionality just to sell the app. IMHO.
@jwildeboer @aral for me, opening with Safari shows me a message saying “to use the web app, open this page with [list of chrome based browsers]”.
Might just be a compatibility thing, since Safari and Firefox are just about the only browsers left that use a different engine.