Introduction To Inkscape And Its Future

WarriorC writes "Bryce Harrington, Inkscape's founder, wrote an article introducing his brainchild and where its development is heading (see: Illustrator-killer). Some screenshots of the latest CVS version are included." It's also a nice glimpse into an "unorganized" but nonetheless successful open source process.

Comments

Trivial?

[th1ckasabr1ck]

"...one of Inkscape's distinguishing features is that it stores its drawings in a web-friendly XML format"

Isn't that a fairly easy change to make to current open-source vector-drawing utilities? Serializing the output to XML instead of a binary format doesn't seem like the first feature you should mention when describing the advantages your program has over others... Then again, it is open source.

This bothers me

[stratjakt]

Following our policy to "Patch first, ask questions later", we integrated the new feature as soon as practical, without wasting time arguing about it on a mailing list

The patch in question, a boolean operations patch, is said to be PD in the article. But this attitude is a major landmine for GPL (or any other free license) projects.

At least Linus wants folks signing patches now. But how much damage has been done to the various Free projects we all rely on? How can anyone guarantee the pedigree of any of the code on my linux box with a "go ahead and paste it in!!" attitude?

Anyhow, I call this Kinkscape since I use KDE. You may know it as Ginkscape.

Re:This bothers me

[schemanista]

The SCO fiasco crap could have easily ended if Linus could produce some sort of audit trail, send it to SCO, and say "here's who contributed what, go take it up with the author".

Linus did say that.

"It's not our side that isn't identifying the code. We'll work damn hard to identify everything they care to name," Torvalds said. "In fact, the source control system is out there in the public, and it identifies the source and the reason for patches," mentioning the BitKeeper repository he's used for the past two years to keep track of code in the heart, or kernel, of Linux

...

No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the Linux process is already the most transparent process in the whole industry. Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the evolution and source of every single line of code out there. The only party that has had serious problems clarifying what they are talking about is SCO, and now when details start emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that they are confident that they own the collective work of Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from being the actual copyright owner of any specific section of code.

How much more of an audit trail do you want? The SCO-job was gonna happen. One way or another.

Inkscape Rocks!!!

[carlback]

I use inkscape all the time as a jump start for any svg based graphics i build.

my job right now is creating svg based graphs and data visualizations and inkscape is by far the best product I've used (illustrator, sodipodi, xmlspy and even vi) for creating the base graphic before i have to build all the data driven elements.

now just let me link in a .css or use a style block for styles and i have a 99.999% solution.

Re:What makes this a killer?

[quinto2000]

Gimp actually has a fairly closed development structure, and I don't think it would be accurate to say that they're trying to steal Photoshop's userbase. They seem to have their own goals and interests, and seem to be pretty stubborn about them (especially interface decisions).

I need it

[InternationalCow]

Apart from showing nicely how the "hive" model of software development can and *will* work (although I am not sure whether patch first, ask later is always a good idea), this development has me hoping that people who, like our group, use Illustrator and Photoshop for scientific illustrations, can finally escape vendor lock-in. For relatively simple illustrations (we always keep illustrations as simple as possible for reasons of clarity), Adobe's solutions are really overpriced. Licensing issues have us worried anyway since it is almost impossible to keep track of all the licenses we're supposed to have... Anyways: we're on a budget and are always looking to open source alternatives. We have our students on OpenOffice and lots of touching up is already done with the Gimp. If we can now do other illustrations with an open source tool that is equivalent to Illustrator, well... And we would be happy to contribute to the effort financially as long as it is cheaper than buying Adobe :)

Why SVG?

[nagora]

What is the problem with EPS? No one in OS seems to be putting any great efforts into supporting one of the most important file formats in the world. There is not a single decent EPS editing system for Linux (decent: imports and exports EPS and can cope with TrueType fonts). But SVG, there's plenty. Why? What's the advantage? Does nobody use Linux for designing logos for use in the real world?

TWW

Re:Why SVG?

[dmoore]

EPS is an output file format. It is not meant to be an intermediate file to be edited. For example, SVG keeps track of what objects are "grouped" and their relationship to each other. EPS just contains the lines, curves, characters, etc to be displayed.

The correct solution to your dilemma is to write good import and export filters for EPS into the SVG editor. Naturally, there are times when you would want to edit an EPS file, but such cases should be avoided. You almost always want to go back to the original program which created the EPS and edit in its native format. When this is impossible, you want the ability to convert EPS to SVG. That can currently be done with pstoedit, but unfortunately the SVG plugin is not free software.

Re:Why SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Illustator uses a very limited and mitilated version of Postscript as its .ai format. And because most other PS and EPS producing programs use a very limited subset of the language in very similar ways. In other words, it's pure luck. PS was good as a printer language, but the decision of Adobe to base a vector editor format on it was a disaster. The amount of stupid hacks they had to do in their AI files to keep them editable over the years boggles the mind. Note that NONE of their competitors ever used EPS or PS as native format, only for export/import. The limitations of PS held AI back for a long time; it was one of the LAST vector editors around to implement transparency, for example.

That's why PDF was a success - it was basically a codification of a very limited and therefore tractable PS subset. Everyone has moved to PDF, even the AI format in last versions is PDF based. Which is much better than PS, but still rather stupid. Note my words: Adobe itself will be moving AI towards using SVG as a native format, simply because their old format is such a huge mess by now.

Autopackage!

[arvindn]

The latest contribution that I think will have widespread and exciting ramification's was brought to Inkscape quite out of the blue by Mike Hearn. Mike's project, called AutoPackage, seeks to solve the perennial problem of easily installing software on Linux. It wrappers the underlying RPM, Debian, etc. systems with a friendly GUI front end, similar to what's used on Windows. Mike's hoping Inkscape can help be a good proof of concept for his work, and we're looking forward to gaining an extremely easy installation mechanism for non-technical users.

Mmm... I'd love it for two of my favorite open source projects to come together.

Re:I'm waiting for milestone 9, EPS, PDF export

[Cthefuture]

You don't need to wait. You can currently "export" (print) to Postscript/EPS. Convert that to PDF, and you're done.

Going the other way is what I'd really like to see. That is, import ps and PDF into Inkscape.

Oy – first the GIMP. . .

[noewun]

Now I have to sit though more crap about an "Illustrator killer". I have no love lost for Adobe, but this kind of marketing hype ends up making those who sprout it look stupid.

There is a reason Adobe owns the market for graphics applications; despite their best efforts (cf. application bloat and corporate arrogance). Photoshop and Illustrator are still the best combo out there for bitmapped/vector graphics.

The Open Source Office is here, and getting better

[SteamyMobile]

This is yet another component of the Open Source Office. Right now, OpenOffice.org and Evolution together provide a great deal of functionality, and programs like this one are going to fill in. When OpenOffice 2.0 comes out, with good KDE integration, everyone else will be trying to catch up with Linux on this. Here at SteamyMobile, we already use all Open Source office products.

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Re:Its called The GIMP 2.0

[youknowmewell]

Personally, I find the GIMP 2 UI to be easy for my uses. However, going from PS to GIMP is like going from using a calculator for dividing, to using long division. Things like an inner shadow which are simple to implement in PS take many more steps to implement in GIMP. Because it's so easy to make an inner shadow with PS it makes it easier to experiment, and it saves me time. However, I want to use a Free alternative to PS for things like web design and GIMP is that.

Re:Not that easy

[Anonymous Coward]

I find Illustrator's type options to be severely lacking. You can't even underline your text. You can adjust all sorts of crazy font parameters, but you can't fucking underline.

color models

[MenTaLguY]

Color models are going to be tricky ... SVG is currently limited to only sRGB by CSS2/3. We're trying to find clean ways to extend SVG/CSS without breaking backwards compatability (and of course we're tracking future W3C proposals along these lines).

Re:color models

[MenTaLguY]

W3C compliant, I think. We are trying to modularize the code more, though, to provide a basis for other (possibly non-SVG-based) tools (implemented by us or someone else). It might eventually mean an internal or external fork, but that's okay. People gotta do what they need.

The other thing is that once we've reached a decent level of SVG-compliance we should be in a pretty good shape to get involved with the development of the SVG spec and help nudge it in appropriate directions.

So we'll see how it works out.

Inkscape is awesome!

[ecloud]

I tried it the other day, and my first impression is man, I won't be missing Corel Draw anymore! It even has some features Corel doesn't. I liked Sodipodi somewhat before, but this is much better.

Now somebody needs to fork Dia and make it work as well as Visio.

Re:Inkscape is awesome!

[Aaton]

Dia and Xfig have some features I would love to see in Inkscape. I actually prefer Xfig over Dia for drawing layouts and wiring plans (checkout the library for some 2u machines ). Dia is better for doing UML objects and such. Then there is DiaCanvas which seems more like Inkscape.

The item I like about Xfig is I can create template objects quickly and easily and add them to it library of objects. The last time I tried to make an object for Dia I just gave up.

Now if Inkscape could export to the .xfig format and Xfig to the proper .svg format that would be great! Using both tools would save me sometime.