[Bf-committers] Import scripts quality

[Willian Padovani Germano]

Alexander Ewering wrote:

> (...) I feel the need to express some serious concerns about the 
> quality of the bundled import scripts.

That's welcome and needed feedback, of course.  Scripts in Blender have 
been tested by their authors and other users, usually with discussions 
at elysiun's Python & Plugins forum and also by me (only to make sure 
they work, basically, actual users needing a script can test way better).

This is almost a controlled situation, because the author and forum 
participants get to know what already works and how -- the scripts work 
for them.  Surely we can't expect all Blender users to know that, so 
both we need good, structured documentation and bug reports from those 
who try the scripts in ways that the author hasn't yet or knows that are 
not supported.

Specifically about Paths Import (from JMS), not sure if that is your 
problem, a common issue is that they import "paths" only, not other SVG 
objects (it is not a standalone svg importer).  And for .ai it seems not 
all versions are supported.  The svg part was updated for inkscape 0.40, 
if that didn't work maybe you have an older version of the script in 
your .blender/scripts dir (note that dir was changed, it has subdirs 
now, scripts will fail with "Import Error" if you don't update).

But anyway, please all users report problems at the elysiun forum or 
fill a bug report with a sample file you tried to import.

===

To say what is being done:

The quality of all bundled scripts is a concern.  We need them to have 
the "boring parts" developed as well -- full documentation, proper 
warnings error msgs for all problems, bugs fixed, improvements made.  
Projects to help with this have been planned to start soon, along with 
the rest of the helper stuff authors may need: an script installer, a 
general gui script to report errors and warnings instead of using the 
console.

An specific project to make importers / exporters more robust and 
documented in detail (per script: what is supported, important details) 
is high on our TODO, but it will only work if we get reports from those 
who actually need these convertors.  Adding important missing convertors 
is also part of this project, I'll write about it soon at elysiun and 
the bf-scripts mailing list.

-- 
Willian