[HN Gopher] Penpot Alpha Release - Free and Open-Source Design P...
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       Penpot Alpha Release - Free and Open-Source Design Plattform
        
       Author : stephdin
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2021-02-02 12:35 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (penpot.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (penpot.app)
        
       | gggtt wrote:
       | Really cool. I think using standard JS or TS with a standard UI
       | framework (like Vue, React, Svelte, etc.) would have attracted
       | more contributors than Clojure.
       | 
       | But otherwise , I'm really looking forward that project !
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | I hear you! The thing is that sometimes (only sometimes) you do
         | need to use the best technology for a project. In this case,
         | Penpot's very own nature demands technology that is super-
         | performant manipulating zillions of vectors and mathematical
         | objects. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with standard JS
         | or TS but to reach this status in 1 year we needed to go for
         | this route. Anyway, we have plans for a more straightforward
         | plugin contribution architecture so that shouldn't be a
         | problem, but the "core core", yeah, it was our choice, same
         | with SVG, a tough choice but it was worth the challenge.
         | Thanks!!!
        
           | gggtt wrote:
           | That seems totally fair, thanks for your response. If the
           | core is powerful thx to the choice of tech while plugins can
           | be contributed easily then it sounds like a great plan !
        
       | diacritica wrote:
       | We're presenting Penpot at FOSDEM (online) this Sunday in case
       | anyone wants to know more about the project:
       | https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/penpot_design_freedom...
        
       | imsky wrote:
       | I've been working on a similar project - open source interface
       | design tool with SVG as document format. Glad to see others think
       | it's a good idea, too.
       | 
       | There's an impressive amount of functionality just in the alpha
       | release. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves!
        
       | diacritica wrote:
       | Heh, once again, hackernews makes a difference. Thank you guys!
       | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtQIzT9XIAA5DRJ?format=jpg&name=...
        
       | ashneo76 wrote:
       | I will gladly pay for this as a hosted service. This is amazing!
        
       | eposner wrote:
       | awesome
        
       | rglullis wrote:
       | From the same developers of Taiga, which IMHO is a criminally
       | underrated open source alternative for Agile Development
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | Hey taiga lover, I feel you :) Today we released Taiga6 BTW
         | (https://blog.taiga.io/taiga6-release.html), but we didn't want
         | to steal penpot's thunder. We think Taiga6 will make things
         | right. Anyway, Penpot is just so amazing! It should have
         | existed 10 years ago, oh well, here it is
        
       | simulo wrote:
       | I think it is hard to overstate how impressive this is. While it
       | aims to be well integrated in tech workflows, it is a product
       | that allows designers to work well, with a nice, usable and
       | useful UI.
       | 
       | For the few designers in open source, designing with open source
       | software is often a love/hate activity: We want to use and
       | support open software, but it often is painful to use, lacks
       | features relevant for design activities (which, yes, can mean:
       | Being similar to industry standard products) while at the same
       | time being overflowing with settings.
       | 
       | Trying penpot makes me look forward to a product with a clear
       | vision and great utility.
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | wow... I just screenshot this and shared it with the Penpot
         | team. No need for comment, really. You got it. Thank you.
        
       | redindian75 wrote:
       | As a regular user of Figma, I am blow away. I did a quick mockup,
       | and it runs as well as figma on my browser. Silky smooth
       | zooms,pans etc.
       | 
       | I briefly played with components, pasted screenshots, and drew
       | rectangles & shapes (80% of UI design is drawing rectangles :-).
       | Yet to play with Prototypes.
       | 
       | Kudos to the team... extremely impressive alpha.
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | Yeah, that's one of reasons we went for clojure and
         | clojurescript, to get that smoothness and performance. I'll
         | send those amazing kudos to the team in 3, 2, 1... :)
        
       | thecupisblue wrote:
       | Wow! I'm quite impressed!
       | 
       | An open source sketch-like app with the collaborative aspects of
       | figma? Multiple shadow layers? all of the google fonts already
       | there? Wow! Sign me up! I figure if it came in the desktop
       | version it would eat up a quite bit of sketch/figma market.
       | 
       | Stuff I seem to be missing at first:
       | 
       | 1. Double click to go to Component definition
       | 
       | 2. Resize/collapse sidebars
       | 
       | 3. I get an internal error on shift+click in the Pages sidebar
       | 
       | 4. Gets quite stuttery in large document, but well, first
       | version, what can you do.
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | Wow, thats great feedback, let me write all that down! I'll
         | tell you this already, desktop version is on the roadmap, we
         | will probably produce an electron-based "native" app that can
         | "install". We kind of like the idea of having the best of both
         | worlds. That's also the beauty of open source, what's the risk
         | really? Feel free to go to https://github.com/penpot/penpot and
         | elaborate on those topics! Thank you!
        
       | donclark wrote:
       | Looks neat! Will it be cable of importing and exporting in
       | various formats? Figma, XD, Sketch, etc?
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | Yes, proprietary format import/export is on our roadmap. We
         | have given priority to the feel-at-home experience rather than
         | going for format compatibility. Also SVG posed many challenges.
         | But yeah, I think we'd start with Figma, since it was the team
         | knows best
        
       | steveharman wrote:
       | I'd love to see this succeed, but while Figma is pretty much free
       | for most cases.... ?
        
         | diacritica wrote:
         | Yeah, if you are a freelancer and don't interact much with tech
         | teams, I'd say yes. But Penpot is open source, SVG based, you
         | can go cloud or on premise, meant to engage with devs also. I
         | think we've got a different approach here. But yeah, it's quite
         | a challenge. So what :)
        
           | raun1 wrote:
           | I just got a Figma Educational license two days ago. I'm
           | likely going to just work with Penpot, instead. I'm so glad
           | to see you guys here. It's certainly worth the development,
           | considering how quickly prices raise at Figma when working
           | with teams.
        
             | diacritica wrote:
             | That's the thing with proprietary tools. You're always
             | always trapped. To be completely honest, when we were
             | considering Penpot's huge roadmap we told ourselves "even
             | if it's just the tool for education, universities, etc,
             | that'll be fine". It turned out to be much more than that,
             | but I see where you're coming from. And hey, if you'd like
             | to fiddle with the code yourself or install it locally...
             | be my guest.
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-02 23:01 UTC)