Freedom of Design, Design of Freedom

Today I feel compeled to write about one of my greatest aspirations, which is to build an online community centred around Free graphic design scripting (as in, writing computer programs). Currently I manage a piece of Free Software called pLAySVG, which allows me to write computer programs that generate vector graphics images. Currently it is nothing more than a bag of code made out of the functions I have invented to allow me to do particular things with graphics scripting. So, as for my own needs as a graphics scripter, I have most of what I need covered (aside from some things like : making a path that is a circular or eliptical ark i.e. a circle from 10-230 degrees).

However, I feel as though others are not really benefiting from the Freedom of my work (software published under GPL, images licensed under Creative Commons), and that me and/or my project is not benefiting from the interest of others. I haven't heard of anyone who has used my software, never mind someone who wants to contribute to it. But then I think to myself, if I encountered my software on the web for the first time, would I try it out? Maybe... currently the release is not up-to-date, so I'd have to download it though SVN... and if you don't know what that is, you've sorta proved my point, it's not really accessible to the average Joe. I do realize that to a certain degree, only geeks would use it anyway because its a programing library (a program used in programming). However, my overarching goal for the project is to make something that would enable people to learn about geometry and programing in a creative manner. In order for me to make something that enables user to become developers.... well, I have a long way to go.

First of all, my libraries are in no way robust, they have not been thoroughly tested, and they are reliant on some other libraries that have gone defunct (PyXML). Secondly, and I would say more importantly, there is absolutely no user documentation for them. Lastly, I haven't really gone out of my way to promote pLAySVG, partly due to the challenges aforementioned, so really, I'm in no way surprised that this little project has not generated much attention.

However, my geometric art has gotten a little bit of positive light recently, a guy in a local band wants to use some for an album cover, and the deviantart community has given me some thumbs-up. I'm really not all that skilled when it comes to graphic design yet, I just have some powerful tools that allow me to do some neat conceptual things. I would love to see what someone with some programming experience and a keen eye to design could do.

Which is why I have decided to set a goal for myself to build an online community around graphics scripting. It wasn't until I saw Jon Phillips' iSummit Presentation Slides on Building Online Communities
that I thought of it in these words. I felt pretty honoured when Jon friended me on Facebook, because I've decided he's my new... hero ? ... well, I never liked that word, I'm not so into idolatry ... let's just say I aspire to his excellence in this field (check out his website to see what I mean).

The kind of online community he has built at http://www.openclipart.org is very similar to a component of what would be the "pLAySVG community": a ccHost site that would allow users to publish SVG files (and the scripts that made them) under any CC license (OpenClipart is all public domain). It would serve as a remix community for graphic designers. Frankly, I think many artforms could use a ccMixter-like site, video has some already, but I've never heard a ccHost site for something like poetry and song.... I digress.

Warning: geekery inside
More central to the pLAySVG community is the software product itself. I have been dragging my heals on changing PyXML functionality to lxml, which shouldn't be to tricky. I found out about this mess because the Inkscape developer who was central to building a python extensions architecture went throught the same ordeal of having to change over.

I have used my software to build extensions and I would like other to be able to as well, so it's important I stay in sync with Inkscape. I would like to help make the functionality available to Inkscape extensions developers be more centralized because I find that there's some useful stuff in extensions that I would like pLAySVG programmers and other extensions developers to be able to use more readily. From what I understand, the Inkscape developers community also needs a repository for extensions so that people who want to develop extensions can simply submit them to a website. That way not all extensions have to be included with the releases of Inscape... but that's a bit of a different story.

Another thing that's going on with Inkscape is that they're centralizing all of their geometric functionality inot a separate library called lib2Geom. Because there are some really smart people doing some really difficult things for this project, I would like to just use this functionality rather than my own geometric libraries. Already the developers are working on python bindings for it (the library is written in C++, which I'm not so skilled with), so it seems managable.



In the end, I think the best possible way to describe this project would be to say that it could become something like a cross-platform version of NodeBox that could be distributed as a part of Inkscape... I'm starting to feel a little too bright and warm, like my wings are going to fall off or something... I better go make some concrete plans, like: make time to align with people/organizations with similar intentions, and more importantly, find a sense of consistency with my application to this project (aside from my own play with pLAySVG). I find it's rather challenging when it's all coming from my own volition sometimes, which is why I want to partner up and/or get some funding for the project (it really bring a new level of comitment to it) but first I think I need to prove myself to be worthy of that.