Allowing the Icon-O-Matic format to store and show authorship, credits, license, comments, etc .

[Handmaus]

• Adding a place in the IOM format to store and show authorship, credits, license, comments, etc .

(for IOM 2.0) (...or maybe it can be implemented in the actual format without messing anything?)

The IOM files are, in a sense, the source file of the final icon, and the hvif or rdef exported files will be akin to a compiled version of that source.

A source file can be as big and full of comments and unused sections as needed, the size is only really important when you compile the resulting file.

Maybe adding an editable "source" view, in a side panel.

With interactive highlighting. Everytime you click on an element, the corresponding parts of the source gets highlighted. This will be very useful for the people that want to understand the intricacies of the format.

[Zardshard]

The current IOM save format is a binary file. Comments like you are describing would likely require turning it into a plain text format first.

Alternatively, the UI could have options to specify the license, author, publisher, date, title and so on. Inkscape gives one idea for how this could look. See File->Document Properties->Metadata in Inkscape. Also, a place to specify comments about the current shape/path/style could be added.

[pulkomandy]

Why not put these things in a README next to the iom file? That would make them more accessible. Or, you can also store them in extended attributes, which don't need to be edited from inside the app.

[Zardshard]

Both of the ways you mentioned are probably the ways to do it. That doesn't necessarily rule out having a way of editing extended attributes from the app, but... we'll probably never get around to it :P