[OS X TeX] Another vector drawing program: Inform

[Alain Schremmer]

musa furber wrote:

> Has anyone given Inform a spin? It's a vector drawing program similar 
> to Ingalio, though with a few less export options (like no SVG).
>
> Link:
> <http://www.tribarsw.net/inform/>
>
I just took a quick glance.

While the Disclaimer at the bottom of the Inform versus Intaglio 
comparison says "These categories are obviously picked to make Inform 
look good, …", the fact that they say that Inform is Cocoa and Intaglio 
is not seems strange to me as Inform looks indeed /very/ similar to 
Intaglio. Also, Intaglio's Bezier editing seems to me complete enough 
but I haven't checked what Inform does that Intaglio doesn't.

They also say "Create floor layouts and plans, …" which, in my other 
life, I would like very much but seems a bit of hype here as I do not 
see any of the standard tools for that. Like, to draw two walls, draw 
two rectangles and use a special tool for removing the unwanted pieces 
of the rectangles at the intersection.

In fact, Inform appears to be in general much less mature than Intaglio 
even with features such as CMYK Preview.

For instance, and most important to me, though:

-- Intaglio comes with many scripts of which I am using a lot: Convert 
to superscripts, Convert to subscripts and Rescaling arrowheads.

-- The main problem Inform would have for me is due to my workflow: I 
make a graphics, then click Save As, enter the file name, say, RatFun1 
and the folder, say, Graphics, then hit Save A Copy As and Intaglio 
automatically saves the copy as cropped pdf, with the same name, but in 
the folder Figures.
(Under a GPL, the Intaglio graphic file is used for editing and the 
corresponding pdf file is for \includegraphics. For the time being, I am 
not using SVG but will when I upload the book .)

So, yes, Inform looks nice but I really don't see that it has any 
advantage over Intaglio and, in any case, at this point, I couldn't use it.

Hope this helps.
--schremmer
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