On Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:10:29 -0700 (PDT)
Darrell Anderson <humanreadable@...> wrote:

> > > I tinkered some more with libreoffice draw, but still
> > can't draw a line with rounded ends. I 
> > >drew a rectangle with round edges. Looked nice until I
> > realized libreoffice draw had changed 
> > >the borders from "dashed" to solid/full all around the
> > image. Not sure what is up with that. 
> > 
> > Incomplete support of the SVG standard, maybe?
> 
> I don't know. I thought about filing a bug report for that particular image, but I 
>want to know more to ensure this is not a PEBKAC issue. :-)

I think it's ignoring part of the border's style information--see below for
what I think the border actually is.
 
> > One question that comes to mind with respect to Karbon is,
> > was any of the missing functionality added in the Calligra version?
> > And if so, can any of it be backported?
> 
> I don't know but probably. For me, I don't care that we provide significant 
>attention to the koffice apps, but they should all at least be functional. I rather 
>we ripped karbon from the sources than provide crippled software that ends up 
>being embarrassing to us.

Well, we could downgrade its version to XX.0.0-alpha.  That would
permit us to continue shipping it while acknowledging that it's
problematic.
 
> > I'm tempted to file a Karbon mega-bug for milestone "Future"
> > (as in, to be tackled when/if we have enough devs that some can be spared
> > for nonessentials), with an interface mockup and a list of
> > missing functionality.
> 
> Sounds like a good idea. With a punch list in the bug tracker we know where 
>to focus. First item is add a pencil tool. :-)

Bug 1064: "Karbon functionality and UI improvements needed" filed, listing the
deficiencies that I'm aware of at this time.  I'll look at building an interface
mockup when I have more time (might be QT4, but it'll be enough to
get the idea across).
 
> I don't know how these vector drawing apps are supposed to work, but with karbon 
>I notice there is a limit to ungrouping. At that point I am clueless how to work with that 
>final "element" or whatever is the correct term. For example, in the ark image you created, 
>the outside border is actually smaller "dashes." At one point I wanted to grab only one of 
>those dashes and stretch into a longer diagonal line --- because of the rounded ends. 
>Perhaps the problem is how I think about these things because I don't use these apps.

I'm pretty sure the outside border of that particular image is a single line with a
dash style applied, not a series of shorter lines.  Extracting a single dash-bit in
Inkscape would require two non-obvious actions (Object > Stroke to Path, 
Object > Break Apart), neither of which Karbon appears to support.  (I don't 
consider that a deficiency in Karbon per se, as those are more advanced functions 
which aren't strictly necessary for a basic editor.)