Improved Media Management

Overview

This set of issues generally is first seen due to problems managing linked vs. embedded images. However it quickly becomes clear that the underlying principals and problems extend across the board to many things including CSS files, ICC profile files, etc.

Issues

• Pasting writes a PNG file with a bogus name into the directory of the document and creates a link; this prevents pasting into a document opened from a read-only folder and causes broken links when the file is sent to somebody else

Use Cases

• Arthur wants to create a collage using some bitmaps. He drags 2 images from Firefox into an SVG document, pastes a third one from GIMP and imports 4 other from his photo folder. He saves the document and sends the SVG using e-mail to a friend. He doesn't know much about links, so he does not include the original images in his e-mail.

• Issa works on a multi-user system at an university. She opens a scientific poster template from a shared read-only folder. She pastes photos of samples into the document, then saves the poster in her home folder.

• Charlie uses Inkscape to add vector frames to his photos. He wants to be able to post-process the images without updating the SVG document. He creates an image link.

• Sara is a web designer and has SVG documents with lots of absolute image links. She moves all the images to another folder. The links break, which is not surprising to her. She wants to fix all the links at once.

• Billy wants to edit an image embedded in the SVG document he received from Arthur.

Proposals

• Default to embedding images when pasting and DnDing pixel data
• When DnDing a file, ask whether to embed or to link
• Add a link option to the import dialog that defaults to off