In reading this it would seem easy to have quick SVG editing right in a page here alongside or inside the GFUI with little or no effort by the Glowforge team. Or perhaps someone with more chops than me could make it an easy connection.
The problem with that is that its an incredibly slippery slope. Once you start adding basic editing features, everyone will be asking for just one more thing until it finally ends up trying to be illustrator. I think its wise to keep them separated.
That being said, I definitely think there are still a lot of additions that could be useful to the editor, like primitive shapes, a reflect option, an invert grayscale option, etc
Not to mention the pieces they still need to release like auto-alignment, passthrough features, organization for the files section, etc…
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The very fact that it is a complete package weighs against the slippery slope issue. It does what it does and that would be the reason for not doing more. Now if the folk here with the chops to write for special needs as with the Glowforge material manager and incorporated that data sp the material manager app would hand the GFUI the SVG all set up and we as a group provided settings that met our experience for speed, power, LPI etc it would add incredible value to having the Glowforge, even as we used another program usually for the basic work.
Edit to add: Folks here often complain about things like not locking xand y scaling or having mirroring or rearranging the layers of what cuts with what all easy with that program and so much more.
Glowforge maintains that the GFUI is not a design tool and I think rightfully so, but I also think that the SVG-edit is a middle ground between a full editor and just a line of g-code you can’t see.
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Could you make something work with an extension? One thing I imagine is that the workflow gets complicated, because you’d have to reparse the whole SVG (potentially) and then re-render. Fitting that into the gfui without going back to the upload page might lead to unexpected results.
lots of things are possible, but that doesn’t always mean they’re a good idea.
there are sooooo many things that need to happen with the GFUI that would be miles ahead of even considering this. there are lots of options available for editing SVGs, i don’t see a compelling reason to cobble SVG editing into the GFUI. maybe way down the line when we have all of the things GF originally promised, plus so many of the other things people have brought up since that can’t easily be fulfilled by outside programs that already do those things.
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I’m very much an adherent to the Unix philosophy. Have the tool do what it does, and do that very well, but no more. I can flip, mirror, invert etc. in inkscape. In fact, I don’t even use the file management functionality - I have a file system with subdirectories, tags and everything else I need to organise files. Usually, when I want to burn something again, it’s quicker to upload it again than to look for it in the pile of stuff on the GFUI… Although a “delete all” button would be handy 
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I’d just be happy with DXF support.
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Ability to scale each axis and flip would be sufficient. Possibly basic lines/shapes and direct text entry. No need for anything else.
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Probably not that hard. Inventables did it years ago with Easel. I suppose it’s possible they have vastly more resources at their disposal than Glowforge, but I don’t think that’s the issue here.
[edit] Oh, I didn’t realize you were talking about integrating a specific open-source project into the GFUI. That seems harder to me than doing it from scratch.
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At the simplest it would just be a page on the server with everything else already done and setup. A feed back and forth to the GFUI would be useful and I do not think very hard or hooking in any requirement that the entire GFUI be included as open source as it would pretty much stand on its own.
The analog would be more like Irfanview, stand alone, ease, and quick doing simple stuff. If it did a few things not needed, it remains a finished, drop in, web page needing almost no extra effort.
My car has a stealth mode switch that turns the gas engine off and just leaves the electric motor engaged so I can sneak home late at night without waking my wife. (Honest, it’s a feature and actually described just that way in the owner manual.)
But then my Pro cost me only 1/20th of what the car did so I guess I’ll never see a feature that lets me make the GF quieter 
Inkscape is free, amazing how many design tools are in there. The Shopbot cost twice what the GF did and has zero design tools in its CAM software.
It’s not about what can be done, it’s about what a product designer decides should be done that determines what the product is. The can list always exceeds the designer’s should list for any product. If you come to terms with that it’s less frustrating (the worst thing about being in Product Dev myself is how often I see the flaws in everything around me 
I don’t recall the last time I saw anything that was properly made or designed where it wasn’t obvious how it could have been improved) - gotta just let it go.
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and, as i mentioned above, is this really more important than so many other things that the GFUI still needs to accomplish? SVG editing can be done easily in scads of different design programs (and more efficiently). would it be nice to have some basic stuff in there? yeah. but i’d far rather see things like saving custom material settings, folder organization, etc. things that can’t really be done as easily outside the GFUI.
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Just thinking about what I would like added to the GFUI - and it really boils down to one thing and one thing only: An API. This would allow me (or somebody with more coding prowess) to write an interface for inkscape… Imagine how nice it would be to set zips/pews/lpi etc. directly per shape in Inkscape, download the bed image as a background, and just hit the “Send to GF”-button when you’re done… The same could be done for Illustrator, Affinity designer - well, any vector design software that allows extensions… Not holding my breath on that one though - seeing that introducing metric took 1.5ish years, that feature will probably be ready right around November 2259.
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yes. this makes sense. i’d still like them to take care of a couple of promised things first, but this makes even more sense to me than asking GF to code more features in beyond the basics (and i consider saving custom settings and some file structure basic). let the third-party people spend the time/effort with a proper API.
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