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GOAL.md

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Goal

Workflow is intended for everything related to 2d vector graphics.

The target is users as well as artists/software developers who want to tweak and extend their tools and have the source code as well as the created artwork available in an open non-proprietary format.

The name Workflow was choosen to indicate a tool which can be adjusted to the user's workflow.

Vector Graphics (In Development)

Providing decent vector graphics support

  • basic shapes like rectangle, circle, ...
  • text
  • bezier paths
  • freehand
  • boolean operations
  • flood fill
  • bitmap images
  • transformations (perspective, etc.)

Note: Last time I looked at Inkscape, their algorithms leave something to wish for, eg.

  • Inkscape's flood fill converts the image to a bitmap, fills that and converts the result back to a vector graphic. the result depends on the current zoom level.
  • Inkscape's ink tool doesn't use all the pen's data (pressure, rotation) to emulate the nib.

Manga/Comic (Planned)

I've been a user of Manga Studio/Cell Studio Paint and one of the biggest drawbacks for me was it's inability to export vector graphics. Hence the plan is to support the following features in Workflow:

  • Screentones
  • Panels
  • Rulers
  • Speech Bubbles
  • Pages
  • Page Templates

Software Development (Planned)

I'm a software developer and most of the time the diagrams I draw are done as ASCII art because it is easy to create and share.

Hence the plan is to add support for various UML Diagrams

Collaborative Real-Time (Planned)

The code currently contains a limited proof of concept. For a production ready implementation WebRTC and CRDTs will be required.

Scrum/Kanban Board (Planned)

This is the idea which got Workflow started in the first place:

Managing the software development process through Lean/Agile methodologies means to apply the same steps used in creating an algorithm to the software development process itself:

• design the algorithm (Plan)
• implement the algorithm (Do)
• test the algorithm (Check/Study)
• release the algorithm (Act/Adjust)

A tool to visualize the software development process and to give the team ownership of it's process, is the Kanban board as described in Henrik Kniberg's seminal book Lean from the Trenches.

When compared to what Kniberg did for the Swedish police, electronic kanban boards, like Jira, et al., place a lot of restrictions on what can be done to the board.

Some restrictions are owed to the hardware

  • limited screen space
  • single user interface (one mouse & one keyboard)
  • no haptic experience
  • restricted face to face communication between developers

But some might be overcome by large, high-resolution touch screens and/or by turning each developers phone/tablet into a input device.

Other restrictions are owed to the software and the organizations which run them:

  • kanban board with only columns and lanes
  • no notes, descriptions, drawings, etc. on the kanban board
  • no undo/redo
  • no collaborative real-time interaction
  • screen sharing makes it annoying to switch temporarily to another application
  • sometimes all changes to the board structure have to go through an unwilling administrator
  • sometimes management doesn't want everything to be put on the board because it might look bad to outsiders
  • no API to use custom algorithms to analyse the data
  • separate Wiki which lacks decent support for flowcharts, UML diagrams, ...
  • separate Chat (ie. Workflow could highlight/enlarge/animate the cursor of the person speaking)
  • separate Chatroom and likely not threaded like Reddit or imporant comments not markable as sticky
  • not suited for sophisticated illustrations
  • not open source, so you can not extend/change/fix it
  • etc.

Then there are also restrictions with physical boards:

  • no anonymous dot voting
  • can only be archived by taking a photo
  • etc.

Workflow aims to be a Kanban board which is not less but more than a building plastered with whiteboards.