| Comparison Of Vector Graphics Editors |
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SOME PACKAGES IN DETAIL Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard editor for professionals, and the AI file format is still the most common vector format for exchange. Illustrator is an expensive package, but it has a long history, and its deep feature set allows rapid creation of complex vector artwork. It has a steeper learning curve than competing products, but is more refined, and a much wider selection of reference materials is readily available. CorelDRAW has much in common with Adobe Illustrator, including the use of AI files. AI files created in one editor do not always work correctly in the other though, unless they are simple, with problems like incorrect text display being common. Macromedia Flash ( Adobe ) - Flash has fascile vector editing tools which are popular with designers and illustrators — most important of which are its handling of vector lines and fills as bitmap-like selectable areas, simple modification of curves, and handling of beziers (via "direct selection" tool). Flash uses Actionscript for OOP scripting, and has limited XML functionality. Exports Illustrator .ai format but does not export SVG . Macromedia FreeHand , was an Illustrator competitor before Adobe's aquisition of Macromedia. Microsoft Visio , a diagramming and vector graphics editor available only for Windows , is commonly used, especially among businesses, as Visio comes standard in some versions of Microsoft Office . The Omni Group 's OmniGraffle is a vector graphics editor available only for Macintosh . It is much easier to use than the more expensive Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and FreeHand, and is principally used for creating flow charts and other diagrams. OmniGraffle imports and exports Visio files, SVG files, and PDF files, among other formats. Inkscape , a free open-source editor, uses a version of SVG as its native format. Currently Inkscape cannot import or export Adobe Illustrator files. Loading is impressively quick. Some find that the layout of controls and easy-to-use Bezier curves make Inkscape a delight to use. OpenOffice.org Draw is part of the open source Office suite OpenOffice.org - as its drawing component tool and a vector graphics editor. It can support many import and export file formats but with some functional problems currently. The PNG and GIF bit-map outputs do not appear to be 'antialiased' and look pixelated (though taking the SVG into Inkscape for output provides a workaround). The grid is fixed in size, and editing is less flexible than Inkscape in many ways. Loading time is long, partly because the whole package has to be loaded: there is no option to load just the Draw component. PNG files from Draw do work in Microsoft Word, but lack antialiasing—currently neither open-source package works well for Word documents. The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of Vector Graphics Editor s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is neither all-inclusive nor necessarily up-to-date. GENERAL INFORMATION This table gives basic general information about the different vector graphics editors: OPERATING SYSTEM SUPPORT This table lists the Operating System s that different editors can run on without emulation: "Unix" includes the similar Linux , BSD and Unix-like Operating Systems . BASIC FEATURES VECTOR FILE FORMATS: IMPORT VECTOR FILE FORMATS: EXPORT SEE ALSO
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