When comparing Sass vs Inkscape, the Slant community recommends Sass for most people. In the question“What are the best web design tools?” Sass is ranked 3rd while Inkscape is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Sass is:
You are able to declare custom functions with Sass (for example, converting units) which can be easily invoked, even when using shorthand properties. This results in cleaner, more reusable code.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Powerful advanced function features
You are able to declare custom functions with Sass (for example, converting units) which can be easily invoked, even when using shorthand properties. This results in cleaner, more reusable code.
Pro Nested selectors
Sass allows you to nest selectors which results in code that is both faster to write and cleaner to read.
For example, this:
.parent
color: blue
.child
color: yellow
Will compile to this:
.parent {
color: blue;
}
.parent .child {
color: yellow;
}
Pro Rapid development
Another big advantage for Sass is the very active community pushing the development forward at a rapid pace. Sass is constantly coming out with bug fixes, and are often the first to come out with improvements.
This is an important factor to keep in mind when picking a preprocessor to invest your time into.
Pro Extends CSS maintaining compatibility with CSS standards specification
It comes with two possible syntaxes:
- Sass - No parens or semicolons allowed and the nesting is dictated with whitespace.
- SCSS - SCSS syntax is a superset of CSS – which means SCSS can be written as CSS, but has been expanded to include the features of Sass as well.
SCSS is easier to pick up for beginners and Sass has a cleaner syntax. Having both syntaxes means you can pick the one that best suits your coding style.
The mandatory syntax rules for both SCSS and Sass results in a more consistent code. For a more detailed analysis between Sass and SCSS go here. To see a nice comparison of the Sass syntax against CSS and SCSS go here.
Pro Output minified CSS
Sass simplifies minifying CSS files by offering a one-line command that will output a minified version.
Pro Easy to learn
It's very comfortable and easy to write/learn Sass, even for beginners.
Pro Compass framework provides added features
Sass can be used with a framework called Compass, which provides additional functions and mixins which can reduce the amount of code you have to write.
For example, Compass will take care of vendor prefixes.
This:
div {
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
}
Can be written as:
.gradient {
@include background-image(linear-gradient(#F00, #000));
}
For a full list of features, check out the Compass documentation.
Pro Source maps support
Rather than being limited to editing the outputted CSS file in devtools, with source maps you are able to manipulate the original .scss file.
Pro Libsass - C/C++ port of Sass
There is also a C/C++ port of the Sass CSS precompiler called Libsass that decouples Sass from Ruby. It is very fast, portable and easy to build and integrate with a variety of platforms and languages.
Pro New sass package means you no longer need external dependencies
The latest implementation of Sass is written in Dart, and compiles to pure JS with no native code or external dependencies, means you no longer need Ruby or libSass.
Pro Easy to use with ruby apps
Since it's written in Ruby, it's easier and faster to use with Ruby apps.
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
Files can be exported and saved 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 can do anything
A very powerful software that can do pretty match anything!
Pro Measurement Tool
This tool is extremely handy and can not be found in any other vector graphics programs out there.
Pro Live Path Effects
Extremely powerful menu that offers more than 30 powerful Live Path Effects to apply to paths vastly enhancing the application functionality.
Pro Guides, Grids, and Canvas Rotation
Extremely handy features when building complex graphics using Inkscape.
Pro Dark Theme Support
The new 1.0 beta 2 version finally got support for dark theme which normally is only available for commercial software like Affinity Serif, Adobe Illustrator.
Pro The new version 1.1 is looks and feels fantastic
Inskape got UI update: new dockable dialogs.
Pro Interface is available in 29 languages
Basque, British English, Brazilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Swedish.
Pro It's really easy and fun
Vector graphics can be created and edited with Inkscape.
Cons
Con Requires Ruby or libSass
To compile Sass, it needs either Ruby or libSass installed locally.
Con Noisy syntax
There is many unnecessary characters when using the SCSS syntax.
{}:;@
However using the Sass syntax eliminates them.
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 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 1.0 is sluggish
Inkscape 1.0 uses GTK 3 which is sluggish and slow for low spec systems( eg. ARM, Celeron, Pentium, Core-i3, Ryzen 3 or Athlon ) compared to previous versions.
Con Buggy
Application is often buggy so it happens from time to time that the popup / right-click menu won't close and stays open. It crashes also sometimes randomly. This makes it almost unusable for productive / business use.
Con Crashes very often
Inkscape encountered an internal error and will close now - is one of its standard messages.
Con Since 0.91 the gradient editor is gone
It is now only possible to edit a gradient on screen. but you can't set a stop to a specific percentage anymore.
Con Limited work with ICC CMYK color scheme
Support for ICC color profiles only in SVG files.
Con Y-axis inverted
0,0 coordinates begin in lower left corner, not upper left corner as SVG standards define in Inkscape 0.92.x.
It seems this is now fixed in the 1.0 beta 2 version of the program.
Con Uses GTK
It looks an feels like an alien. It also uses now touch-based widgets instead of professional widgets.
Con A toy for facebook-ist enthusiasts, not for professionals
It's a Linux niche mumbo-jumbo, same as GIMP for raster edit .
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 does not look as polished as its versions for Windows/Linux version for the 0.92.x version
It seems that Inkscape 1.0 beta 2 for Mac got some needed attention and it looks a lot better with dark theme support. native DMG installer and they got rid of X11 which is great.
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 No support for large printing machine system
No support for large printing machine environment, except exporting the resulting artwork to PDF.
Con Under GNU GPL
It is released under GNU GPL which one of the restricted open source license.