I’ve never had to do any illustration work, so I never tried inkscape, even though it’s been around for quite some time.

Today, I decided that I should make my flowchart in svg. It’s pretty easy to view and supposed to be supported by most browsers. Inkscape seemed the logical choice for doing svg images… even though I’ve never really used it, or any alternatives.

My first impression was: wow someone actually thought about the users. Everything in inkscape is accessible via keyboard shortcuts… well, everything I tried to use so far.

This is not rocket science. The whole click-click usability is rather slow… programs should have keyboard/mouse shortcuts for everything. :) Well incscape does this well:

  • # enables the grid and grid snappping
  • | enables the guides and guide snappping

And here are the really cool ones…

  • s selects the select tool
  • r selects the rectangle tool
  • t selects the text tool

These are just a few examples, there are other really cool things besides the keyboard shortcuts. This means that the program is really newcomer friendly and I will come back and use it again.

I was in such a good mood as I was using it I didn’t even notice that last.fm played Mandy Moore and forgot to skip it :D.

… back to work …