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You get "Word Art" with inkscape.

Although it is 2017, and LibreOffice requires an external editor to launch. There's no excuse why we can't embed Inkscape, Dia, Xmind, etc. directly into LibreOffice when the user adds a file of that type to the document..

-dk

I'll be the first to say that there's really no good equivalent for some applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. For those you'll need a Windows box. However, the vast majority of people don't those applications.

You can always find alternatives to most computer applications and in many cases, the alternative while not being feature to feature identical are good enough for most people and in the case of Linux are usually free and well maintained.

For "Photoshop" the Gimp is pretty much identical and for "Illustraltor" you could use Inkscape . Of course, you will always get people who say "But it is not the same as [name your Windows-centric product here]" then it becomes rather pointless even attempting to point out the alternatives.

LOL! You should typeset it. The Gimp works really well [ ... ]

I'm more of an Inkscape guy...

100% agree!

If businesses were smart they all would chip in $10 say towards LibreOffice, Inkscape, Krita, FreeNAS, GimpShop, etc.

They could be free of the tyranny of proprietary vendor-lock file formats for once and for all. But yet they would rather pay to suffer ! **shrugs**

Could you image how much development could get done if open source alternatives to X could get funding!? Not say money is a silver bullet TM but it certainly would go a long way!

Eh what? I'm using "commercial quality Open Source products" all the time. GIMP, Inkscape, Eclipse, Fedora Linux, Apache, Archiva, Maven, gcc, VLC, LibreOffice, XBMC, ArgoUML, Avidemux, Latex, Kile, KDE, Amarok, (that was a very short list of a much bigger list of software that I think are "commercial quality" and I'm using every day). The documentation is also very well.

"it's even rarer that you see actual documentation apart from "read the source" Eh what again? For example: Fedora Docu, GIMP Docu, Maven Docu, Inkscape Docu. "read the source" my ass.

What have the development method (open source) to do with quality anyway? I think you wanted to say: " It's rare that you see commercial quality hobby and in free time developed products".

The market has clearly failed to self-regulate and as a result, deserves government intervention.

The market has not failed to regulate Adobe

I once tried Inkscape and realized in disgust that the "manual" was a wiki.

Yes. I hate when errors in the documentation can be fixed easily, and you can deviate from an approach where the documentation and development process happen concurrently in realtime, if you so choose. In other words, they don't really enforce a particular process on you. You get to choose. I hate that. I really hate that wikis let you mix links to external references including source repositories, right in with the content. How will I keep my typing skills and window manipulation chops up??!!!

"When I was working in aerospace, we would often write the manual first, then implement"

Did it ever occur to you that you can still do that very thing, but introduce the ability to track revision changes as you do the design, as well as changes made after design release, and separate them from each other during analysis to see how well the design process maps to the implementation process, for example? You can even continue to do it imposing upon yourselves every single limitation that a word processor imposes if you so desire. Just make your whole wiki a single page, or have them correspond to book pages. Never mind. I just realized that won't work. You'd still get extra benefits for nothing. You'd still have immediately linked tables of context and the ability to traverse the content via hyperlinks :-(

You don't understand that Wikis are just a way of capturing, editing, and presenting documentation, but with many added benefits including the ability to revision control every change, which is always owned by some user thereby enabling accountability. Not every wiki is set up as like wikipedia. For example, you cannot make changes without logging in on the Inkscape wiki.

then solution = buy the new version.

Adobe's fix? You need to pay to upgrade to Photoshop CS6.

A reasonable fix? Get GIMP.

Combine it with Inkscape for your vector needs.

You are welcome to try and convince me as to why I should ever go for the Adobe options.

Inkscape my friend, Inkscape. Raster image editing is always my last resort.

http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:welcome

"[...] not organized as a slideshow, but rather as a poster where the content of your presentation can be freely laid out [...] series of translations, zooms and rotations [...]"

It's GPL 3.0 software and it's an extension for Inkscape.

the very thing the 'rounded-rectangle patent' case is all about.

First off it's a design patent big difference from patent in the standard sense. Secondly, there so much prior art to rounded rectangle this patent has no choice but to be nuked. I have in my hands right now a cell phone circa 2003 that is rounded rectangular with just a screen and a slide out keyboard. Oh look, I also have here in my collection an LG Chocolate circa 2006. It's quite rounded rectangular. Oh look here is a credit card, it too is round rectangular. Oh look the formula for the area of a rounded rectangle is A = a * b + 2 * r *(a + b) + pi * r^2; I know this because here in this math book copyright 1976 is a rounded rectangle.

Apple wouldn't be the first to have a patent tossed out of court, because the notion of patenting a shape is ridiculous. Can we please move past the rounded rectangle? Apple wasn't the first to use the shape. Hell they weren't even the first to use the shape for a phone Hell phones weren't even the first ones to use it in electronic devices.

actually maybe you have and you just thought it was a Tab.

All you fancy whipper snappers and your phablets. You know how much I love plopping down $500 - $600 on a device and can't even compile a C program in a reasonable amount of time, on it. No you both have it wrong. Both iPhone and Samsung Galaxy Tab suck. I can buy a $500 laptop that smokes anything your phablets can do, hell smokes anything they can do and brews tea for me while playing a soothing classical waltz, tells me the weather in three different locations while typing a document, and compiling a kernel whist I sip said tea. Hell, can you even do SVG artwork on one of these damn things? Oh look I can for only $8.99 Oh look, I can do it on my $500 laptop for free.

Stupid phablets, stupid fanbois, mumble mumble, get off my damn lawn!

For *nix, try: Impress!ve

Works on any deck of pdf / image files in a directory that you throw at it. Uses OpenGL effects... effectively! Not just as useless eye-candy (though the transitions available are posh), but to help visualize, highlight, and zoom into parts of your presentation as you go.

It won't actually help you create content, though. You'll still need some tools for that. Open/LibreOffice is still kinda squishy, but works (though still too PPT-like). Inkscape is worth the time investment for learning to create reasonably involved diagrams... I've more or less switched to it from xfig and Dia.

This. Of course, they're be the usual whining about how Gimp is supposedly unintuitive (i.e., it's not set up exactly like Photoshop), or how it doesn't support color separation for print (even though most people are just using it for web graphics).

And Inkspace gets better with each version, it's already much more usable (I think) than Gimp.

If you're a small company, just starting out, and you're not locked into Photoshop for some reason, there's no reason to start producing files in that format. If you're starting up a web-based company, and need to produce some graphics for your website, just create it in Inkscape.

Gimp is shit. You should be slapped in your face for recommending it. It is the worst graphics program ever made.

This. Of course, they're be the usual whining about how Gimp is supposedly unintuitive (i.e., it's not set up exactly like Photoshop), or how it doesn't support color separation for print (even though most people are just using it for web graphics).

And Inkspace gets better with each version, it's already much more usable (I think) than Gimp.

If you're a small company, just starting out, and you're not locked into Photoshop for some reason, there's no reason to start producing files in that format. If you're starting up a web-based company, and need to produce some graphics for your website, just create it in Inkscape.

God, I hope so.

Maybe if we're REALLY REALLY lucky they could talk to the guys from Scribus and Inkscape and do something really cool together. LibreOffice has the mass, Scribus & Inkscape have the game. It could be a win-win for all.

Kind of like using a fork to eat tomato soup, isn't it? I mean, you can do it but you'll really annoy yourself. Vector-graphics programs have so many advantages over raster-graphics programs for drawing it's almost ridiculous.

In the commercial space, there's Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. In the free space, there's Inkscape — a software package I like a lot.

For this purpose -- vector animation -- Flash honestly is the best thing out there and I'm not sure I want to see it go (though open standard are always good). I think people are more up in arms about Flash video in particular, which is too widespread given that it's both proprietary and a resource hog.

You definitely raise an interesting point though, and I wonder if an OSS project to do what you describe exists. Googling turns up this note on the inkscape roadmap which indicates that this is in their long term plans. Apparently another project, MadSwatter also exists, but I know nothing about it.

Given the amount of time it has taken for the Gimp to become a strong competitor to Photoshop, I do however suspect that Flash's reign in the vector-animation arena is hardly over.

Photoshop would be replaced by Acorn, which would get a bunch of resources dumped on it. Illustrator is replaced by Inkscape. Quark Xpress makes a comeback to replace InDesign. Apple iWeb, Softpress or Karelia Sandvox or someone steps up to the plate to replace Dreamweaver. Fireworks is replaced with DrawIt. And Flash is replaced by Anime Studio or something. In any case, there's a great number of companies that would be ready to jump into the fray should Adobe choose to pull out of the Mac market.

Inkscape?

Please do not suggest Gimp or PSP.

Perhaps inkscape is the GPL'd vector image editor you seek.

On topic: Everyone, please cease mentioning that Photoshop went to pot with the CS namechange, lest Adobe pulls a Comcast-esque rebranding.

Lets not forget things like Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) the whole video was made with FOSS tools. Hell, here's the list of every program/software they used:

Blender http://www.blender.org/

GIMP http://www.gimp.org/

Python http://www.python.org/

Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/

SVN http://subversion.tigris.org/ (I think thats the right link)

Ubunutu http://www.ubuntu.com/

It is possible, take a look at inkscape: http://www.inkscape.org/

Now take a look at Inkscape on Windows or OS X... shocker! It's a piece of crap!

(Mostly due to them using GTK+, which is a piece of crap. But still.)

The point here is you're not going to build-up a reputation for usability if the majority of your users see the crappy version. (Even if Inkscape is amazing in GNOME, most people are using Windows or OS X so they see the crap version.) Even worse, you're going to tell people "hey try Inkscape, it's amazing!" and they'll try the crap version, and then think you're a filthy liar.

It is possible, take a look at inkscape: http://www.inkscape.org/

Using inkscape was a great shock to me, it was usable out of the box, with 0 tutorials! A real usable open source image application. It should be the flagship of FOSS development IMHO.

It's not the single window/multi window that makes GIMP bad. It's the GIMP UI that makes GIMP bad. Every time I tried to use it it found myself fighting the UI. Not a single feature was easy to use, no single element reacts as you expect.
I only know 1 worse offender, Blender. Which just mocks you with it's UI.

What do you developers prefer as a development environment? I personally use Inkscape, an open source Vector graphics editor. What does Slashdot like to use?

WTF? It's like saying somebody should buy an F1 car just because it's fastest

I agree 100%. People should buy a machine to suit their needs. Anyone who blindly buys the fastest model available is just being egotistical and foolish.

which does not cost them their house and children

A new Mac mini goes for $599 and a MacBook is $999. This is hardly "house and children" figures. Pick a reasonable Mac then go to Dell and spec out a similar machine. The PC prices will be in a close neighborhood.

not require special fuel and can run on ordinary road

This article is not about the iPhone. It is about Apple systems running OS X that can utilize Boot Camp.

Hardly any "special fuel" required on OS X systems. Take your pick from any of the great open source apps available for the platform: Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape, Gimp, VLC, Eclipse, the list goes on. Wanna write some code? Xcode comes free with OS X. Don't wanna use Xcode, then use another IDE or directly use make, gcc, gdb, and vim.

As for your "ordinary road" comment ... I'm writing this on a four year old iMac. Over the years I've upgraded the memory (Crucial has great prices) and hard drive (1TB was only $99 at Fry's). My mouse of choice is a five button Logitech scroll mouse. I hardly feel "locked in" or "abused".

Way to go on a tangent!

Way to spread FUD. How about we just let people use the computer that best suits their needs.

Getting back on topic, I've been running Windows 7 in both Boot Camp and Parallels 5 with no problems. I don't know what the damage is with this "article".

Milestone 16 - Inkscape 0.50 - SVG Mobile Support
SVG Feature Compliance Effort: (Also see SVG Tiny Compliance)
* Multi-page
* Scripting
* Markers
o Inherit stroke properties (like color)
o On-canvas editing
o Fix snapping issue
* Real CMYK / LAB / HSB support

No, not even anywhere close to capable of what Illustrator is capable of.

A nice example from the release notes:

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes047#Initial_SVG_Fonts_support

You can design fonts within Inkscape, but using them to render text on the canvas is not yet supported.

Inkscape is fine if you don't do anything complex. Drawing basic flowcharts and simple diagrams works perfectly well.

Interoperability and actual features are another story.

Their roadmap states that the 1.0 milestone is "full SVG 1.1 support".

In theory, vector graphics is what Inkscape is for. Like GIMP, it too is free in the usual liquor and screaming ways. Like GIMP, it's pretty good for free, but not quite up to the same level of spit and polish that its closed-source commercial competitors offer. Still, it's better than nothing.

Do you suggest I do the same thing?

At my company, we downloaded all of our software for free off of the Internet. The software titles include: OpenBSD, Inkscape, Komodo, and Gimp.

I'm torn because the owner openly and brazenly brags about this.

PDFCreator is free and OSS. It can make PDFs. Most people just need to make them, not 'edit' them.

If you do need to annotate them then Xournal works fairly well. I often use it to fill out PDF rebate forms and such before printing them.

True PDF editing software is hard to come by. Inkscape can sometimes make a PDF editable but it's hit-or-miss depending on the content.

Hi,
Firstly if you're looking for opensource app replacements you can always try www.osalt.com.

Personally I'd try:
Photoshop: GIMP or GIMPShop or Krita
Illustrator: Inkscape or XaraXtreme
InDesign: scribus
Dreamweaver: KompoZer or Aptana or seamonkey or Amaya or href="http://net2.com/nvu/">NVU

I also found this website which might help: www.thefreesuite.com

Here are the relevant OSalt links:
photoshop
illustrator
indesign
dreamweaver

Inkscape not good enough for ya?!

That's true, and it's why Inkscape uses SVG to store static vector information. SVG is XML-based, making it very easy to parse (there are tons of libraries in practically every language to parse XML), and supports CSS, which is also has widespread support. The problem isn't with static graphics, it's with animations. If you want to design an interactive control to use in a browser, you'll going to need 5-times the amount of code to do so in SVG than you would in Canvas, and it'll be both slower, and supported on fewer systems.

The Canvas spec is smaller (much smaller compared to SVG), easier to implement, and is already supported on Firefox and Webkit-based browsers. This is the most practical advantage it has -- availability in the field.

Looks like the output of a bitmap tracing program. Those are designed to interpret a bitmap and generate a vector representation(typically for access to fun features like being able to arbitrarily resize, here probably just for artistic effect).

I have the impression that Adobe and others will allow you to spend real serious money on this; but if you are interested, and just want to hack around inkscape has support worth playing with.

LyX. I wrote a thesis in it and didn't have to resort to any manual interventions in the generated LaTeX. Couple it with SVG diagrams, generated by inkscape, and you have a seamless authoring system that handles both text and graphics. SVG means there is no messy task of keeping source and postscript output synchronised (just right click a diagram within LyX to edit the SVG source with inkscape). Use gnuplot to generate your (postscript) graphs and you have pretty well a complete authoring system. A few years ago, LyX and inkscape were too immature to use seriously, but they have matured. I recommend the combination.

Sometimes it really sucks you can't contribute to a discussion and mod it. I reached your post only after posting my rants. You hit the nail on the head: People are confusing Graphic Designers with Developers. Even if canvas gave you 5 times the capabilities of Flash, it won't do the trick until there's an authoring environment -- an end-user application that's designed to be used by graphic designers. There are only so many polymaths around who can code and do visual design. Programmers write tools for, primarily, programmers. Thus the abundance of IDEs and coding tool stacks. It takes an effort, and a team of people with varied skillsets to create a software program that's meant to do, for example, animation.

I can only hope that the guys that are doing Inkscape will consider something along these lines.

*I* didn't "bash" Cairo for being too immature, the Inkscape developers did. In their Wiki. I actually had no idea that librsvg used Cairo for rendering.

But I will say that I make heavy use of SVG and many advanced features, and when an application uses Cairo (like the Gnome Image Viewer) they never render correctly.

I haven't looked at the code, but is there something that you can leverage from Inkscape?

You mean something like Inkscape? You know that SVG is supported by at least Firefox, and iirc also by other modern (non IE) browsers

Back when I did this proof-of-concept SVG game, I used Inkscape. While Inkscape is definitely coming along as a basic Illustrator alternative, it produces terrible SVG for DOM manipulation -- objects are defined with inline styles rather than attributes, and Inkscape would delete my inline JavaScript when I opened and saved the file.

Now that Safari supports full SVG and browsers are actually competing on JavaScript performance, I should really dust off that old project. Its time may have come.

See, this is where the fanboys fall down frothing at the mouth. For starters, I have to be able to use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

No, I think this is fanboyism. Though not everyone can, many people are able to use GIMP or CinePaint to replace Photoshop. Actually when I've said before that GIMP was not a drop-in replacement for Photoshop I've gotten a bunch of replies just as sarcastic as yours. I've been wanting to start a photography business and I will try CinePaint to see if it will work for me before I spend money on Photoshop. Actually I did try it on my Mac however the Mac version is not native instead it requires X11 and I wasn't able to get it to work. So I may install Ubuntu on my Mac so I can test CinePaint. For Illustrator I'll try Inkscape first. If I wanted to do desktop publishing, I have no plan to, I'd try Scribus before I got InDesign.

No it may end up I need CS4 because they won't work for me but they do work for plenty of others and I am willing to try this.

Now, I have to use those because all my peers throughout the industry are going to be using those same exact tools.

Peer pressure is no reason you have to use them. Open source software can save in the same file formats and are capable of some of the same things, even if differently, as Adobe products in many cases.

When a firm hires me to do work for them, they expect me to be able to use the defacto tools for the trade.

And you want to work for them? It shouldn't matter to clients what you use as long as you do the job in the tyme specified.

Next up, games.

I don't play games but if I ever do I can go to Yahoo! Games. I did buy some game CDs but that was before 2000.

Development. Sorry, no substitute for XCode on Linux.

I have yet to use XCode on my Mac though I do use Eclipse which is cross platform. Now if I ever try Objective-C I may try XCode but I'd rather program in C/C++. If you look at this thread I do ask another programmer about whether Objective-C is cross platform.

If I'm writing apps for OS X or the iPhone, guess what?, you need OS X and an iPhone simulator.

I don't disagree but as may be concluded from above I want to program cross platform, Linux, OS X, and Windows.

You substitute cranks are all the same. You see some one complain about Linux not having the par software, and hold up a supposed equivalent which (most of the time) not only pales in comparison, but is outright inferior to the defacto standard tool.

And fanboys are all the same, they cry an open source alternative won't work but they fail to try or to say why. If this isn't you, explain exactly why these alternatives will not work.

Falcon

I will give you that visio and photoshop is currently better than the oss solutions

That's very generous of you. Can I have Illustrator and InDesign too, if I ask really nicely?

Actually that depends on what you're doing. I don't know about Visio but photographers use both GIMP and CinePaint for photo editing. An open source program for editing vector graphics is Inkscape while Scribus is for desktop publishing.

Falcon

Because I don't assume that the needs of the users are met. I do graphics work. I've used both the open and closed ecosystems' products. The open ecosystem's products, to be pretty frank, suck.

Have you tried CinePaint? If so what was wrong with it? Then same with Inkscape and Blender? Currently I use OS X Leopard and don't have the resources to buy Photoshop CS for graphics/photography. I tried CinePaint but it only works in X Windows and I wasn't able to get it working so I'm planning to install Ubuntu, then I'll be able to use CinePaint. And the others easier.

If I can't do what I want with them I might buy an older upgradeable version of CS off of eBay. But I want to try open source apps first.

Falcon

Inkscape has PDF editing support on all platforms.

Inkscape has PDF editing support on all platforms.

I'm somewhat interested in why you'd choose to spend several hundred dollars for an application that you'd use a few hours per year when there's a somewhat equivalent FOSS program, Inkscape. The "few hours" bit suggests that you may be more willing to let slide a few of the differences, particularly if this is a program that you've only recently purchased.

Are there any features that AI has that are a "must have" for you?

If you MUST use Windows:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're partial to macs you have the same options:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):

http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/

If you MUST use Windows:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're partial to macs you have the same options:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):

http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/

version numbered software can be very good.

e.g. Inkscape, which is currently 0.46! (stable version).

It's pretty arbitrary when to go to 1.0, 2.0, etc., I would say.

Traditionally, 1.0 is the first actual release. But with open source software, a release is also pretty arbitrary.