When comparing Inkscape vs PDFescape, the Slant community recommends Inkscape for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF editors?” Inkscape is ranked 6th while PDFescape is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Inkscape is:
Inkscape is GPL-licensed and maintains public repositories.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Inkscape is GPL-licensed and maintains public repositories.
Pro Opens lots of file types
Inkscape supports many common formats for import (including SVG, Photoshop and Illustrator) and its plugin architecture allows more to be added.
Pro Export to different file types
You can export and save your files for example as a "normal" svg, png, jpg, bmp etc. file.
Pro Cross-platform
Pre-built binaries are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Inkscape can be built from source on additional platforms.
Pro Integrates well into a X11-System
Its uses the X11 icon theme and desktop theme(GTK).
Pro It's really easy and fun
You can edit and create vector graphics with Inkscape.
Pro Easy, fast, and free
Very easy to use, with a simple interface.
Pro Fully usable before upgrading (upgrade has desktop version)
A lot of editing can be done on the free account, but you can upgrade to more features.
Pro Available online and works on all popular browsers
PDFescape is available online and works on Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Chrome, Opera 9.5+.
Cons
Con Very slow startup on some systems
Depending on factors like how many fonts you have installed, Inkscape can take upwards of 30 seconds to launch.
Con Unstable
Sometimes it just crashes without any reason, so it's not really usable as professional application.
Con Uses its own SVG-format by default
Inkscape might use SVG as its default format, however this SVG's contains some additional SodiPodi/Inkscape additions that can be troublesome if you want to import the SVG into some other application.
Con Based on the GTK widget toolkit
Software is based on GTK, so it might not integrate well in non-GTK environments. It also requires many dependencies on those non-GTK desktops. It also adds dependencies to GTK-environments since it is written in C++ which requires the gtkmm wrapper/interface
Con Mac version is in worse shape than Windows/Linux version
Con Incompatible with previous versions
Sometimes backward compatibility breaks. For example, pre 0.92 SVGs are incompatible with later releases (due different default resolutions).
Con Limited work with ICC CMYK color scheme
Support for ICC color profiles only in SVG files.
Con No support for large printing machine system
No support for large printing machine environment, except exporting the resulting artwork to PDF.
Con Y-axis inverted
0,0 coordinates begin in lower left corner, not upper left corner as SVG standards define.
Con Has ads
Displays advertisements (in a sidebar on the right - no popups etc).