Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer

bulia byak writes "After several months of frantic work by the evergrowing developer community, the aptly numbered Inkscape 0.42 is out. The amount of new features in this version is astounding. Quoting from the (gigantic!) Release Notes, "while some of the new features simply fill long-standing functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary". Check out the screenshots and grab your package for Linux, Windows, or OSX." The screenshots are pretty mind-blowing; this isn't a 1.0 release, but I think you'll agree it's worth checking out.

Comments

Hmm...

[Zzyzygy]

Is it just me, or did they morph a woman holding a ferret into a classic "wardrobe malfunction" by using some cool filters?

Geez, I need to get a life.

-Scott

Re:Hmm...

[bbyakk]

Please submit your crash report:

http://inkscape.org/report_bugs.php

with as much details as possible, ideally with a backtrace.

> keyset that Adobe and Macromedia apps use?

Because there are many other nice apps that we borrow from. One is Xara X. Another is (yeah) Gimp and other Gnome apps. We can't be a monkey of a single app, and sometimes we can't be a monkey of anyone because we do some original stuff too.

> holding space should enable the panning tool

We don't have a panning tool because we have lots of other ways to scroll. The best of them are middle-drag and ctrl+arrows. Try them, you may like them better when you get used to them.

> holding alt (not shift) should make the zoom tool zoom out rather than in.

That one makese sense - alt+click is currently unused in zoom tool, so i think I'll enable it to zoom out _in addition_ to shift+click.

> Also, double-clicking on the zoom tool should revert to "standard" zoom--not open the preferences panel.

Just press '1' to get 100% zoom. And it would be horribly inconsistent to make doubleclick work different on zoom tool than on other tools.

To summarize, we welcome any feedback, and very often we honor it, but also quite often people just want us to imitate exactly their favorite app without realizing that (1) there are other vector apps which are just as worthy of imitation, (2) Inkscape's way of doing it may be actually better, or (3) we can't do that because that would break consistency of Inkscape behavior in unpleasant ways.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice marmot !

Re:Hmm...

[bn557]

WHERE IS THE MONEY LEBOWSKI. We cut off your balls lebowski. We believe in nothing lebowski.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

> especially if this seeks to be a replacement for those applications.

Inkscape is intended to be complementary to other applications, use both!

Your point about keybindings is well taken but it is difficult to support all keybindings for everything in a managable way. It should gradually become possible to have different keysets but the infrastructure required to manage this is not available yet.

Re:Hmm...

[Tom7]

Thank you for the reply!

Well, as a long time photoshop and illustrator and flash user, who welcomes free/open-source replacements, all I can say is that I'd have a better first-time experience if the basic keys were the same as the "standard" for these apps. I think that there are more of us than there are Xara X users, and nobody should ever strive to borrow from the Gimp's interface. ;)

I understand not wanting to be internally inconsistent. With regard to that, having space act like holding the middle button for panning would not seem to tread on any existing functionality, but would make it more compatible with the adobe/macromedia keys. I agree that there's no actual point to a panning tool.

Re:Hmm...

[bbyakk]

> I think that there are more of us than there are Xara X users

Sure, but Xara X users are more passionate :) I don't know of any Illustrator user who would say that Xara interface is horrible, while the reverse happens all the time. Also historically (since Sodipodi), we're closer to Corel Draw and thus to Xara than to Illustrator in many aspects, so often it's much easier to borrow Xara or Corel ideas than Adobe's.

> nobody should ever strive to borrow from the Gimp's interface.

We certainly don't borrow Gimp's most notirious UI quirks, but for small things (such as, which modifier to use with scrollwheel for zooming) we take it into account.

As for space toggling panning, as I wrote in another thread: 1) we already use space for switching to Selector and back; 2) if you like space+left drag for panning, why not use our shift+right drag for it. Keys are different but the key+mouse principle is the same.

Re:Hmm...

[Tom7]

As for space toggling panning, as I wrote in another thread: 1) we already use space for switching to Selector and back; 2) if you like space+left drag for panning, why not use our shift+right drag for it. Keys are different but the key+mouse principle is the same.

Well, I see that the difference is arbitrary, for but those of us who have been using space for this for ten years, that's like asking us to use Alt in order to create capital letters.

Re:Hmm...

[bbyakk]

Judging by user comments, we have at least that much, if not more, people coming from Corel Draw/Xara as from Illustrator (although this proportion may change in the future, of course). And the Corel/Xara people have been always using Space to switch to Selector and back, just as we do.

Nothing to see here?

[weilawei]

What was up with that?

Replacing?

[coop0030]

Obviously I didn't do too much research, but what does this program replace?

The Gimp?
Photoshop?
Fireworks?

Does anyone use this program? How does it perform compared to these other programs that do similar thiings? This is assuming that the programs listed are the ones being replaced.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freehand/Illustrator. It is a vector based program.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the above. It's vector graphics - Illustrator, FreeHand. It's about as good for vector graphics as Gimpy is for raster, although I much prefer Inkscape's interface over The Gimp's.

Re:Replacing?

[SpikyTux]

"Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG)."

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bash has a better interface than The Gimp.

Re:Replacing?

[perseguidor]

You truly haven't read a single word or viewed a single screenshot, haven't you?; Inkscape is a vector drawing/design program.

Such a low ID and whoring for replies with an early post? But perhaps I'm being too harsh : )

Re:Replacing?

[weighn]

Obviously I didn't do too much research, but what does this program replace?

I think it replaces Killustrator :)

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article implies that the SVG can be edited (is it XML?) and so you've got your wish - you can make your documents in bash by editing the SVG files directly.

Re:Replacing?

[haakondahl]

First time I've heard of it too, but it also seems to be on PageMaker's territory. Nothing wrong with PM, but I like the IS price beter.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nooooo!!!!1
The Gimp has a better interface than Photoshop, Fireworks, Corel whatchamacallit, and er...uh...Paint combined.

Re:Replacing?

[Edward Teach]

I dunno, it looks ok to me.

Re:Replacing?

[mrchaotica]

Does anyone use this program? How does it perform compared to these other programs that do similar thiings?

Well, I showed it to my girlfriend (who is an art student) and she likes it a lot. She certainly likes it much better than the Gimp, since the interface is so much better. I'm not sure if she thinks it's better than Illustrator, but it's probably at least close.

Re:Replacing?

[Raul654]

There are two kinds of graphics - raster and vector. Raster is what you see when you use photoshop/gimp/paint, where you see a 2-dimensional grid of pixels, and each pixel is shaded a certain color. In vector graphics, everything on the page is a shape with certain properties (size, rotation, transparenecy, 'etc), and those vectors are overlayed on top of each other. As someone who creates a lot of diagrams (I'm doing a PhD in engineering and I contribute to Wikipedia a lot), I can tell you that doing it is a lot quicker using vector graphics programs than raster graphics programs.

Re:Replacing?

[strider44]

If you're used to photoshop's interface then just look up GimpShop which is just a clone of photoshop's interface using Gimp. I happen to be used to Gimp's interface more now so I'll stick to how it is right now.

Re:Replacing?

[jonored]

Actually... yes. it's XML. Looks vaguely familiar if you've poked at postscript (which is also human-writeable - and a complete programming language for a printer-type device. Heard tale of a raytracer implemented in postscript... having poked at the language, I quite believe it, too.) - I think I might just use SVG now :) But much more convenient to run perl or vim than bash... bash is for calling other programs to do your work for you :)

Re:Replacing?

[binarybum]

well, if too much research means reading the first few words of the first sentence linked to the first mention of the program in the post - then yes, I am going to go ahead and verify that you first clause is bang on.

lucky for you, it appears that not many mods did their "research" either.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you what it replaces if you tell me what replaced your brain.

(RTFA and web site, you lazy fucking karma whoring bastard)

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have some fascination with poking... maybe you should see someone about that.

Re:Replacing?

[calculadoru]

Bash has a better interface than The Gimp. ...and Microsoft Bob is a better name than The Gimp. I mean, seriously, the gimp ??? What is this, Tarantino appreciation hour? I swear, every time I hear that name I think of this immortal scene below, and I cringe:

ZED: Bring out The Gimp.
MAYNARD: I think The Gimp's asleep.
ZED: Well, I guess you'll just wake 'im up then, won't you?
Maynard opens a trap door in the floor.
MAYNARD (yelling in the hole): Wake up!
Maynard reaches into the hole and comes back holding onto a leash. He gives it a rough yank and, from below the floor, rises THE GIMP.
The Gimp is a man they keep dressed from head to toe in black leather bondage gear. There are zippers, buckles and studs here and there on the body. On his head is a black leather mask with two eye holes and a zipper (closed) for a mouth. They keep him in a hole in the floor big enough for a large dog.
Zed takes the chair, sits it in front of the two prisoners, then lowers into it. Maynard hands The Gimp's leash to Zed, then backs away.
MAYNARD (to The Gimp): Down! The Gimp gets on its knees. [...]

See what happens when you trust geeks with app names?

Re:Replacing?

[aussersterne]

Call me a loser, but I love the interfaces of both bash and The GIMP.

I absolutely adore filename completion, arrow-navigatable history, the heavily customizable prompts, command-line editing, and other aspects of the bash interface.

I also absolutely adore the "per-image context menu" interface of The GIMP that makes it easy to have many image windows open and tiled at the same time in focus-follows-mouse mode without causing problems related to relating menus to images as would apply in the "one menu for the entire app, all images" interface in Photoshop.

Re:Replacing?

[techsoldaten]

Yes, if you combined the interfaces of Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Fireworks and Painter, the Gimp's interface would be superior. The sheer number of windows, palettes, toolboxes, sliders and strange controls would be overwhelming.

Apart from that, each one of these programs has an interesting interface that is worth learning how to use.

The thing that annoys me about both Inkscape and the Gimp is that there are no floating palettes. This is irritating because each program is essentially a creative tool moreso than an office application. In the midst of a stream of thought, it is annoying to have to go up to a menu and have a properties dialog box pop up to do your work in. With Photoshop in particular, you can organize the interface in ways that work best for you. There are still some options (like the transform menu) that make you go through some motions, but this is still a small price to pay for the ability to work with tools at your own pace.

M

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're covered. Just run it as:

$ gimp -i -b -

for the command-line mode :-P

Re:Replacing?

[visualight]

I just realized that there are lot of people who had never heard of inkscape before today. I'm surprised at that and I'm sure the submitter assumed (as I would have) that most people (at least on /.) have some knowledge of this app.

Re:Replacing?

[bbyakk]

> The thing that annoys me about both Inkscape and the Gimp is that there are no floating palettes.

Unlike Gimp, Inkscape has just a few rarely used modal boxes (such as "Add a layer"). EVERYTHING else is either in floating dialogs (that can stay open as long as you need them) or in the toolbars in the document window.

Re:Replacing?

[Coryoth]

The thing that annoys me about both Inkscape and the Gimp is that there are no floating palettes.

Um, isn't the usual complaint about GIMP that it is nothing but floating palettes? I mean really, in GIMP just about everything can be spawned as a palette, and you can dock them or leave them as separate windows (hence floating) however you like. Brushes, colors/palettes, tools, tool options, layers, channels, history, patterns, gradients, paths, font selections, selection editors, image navigators, image lists, even the error console can be made into floating (or docked however you wish) palettes/windows in GIMP. What exactly did you want in the way of more floating palettes?

Jedidiah.

Re:Replacing?

[Coryoth]

Well, you see, Inkscape 0.42 is the ultimate answer, your problem is that you have not yet worked out what the question is. Once you know what the question is then I'm sure everythign will be apparent.

Hopefully the Inkscape team are working on finding the ultimate question as we speak.

Jedidiah.

Re:Replacing?

[Bastian]

Personally, I think Illustrator's interface is better.

But it's not nearly $500 worth of better to my amateur senses.

(As for the GIMP, well, it's not hard to be better than the GIMP. VI is a more intuitive photo editor than the GIMP.)

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a low ID and whoring for replies with an early post?

Low ID?!? His ID is six-digit!

I've been craving an option to only show posts for which

log_10(UID) < 5.

Re:Replacing?

[Linus Torvaalds]

I showed it to my girlfriend (who is an art student) and she likes it a lot.

I hear the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas are fans too :)

Re:Replacing?

[gehel]

There is even a web server in postscript !

Re:Replacing?

[temojen]

Just a little gimp gripe....

Gimp does not support 16 bit colour depth, and Cinepaint (a gimp fork that does) does not support rotating, cropping, or resampling of images.

I use Cinepaint for my scanned slides, but I'm forced to do cropping, rotations, and resizing from the command line with ImageMagick.

I like Inkscape very much from what I've seen so far (0.41), and it should round out the Toolset of Cinepaint, ImageMagick, Scribus, SANE, and CUPS nicely. Anyone with a small business should soon be able to do most of their Image & Print work in house on Open Source.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp is free software so you can just write a decent interface and fork it. People will follow your fork and the gimp developers will be forced to submit to the new innerface.

Re:Replacing?

[Mr. Jaggers]

Yes, if you combined the interfaces of Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Fireworks and Painter, the Gimp's interface would be superior. The sheer number of windows, palettes, toolboxes, sliders and strange controls would be overwhelming.

Yeah, that would be Blender...

Re:Replacing?

[koreth]

Most people have no reason to spend time learning about the available choices of vector-based illustration software. Slashdot's crowd is diverse enough that short of stuff like Firefox or Linux, it's not a good idea to assume that most people here have clue one about any particular piece of software.

BTW, I don't mean that in a condescending way; it's just a consequence of specialization and it's human nature to assume everyone has some passing interest in the stuff that fascinates or occupies us. I'm sure the proteomics folks here could rattle off half a dozen names of very cool molecular modeling apps, but as someone who spends his days writing Java web applications, not one of those names would ring any kind of bell for me. In return I expect most of the proteomics crowd has never heard of Tapestry or Wicket or the JSP Standard Template Library.

Now if only we could get the editors to realize they ought to include descriptions of the stuff they're posting about. It would not have been so much burden, I think, to add the words "vector illustration tool" right before the name of the program, especially since the editor edited the story anyway to add a comment to the end.

Re:Replacing?

[koreth]

Err, make that "JSP Standard Tag Library." Must have been snorting too much C++ lately.

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

I don't mind floating palettes as long as they stay on top of the damn picture I'm working on...THAT's the most annoying thing about them in the GIMP. Then again, I also wish they went with a more intuitive interface like Paint Shop Pro rather than the very overrated PhotoShop. :/

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

Don't like Blender's interface? Try K-3D (GTK based, nothing to do with KDE). It's still kind of early along, but it's interface is alot more like Maya and Max's.

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

Agreed. Inkscape was a breath of fresh air after trying to use most other open source art tools. Now if only someone would overhaul the GIMP' UI to be more intuitive too (and no, I don't want a PhotoShop clone) ;)

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

What if you hate Photoshop's interface too? Anybody want to work on a GimpShopPro or something ;)

Re:Replacing?

[Coryoth]

What window manager doesn't support "stay on top" hinting? Even Windows does, though you may have to get an extension to do it - I recall being able to do it a long time ago with Win2k, but I haven't used Windows in years so I can't recall what extra software I needed. Windowblinds maybe.

Anyway, the end result is that "stay on top" should not be a problem with GIMP. Complain about the "intuitiveness" of the interface all you like, but palettes is not one of GIMP's problems.

Jedidiah.

Re:Replacing?

[M1FCJ]

Any decent window manager supports "stay on top" functionality. Thanks to a nice tool called "nail", you can get the same thing on Windows as well.

Re:Replacing?

[typical]

Bash has a better interface than The Gimp.

Yes, but not for the reason that you're thinking. Bash is incredibly powerful. I wish that the Gimp would let me construct directed acyclic graphs of drawing operations, but it doesn't.

Re:Replacing?

[tooth]

Does anyone use this program?

I use it at work. It's handy for doing clipart type things and basic line drawings. Mostly to put into in-house documentation that I've written. I also have Gimp, but the UI is much simpler and all I really want are simple drawings done quick to show people where a power switch is, or a network plug or something simple where a photo would be over kill and not as clear (and look crappy!) btw, this is all under winxp.

A person that sits near me was trying to do a simple drawing in paint and complaining about it. I showed him this on my box and some of the stuff I'd done. I don't know if he coverted, but he did ask for the url later in the day.

Things that I really like: Round edges on squares easily, easy gradiants of different types, I think it's svg internally so scalling works well, alingment is okay (top bottom left right centre (they need to make this less confusing. but at least it's there, I haven't figured this out in gimp yet)) transperancy is easy, errm, that's about it off the top of my head. I think it is worth a go, even just for a play. Get some stuff from open clipart and test it out. The learning curve is shallow esp if you can photshop/gimp.

I haven't tried it yet, but that flowed text looks really cool! :)

Re:Replacing?

[ultranova]

I've been craving an option to only show posts for which log_10(UID) < 5.

I might be wrong here, but I think that logarithm is quite expensive to calculate. Given that, wouldn't a simple filter like (UID < 1 000 000) be much simpler ?-)

The new slashcrow could reverse the filter to drop the various "bow before my silvery hair, tenderfoot !" posts.

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

Two Thumbs up! Inkscape Rocks! ..and all of that :P

Seriously, Inkscape is by far the best open source graphics program I've used yet. As others have already stated, it's a vector program, so it replaces stuff like Illustrator, Freehand, and Corel Draw ;)

Re:Replacing?

[ceeam]

Your optimizer has a bug - it would be: UID 100 000. And while we are at it...

BOW BEFORE MY SILVERY HAIR, TENDERFOOT!

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

Well, I've had this problem under both Gnome and WinXP. This shouldn't be a plugin situation, it should be built in, having to go down to the taskbar to switch tools is a pain.

Re:Replacing?

[strider44]

I agree in a way. I haven't used Photoshop 9 but the photoshop 8 interface sucked. The photoshop 7 interface was the one that ruled.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it really necessary to say that you have girlfriend?

This is Slashdot, you insensitive clod.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

They linked to a description of it. If you don't know what Inkscape is, then click on the the link. Welcome to the Internet.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

gimpshop....

if only someone redesign inkscape in an "InkScapator" the interface will be more usable... (for the illustrator folks)

Re:Replacing?

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Not a gfx artist myself, but I know ppl who are trying Linux and therefore Gimp right now, and here are a few points. Remember that almost all of this is second hand information, based on what these guys are telling me, so if I get a fact wrong, just correct me and I'll forward it to them - they'll be very happy if these things can be solved. :)

The windows are not floating by default, so you have to go around setting "on top" on each of the windows I think, which of course can be quite annoying if you need to do it all the time. It can be *somewhat* remedied by using a separate virtual desktop for Gimp only, if you have a big screen and it can handle high frequences. Several of the people I know can't run 1600x1200 simply because the low update hurts their eyes... even though they have a big screen.

On top of that, they are sorely missing the capability to "tab" toggle all the palettes, leaving just the image (and back). I heard someone say that this command might exist, but be mapped to ALT-TAB, which of course is blocked by most or all window managers (although maybe it works in plain X). Also, this command - if it exists - apparently is not remappable.

So, in short: my friends feel that the palette windows should be floating by default, and there should be a shortcut for toggling anything but the picture on/off. Of course it would also be nice if all windows in Gimp could act together when ALT-tabbing around programs, there are some reasons you would want to work with other programs on the same virtual desktop... such as drag and drop for instance.

Any tips appreciated. Especially if it's just misunderstandings, that would be great. :)

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

A funny thing, I recently used the original photoshop on the *macintosh* version, and the user interface seemed very familiar indeed.

Apparently the GIMP 1.0 interface was inspired by the original photoshop interface, on the *MAC*.

I think this basically proves that windows users know absolutely nothing about user interface design, but it might be just me. :-)

Re:Replacing?

[Heretik]

Exactly. The GIMP interface is fantastic for people who actually know their way around their window manager.

It just gets a lot of flack from people from Windows-land who only have a single desktop with click-to-focus, and overlap gobs of windows and can't find anything.

It's not the GIMP's fault you can't handle a few windows, folks. People who complain about the GIMP's interface are usually the sort of people who think MDI is a good interface idea.

Yeah... MDI. Duh.

Re:Replacing?

[jacksonj04]

You can 'stay on top' in versions of Windows since 2K (I can't remember earlier, though I'm fairly confident the 9X series allowed it as well) without extensions.

If you mean being able to 'pin' any window to keep on top, I don't believe you can do this in vanilla Windows unless the application itself has implemented a 'pin' function.

Re:Replacing?

[plumby]

The problem is that you don't usually want the windows to always be on top - if I tab to another app, I expect that to be on top, but if I then go back to Gimp I'd expect to have to tab to a single app, which contains all of the windows in the same position as when I left them.

Re:Replacing?

[Bill Currie]

If your hair's silvery, what's mine, grasshopper? :)

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Freehand/Illustrator. It is a vector based program.

Inkscape doesn't replace anything you can quite happily use both!

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

How can you work on a picture if there is something on top of it?!

Re:Replacing?

[mrogers]

So is Perl. :-)

Re:Replacing?

[ceeam]

If your hair's silvery, what's mine, grasshopper? :)

Bald?

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

No plugin under Gnome, go to 'File/Preferences/Window Management' and change the 'Window Manager Hints' to 'Keep above'. If you want to be able to bring the image in front of the panels you will need a shortcut for Metacity's 'On Top', you can define it with gconf-editor by changing '/apps/metacity/window_keybindings/toggle_above'.

Re:Replacing?

[FooBarWidget]

File->Preferences->Window Management->Window type hint for the docks: Utility Window

Before you ask why this isn't the default: it's because they received tons and tons of bug reports from people with broken window managers that don't support utility windows.

Re:Replacing?

[FlynnMP3]

Even when I went to the website and looked at the FAQ there was no basic information about the program. A good FAQ question is "What is Inkscape?". The maintainers can add that to the FAQ and documentation.

That's my contribution to this open source effort.

Re:Replacing?

[Kombat]

Assembly language is fantastic for people who actually know their way around their CPU's instruction set.

It just gets a lot of flack from people from IDE-land who can't visualize an enterprise-scale application without their UML diagrams and runtime debugger.

It's not assembly language's fault you can't handle a few registers, folks. People who complain about assembly language's difficulty level are usually the sort of people who think automatic garbage collection is a good programming idea.

Yeah... automatic garbage collection. Duh.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been craving an option to only show posts for which log_10(UID) &lt 5.

I might be wrong here, but I think that logarithm is quite expensive to calculate. Given that, wouldn't a simple filter like (UID &lt 1 000 000) be much simpler?

Mr. 5.86 here made two technical mistakes in two sentences. This is exactly why we need that option. :)

Re:Replacing?

[fhmiv]

The editors DID link to the website of the program, however, being /., they chose to link to the screenshots page rather than the front page. Inkscape's homepage clearly states in the title that it is an "Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics Editor."

Whether that means anything to your amateur graphics file editor is another question entirely. You can often accomplish many of the same results with either a raster or a vector editor, so especially in many light-usage cases, it really comes down to preference. I like having access to both tools.

Re:Replacing?

[graphicsguy]

Thanks a lot! Now I've got milk spewing out of my nose. Do you know how hard it is to clean out all those nasal passages?!

Re:Replacing?

[GweeDo]

While this is an okay idea in concept, it won't really work out well in the real world. Lets say I am working on some stuff in GIMP and have a few palettes set to "Stay On Top" ("Keep Above Others" here in KDE 3.4.1). Yippie, it is working great. Now...what happens when I go to bring up my email client...my web browser...my anything. That freaking palette is STILL on top.

That is no go.

A feature like that needs to be built into GIMP so that it puts that window on top of the artwork, don't make the Window Manager place it on top o' the whole world.

Re:Replacing?

[Haeleth]

It's not the GIMP's fault you can't handle a few windows, folks.

It is, however, the GIMP's fault that it makes such a half-assed attempt at running on Windows that it actually does more harm to the cause of Free Software than good. People see GIMP - with its interface that (whatever its merits) is a nightmare to use in Windows, and its GTK toolkit that (however well it runs in Linux) drags, flickers, and generally looks and feels crap in Windows,* and they say: "People tell me that this is one of the best Free Software applications out there. Yet I do not like this application at all. If this is good Free Software, then I would like the rest even less. Thus I reject Free Software."

And if anyone has the unbelievable cheek to identify the specific usability problems that are causing them to dislike GIMP, what do they get? Smug Linux weenies telling them that it's their fault they're so stupid, and they'd like it if they were smart enough, and only idiots use M$ $oftwar€ anyway, so they should just shut up and suck it down. Do you really think that's a helpful attitude? I sure don't.

If you can't produce a Windows port that Windows users will feel happy using, you shouldn't produce a Windows port at all.

Compare and contrast this with Firefox, which runs so well on Windows that many people fail to realise it's using its own widget set.

People who complain about the GIMP's interface are usually the sort of people who think MDI is a good interface idea.

Now this is a funny thing. You see, I'm finding it a bit hard to see any real difference at all between a maximised MDI window (Photoshop on Windows) and the solution GIMP fanatics tend to suggest to the GIMP's usability issues, namely "use a dedicated virtual desktop for GIMP". Except that the MDI solution is portable, whereas the virtual desktop solution only works for some window managers. Oh, and the MDI solution means that the application takes care of setting up the workspace for you, while the virtual desktop solution requires users to manage things themselves.

It's also interesting to compare Firefox again here. What is the single feature that causes the greatest usability enhancement in Firefox over Internet Explorer? Most people will immediately say "Tabbed browsing". Now, what is tabbed browsing? Well, it's an Interface that places Multiple Documents in one window. This "multiple document interface", as one might call it, has attracted quite a few fans even among Linux users.

I do hope that whatever web browser you use is configured with tabs disabled. In fact, you should probably have it set up so that the menu bar is in one window, the navigation buttons in another dialog, the address bar in yet another, and every single website you open comes up in yet another window. That way it would be just like your beloved GIMP.

* The GTK problem applies to Inkscape as well. I'm trying it now. The program itself is very nice: it has a lot of neat features, and, unlike GIMP, Inkscape's interface manages to be intuitive and usable in Windows as well as in its native GNOME. But the GTK widgets really do flicker rather visibly. Not a problem to me, but it may put a lot of potential users off...

Re:Replacing?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Just for clarity's sake, that is 8bits/channel, so that means "The GIMP uses 24 bits per pixel to represent color, 8 bits for each of the R, G, and B channels." This is what you get when you set the MS Windows desktop Properties/Settings/Colors to "True Color (32bit)".

Re:Replacing?

[andersbergh]

I actually think window in window MDI is great, everything is jailed in one app. I dislike The Gimp because if i switch window, I have to open all Gimp tools etc using the taskbar again... But in Photoshop, I can just switch window, then switch back, and all windows are placed where i want them.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see, Inkscape 0.42 is the ultimate answer, your problem is that you have not yet worked out what the question is.

Just like XML.

Re:Replacing?

[lahvak]

Indeed! The other day I had to use Photoshop on Windows for the first time, and it was a huge PITA.

Re:Replacing?

[drew]

how long until somebody fixes photoshop's user interface to work like the gimp? that's what i'm waiting for. photoshop's awful mdi interface drives me absolutely batty.

Re:Replacing?

[sketerpot]

For that sort of thing, you have to use script-fu.

Re:Replacing?

[duckpoopy]

This would make a good replacement for Xfig.

Re:Replacing?

[swv3752]

It depends on the window manager. Some of the more intelligent ones will let you individually manage the "height" of the wWindow.

Re:Replacing?

[Drooling Iguana]

Fossilised.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your stupid text based scrolling thingy completly locked up my computer requiring a hard reset. winxp with firefox and sun java.

i would say it sux!!

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

It is, however, the GIMP's fault that it makes such a half-assed attempt at running on Windows

No, it's not the windows port isn't done by the main developers of GIMP.

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

Yeah, I'm still using PaintShop Pro 7, haven't tried 8 or 9.

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

exactly ;)

Re:Replacing?

[ZephyrXero]

that's when you click on the tool and have it roll-up till you need it again, or even better like PSP7 does, auto roll-up when your cursor isn't over it ;)

Re:Replacing?

[quiddity]

> especially since the editor edited the story anyway to
> add a comment to the end.

yeah, but the editor is Timothy. he's responsible for most of the sensationalist/biased/irrelevant articles on /. nowadays.

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

I hate all kinds of auto-hide.

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

Also most X11 window managers have some kind of roll-up functionality, you just need to tell GIMP to use 'Utility window' or 'Keep above' hints for the dialogs. If you use MS Windows I can't help you -- haven't used GIMP there for years.

Re:Replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks my small mountain of Corel CDs have graduated to coaster country. Bloatware be gone. This is one COOL tool...

Re:Replacing?

[lakeland]

I guess finding the ultimate question is a fairly major achievement. I bet when it is found, they will feel it justifies a 0.43 release.

Re:Replacing?

[StarFace]

Eh, not quite. Tabs allow you to add sessions to a single window, but the application remains free of MDI restraints. I can, for example, create a new Firefox window, place it beside the original, and open five tabs in it. I can then activate a text editor and leave one Firefox window raised with the other lowered, then click on something in the Firefox window without fear of losing my text editor.. Cannot do that with Opera in Windows (at least, not the older versions, I haven't looked at Opera on Windows lately), because it really is an MDI interface.

In the Windows world, though, the main reason people like tabs is that multiple browsing sessions do not spawn a dozen objects in the task bar. So it really isn't relevant to compare what a Windows user likes about Firefox to someone on another operating system of desktop environment that does not have this annoyance.

Your comments on virtual desktops being like MDIs is flawed as well. I suppose if you just place one single window in each space that would be true -- but silly. Most people use them to establish somewhat static working environments for different tasks comprised of several applications, negating the need to activate and hide four applications or so when switchings tasks. It is more comparable to having multiple monitors than anything else.

MDI has come to mean more than just Multiple Document Interface. It is really more about Encapsulated Application Space. Nothing else can enter or leave it. Fine for some things, I guess, hideous for other things. I'd rather take the flexability of specifically choosing to isolate an application with all or some of its windows. Throw just one terminal window for FTP into the Gimp desktop space, and you throw a wrench in the Virtual Desktop = MDI assertion.

Re:Replacing?

[arose]

Strike that. You can just set them to 'Utility window' instead of 'Keep above' and toggle the panels with Tab.

Re:Replacing?

[Jesus_666]

I'd prefer a version of Photoshop using the Gimp's interface. I've been using Paint Shop Pro, the Gimp and various no-name drawing tools for years and am capable of finding my way around most GUIs, but Photoshop ranks in the same class of confusiability as Blender. A Gimp-like interface would be nice (and proper support for my damn graphics tablet).

Then again, with apparently every single function devoted to creating some kind of eyecandy, it's no wonder that Photoshop looks even messier than my Gimp's Xtns menu...

Re:Replacing?

[mabhatter654]

Sodipodi!!! say it three times fast!!!

Sodipodi is considered part of the GNU "office" suite with Abiword, GNUmeric, Dia, etc.. Inkscape is a fork foused on getting SVG out there where Sodipodi is just an icon editor.

Great.

[NoTearsShampoo]

Now Slashdot can get a makeover. haha... ha.

Already using it

[Achromus]

By some weird coincidence, I downloaded this two hours ago. It hasn't crashed on my yet during this time, so I can say that it is sure seems more stable than the 0.41 release.

Re:Already using it

[Anonymous Coward]

new version but the svg parser still doesn't recognize my text on paths. i have a lot of them and it crashes when i try to open the file. illustrator takes around 6 minutes to open it but at least it works.

for a better svg viewer, try java batik library and viewer. (xml.apache.org/batik/)

Re:Already using it

[bbyakk]

Why don't you submit a bug for that, and don't forget to attach one of the files that crash it.

Re:Already using it

[gekko513]

Has anyone tried this new version on Mac OS X? I loved Inkscape the first time I tried it on Windows, but unfortunately it didn't work very well on Mac OS X. The menu for the option boxes popped up behind the window, so you had to move the window away to select an option.

Has this been fixed?

Re:Already using it

[bbyakk]

Yes this bug is fixed in 0.42. (Reportedly, as I don't have OSX myself.)

Re:Already using it

[JasonBee]

I've had this running all night now...perhaps 7 hours altogether and no crashes!

Mind you maybe I should move the mouse and do something.

I'll be back in 5!

Re:Already using it

[bjohnson]

Actually, the OS X 'port' simply doesn't run at all.

It starts, spits some error about fonts to the console, and quits:

No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig
library is not correctly configured. You may need to
edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information
about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual
page and on http://fontconfig.org/
bash: no job control in this shell
Quitting XDarwin...

OTHER X11 apps run just fine, this is 10.4 with Apple's X11.

Re:Already using it

[bbyakk]

This appears to be a packaging problem that some people experience on OSX. We're working on it. Hopefully we'll be able to provide a new OSX package for 0.42 with a fix.

Why is the version number apt?

[Quarters]

After several months of frantic work by the evergrowing developer community, the aptly numbered Inkscape 0.42 is out.

Is there some unexplained significance to the number 0.42 in reference to this program?

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anakron]

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. 42 is the 'answer to everything'.
You might want to disregard this comment. It only makes me want to wince. You were better off not knowing, probably.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[ElectricBrain]

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=answe r+to+life+the+universe+and+everything&btnG=Search& meta=This explains all you need to know.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[weighn]

Is there some unexplained significance to the number 0.42 in reference to this program?

I'm not sure, but this version must mean everything to the developers.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[ScrewMaster]

I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Quarters]

Right, ok. I understand that reference. But 0.42 != 42. Either the developers are missing 41.58 of something or they're saying that the program is 1/100th of what it should be.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[jonored]

Version 0.42 != decimal 0.42. Version 0.42 is generally the 42nd sub-version. Many projects even have sub-sub-versions, like firefox: 1.0.4 doesn't even make sense as a decimal number. Occasionally you do see a project that assigns separate meanings to digits without a delimiter, as decimal numbers do, but this is often sub-ideal - it runs into conflicts if you pass nine on any given digit.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.ca/search?q=answer+to+life+the+u niverse+and+everything+*+the+speed+of+light

Stupid google tricks.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anonymous Coward]

.42 = .420
It took so long, u know they had to be smoking something

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[frostw]

Maybe they decided on the release number using Bistromathics.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've just got to love a company geeky enough to make The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything a constant in their calculator.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[-kertrats-]

Dude, you have a 5-digit UID and haven't noticed the nerd communities' fascination with the number 42?

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[shadowmatter]

Inkscape dev:I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit, I always do that, I always mess up some mundane detail.

-sm

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anonymous Coward]

So. Many. Hidden. Office Space. References. Today.

Watch your inkscape, bud.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But 0.42 != 42. Either the developers are missing 41.58 of something or they're saying that the program is 1/100th of what it should be.

If "everything" is the same as infinity then 1/100th of infinity is still infinity.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Tim Browse]

It's amazing what you can pick up on ebay these days.

I think that UID got sold by some kid's mom because he wouldn't tidy his room or something.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[geeber]

You would think that a program that is the "answer to everything" would deserve at least a 1.0 release!

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[mrogers]

It's OK, it's SVG, you can rescale it later.

Re:Why is the version number apt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps because its not the awnser to life the universe and everything, but rather just the awnser to GNU vector graphics which is only a small part of life the universe and everything =)

Don't you hate it

[TCM]

Don't you hate it when some application gets into "news" and you are supposed to already know what it does?

Just including this blurb from the homepage would have been enough:

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG).

Re:Don't you hate it

[Michael Woodhams]

What I could figure out from the article:

"There is a new version of something, and it is really cool. Something is probably software or just possibly hardware (as if it being reported on /. wasn't enough to figure that out anyhow)."

Fortunately we have editors to filter the submissions so we don't have to see incomprehensible ones.

Re:Don't you hate it

[MenTaLguY]

I have to wonder whether the Slashdot editors mangled the original submission. bulia is one of our main writers/copy editors and is generally very lucid.

I guess everyone has their off days though...

Re:Don't you hate it

[Zobeid]

All it would have taken was three more words.

"vector drawing program"

If the poster could have fit those three words into the article, it would have saved me a fair bit of bother. And yes, this sort of thing does happen all the time on Slashdot.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Chasuk]

Truthfully, not at all. First, because it is usually obvious from context -- or from the name of the application -- what that application does. Second, because, even though I am busy, I click on virtually every linked article, as one of the pleasures of reading Slashdot/geek news sites is discovering things that are fresh, that I wouldn't necessarily have read about elsewhere.

Re:Don't you hate it

[koreaman]

You must be new here.

Seriously, the UID is just a bug in slashcode or something.

Every day is the slashdot editors' off day.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you hate it when some application gets into "news" and you are supposed to already know what it does?

Just including this blurb from the homepage would have been enough:

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG).

And then we are supposed to know what Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw do also. And of those, CorelDraw is the only one running on a modern PC OS (if you can find an old version 3.5). The others require buying a Mac, or worse, Windows, and all of them cost shitload of money.

At least compare it to something that we have a chance of being familiar with, like SodiPodi.

Re:Don't you hate it

[typical]

See, the thing is that I have used Inkscape for more time than Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw put together, and at least for *me*, it would be easier to explain Illustrator in terms of Inkscape. Not everyone has spent years churning along with proprietary software packages.

Re:Don't you hate it

[ultranova]

Truthfully, not at all. First, because it is usually obvious from context -- or from the name of the application -- what that application does.

Yeah. Any fool can see that Inkscape is a program that automatically inks scanned comic book scetches. Just as obvious that Firefox is a firefighting program that calculates how the fire will spread and devises countermeasures with the cunning of the fox. Or Thunderbird, which is either a bird migration monitor, an emergency rescure crew communication tool or a weather prediction program.

But while this is painfully obvious to me, not all reading Slashdot are blessed with my intelligence, so it might still be a good idea to tell what the program does in the summary.

Re:Don't you hate it

[HaydnH]

If the poster could have fit those three words into the article

"After re-drawing their initial plans, the designers decided to follow a different vector and this program is now vastly improved"

Are you sure that's ALL it would've taken? Perhaps common sense combined with your suggestion might help... oh wait it's a /. article!

Re:Don't you hate it

[Anonymous Coward]

And then we are supposed to know what Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw do also. And of those, CorelDraw is the only one running on a modern PC OS (if you can find an old version 3.5). The others require buying a Mac, or worse, Windows, and all of them cost shitload of money.

Okay, I'll byte :-).

What OS are you referring to, and what exactly do you think is modern about it. Surely you don't mean Linux. It's claims to fame are that it is open source and actually works darn well, but not that it is "modern". See Torvalds vs. Tannenbaum.

Re:Don't you hate it

[uradu]

>at least for *me*, it would be easier to explain Illustrator in terms of Inkscape.

Sure, but then not everyone does that thing you do when you think no-one's looking either. Sometimes you just have to go with what the majority is familiar with.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you hate it when some application gets into "news" and you are supposed to already know what it does?

Not really. From the icon, we know that it is a graphics related application. If you don't care about graphics applications, move on to the next article. If you do care about graphics, then RTFA.

Slashdot comments are polluted by people who think that all that is required to be educated on a subject is to read the submitter synopsis and then go straight to ranting. Ugh!

Re:Don't you hate it

[FoogyFoo]

Just as obvious that Firefox is a firefighting program that calculates how the fire will spread and devises countermeasures with the cunning of the fox.

Oh that's what this Firefox thing is? and I thought it was a computer game based on Samson and the Philistines...

Re:Don't you hate it

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually "Scalable Vector Graphics" (SVG) would have been enough. The XML-based SVG file format is as important as the vector vs. bit-mapped distinction.

Re:Don't you hate it

[IpalindromeI]

Yes, everyone does masturbate. You can stop feeling guilty.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Zobeid]

Well, it wouldn't have been enough for me, since I've never heard of the SVG file format before today.

Re:Don't you hate it

[MenTaLguY]

Any fool can see that Inkscape is a program that automatically inks scanned comic book scetches.

You laugh, actually that is within the range of functionality we would ultimately like to have... comic work was the reason I got involved.

We already have bitmap tracing, but it's not refined enough for auto-inking yet. I do already use it for tracing scanned, hand-inked pages, at sufficiently high DPI.

Of course, yes, that's hardly the sole purpose of Inkscape.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Anonymous Coward]

If I didn't know what SVG was, I'd welcome any excuse to look it up.

Re:Don't you hate it

[Chasuk]

You skipped the remainder of my post:

Second, because, even though I am busy, I click on virtually every linked article, as one of the pleasures of reading Slashdot/geek news sites is discovering things that are fresh, that I wouldn't necessarily have read about elsewhere.

Further, I was replying to a specific question posed by another individual -- not you -- so to have replied from a viewpoint other than my own would have been silly. I have learned hundreds of ultimately interesting and useful bits of information that I never would have learned had the topic been described more fully in the original article. If that isn't true for you, fine, but it is for me, and I was the one answering the question.

If this reply isn't sufficient, might I suggest auto-felatio?

Re:Grab your package....

[Coneasfast]

For Linux, Windows or OS X.

Uh.... I prefer Linux just like most of us, but I like my GF better.

With a witty sense of humour like that, i'm suprised you even have a GF ;)

Re:Grab your package....

[MustardMan]

Yeah that wording was kind of bothering me too...

The last time I grabbed my package in public I ended up getting the snot beat out of me by a couple of feminists.

Did you say OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the OS X version work now? Is it native now? That would be very good for me. Last time I tried to use inkscape on OS X it only worked in Fink and it had a serious problem with the popup menus.

Re:Did you say OS X?

[5plicer]

It runs under X11

Re:Did you say OS X?

[Draconix]

Not from my experience. It craps out due to dependancies that I can't be bothered to fix due to lack of documentation on how to fix the dependancy crapout.

Re:Did you say OS X?

[aergern]

Well, it works fine.

Re:Did you say OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't launch on my machine running 10.4.2. It complains about not being able to find any fonts, and quits. xman finds fonts fine (try saying _that_ three times quickly).

Re:Did you say OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was strange. I wasn't able to get Inkscape to launch on my machine, but once I installed and ran Gimp, inkscape had no trouble. It's fine now - I wonder what Gimp did to make it work (too tired to debug this tonight, don't really care).

Re:Did you say OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't run on mine either. Have OS 10.4.2 and Fink and X11. GIMP runs fine. This program starts up and immediately shuts down.

Re:Did you say OS X?

[ValiantSoul]

I'm running 10.4.2, downloaded this just now and ran it for about an hour without a single problem (other than the fact I have no artistic abilities)

Re:Did you say OS X?

[mjwybrow]

There is a problem with Apple's X11 installer for OSX 10.4.x which causes fontconfig font caches not to be generated, making gtk apps think they have no fonts. The solution is to run the following:

sudo fc-cache

Should start fine after that.

Developers. Did it all free too.

[zymano]

If anybody has hacked windows api then you know what these guys have done. Good stuff.

Developer Username Role/Position Email Skills
Arpad Biro a_b Translator (I18N/L10N) a_b at users.sourceforge.net Private
Aaron C. Spike acspike Developer acspike at users.sourceforge.net Private
Andrew Fitzsimon andyfitz Graphic/Other Designer andyfitz at users.sourceforge.net Private
Artemiy Pavlov artemiopabla Web Designer artemiopabla at users.sourceforge.net Private
Arturo Espinosa arturoea arturoea at users.sourceforge.net Private
Ben Crowell bcrowell Developer bcrowell at users.sourceforge.net Private
Ben Fowler bpfowler Developer bpfowler at users.sourceforge.net Private
Bryce Harrington bryceSourceForge.net Subscriber and DonorProject AdminAccepting Donations All-Hands Person bryce at users.sourceforge.net Private
bulia byak buliabyakProject Admin Developer buliabyak at users.sourceforge.net Private
Carl Hetherington cth103 Developer cth103 at users.sourceforge.net Private
Richard Hughes cyreve Developer cyreve at users.sourceforge.net Private
David Yip dwyip Developer dwyip at users.sourceforge.net Private
GEMY Cedric gemy_cAccepting Donations Doc Writer gemy_c at users.sourceforge.net Private
Ted Gould gouldtj Developer gouldtj at users.sourceforge.net Private
hjheins hjheins Packager (.rpm, .deb etc) hjheins at users.sourceforge.net Private
Alan Horkan horkana Support Technician horkana at users.sourceforge.net Private
Bob Jamison ishmal Developer ishmal at users.sourceforge.net Private
Johan Ceuppens jceuppen Developer jceuppen at users.sourceforge.net Private
Jogchum Reitsma jehojakim Packager (.rpm, .deb etc) jehojakim at users.sourceforge.net Private
Jean-François Lemaire jflemaire jflemaire at users.sourceforge.net Private
Derek P. Moore jizzbug Developer jizzbug at users.sourceforge.net Private
John Cliff johncliff Developer johncliff at users.sourceforge.net Private
Jon A. Cruz joncruzProject Admin Project Manager joncruz at users.sourceforge.net View
Jonathan Leighton (Turnip) jonleighton Web Designer jonleighton at users.sourceforge.net Private
Kees Cook keescookAccepting Donations Developer keescook at users.sourceforge.net Private
Jonathan Phillips kidprotoAccepting Donations Developer kidproto at users.sourceforge.net Private
MenTaLguY mentalProject Admin All-Hands Person mental at users.sourceforge.net View
Michael Wybrow mjwybrow Packager (.rpm, .deb etc) mjwybrow at users.sourceforge.net Private
Daniel Díaz mrchapp Packager (.rpm, .deb etc) mrchapp at users.sourceforge.net Private
mrdocs mrdocs Developer mrdocs at users.sourceforge.net Private
Nicu Buculei nicubunu Developer nicubunu at users.sourceforge.net Private
Nathan Hurst njh Developer njh at users.sourceforge.net Private
David Turner novalis_dt Developer novalis_dt at users.sourceforge.net Private
Aubanel MONNIER o__b Developer o__b at users.sourceforge.net Private
PTT piersvdt Developer piersvdt at users.sourceforge.net Private
Peter J. R. Moulder pjrm Developer pjrm at users.sourceforge.net Private
Poeir poeir Developer poeir at users.sourceforge.net Private
Ralf Stephan rwst Developer rwst at users.sourceforge.net Private
Josh Andler scislac Web Designer scislac at users.sourceforge.net Private
Alexander Clausen

Keep in mind

[JonN]

That in the FAQ it says:

Q: Is Inkscape ready for regular users to use?

Yes, while it's far from being a replacement for commercialware, the codebase provides for a large portion of basic vector editing capabilities.

Re:Keep in mind

[ProfaneBaby]

The fact that it's really for SVG will hold you back, too - many commercial printers are tied to Illustrator versions (and those that aren't still prefer EPS to SVG), that this isn't going to find its way onto any professional graphic artists standard list of tools anytime soon.

Re:Keep in mind

[bbyakk]

This FAQ is somewhat obsolete. It's not a replacement for commercialware in ALL situations, that's true. But it's not as far from it as it used to be just a few releases back.

Re:Keep in mind

[MarsLander]

From the release notes for version 0.42:

* Better PS/EPS export: gradient support, better text handling, a command line option for batch export.

Not sure if it's good enough for professional work or not.

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it's really for SVG will hold you back, too - many commercial printers are tied to Illustrator versions

It certainly won't hold me back: Inkscape exports postscript & encapsulated postscript just like many other programs, and, more importantly, most people don't give a rat's ass about commercial print shops.

Re:Keep in mind

[4im]

far from being a replacement for commercialware

You'd think they'd know that the opposite of free software is not commercial software, but proprietary software . Even free software may be commercial. For the typical /. troll, I'd not be surprised, but for these actual developers, this is an astounding mistake.

Re:Keep in mind

[pbhj]

Also there's a perl script for transforming ai2svg somewhere.

Which give me some hope that we might get .ai export at some stage. Or does Illustrator import svg? (Inkscape can export standardised svg).

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you are ready to stablise and call it version 1.0 and provide support it is not ready to replace commericial software and you are asking for trouble by claiming otherwise.

Re:Keep in mind

[ultranova]

far from being a replacement for commercialware

You'd think they'd know that the opposite of free software is not commercial software, but proprietary software . Even free software may be commercial. For the typical /. troll, I'd not be surprised, but for these actual developers, this is an astounding mistake.

The mistake is yours. The quote you showed didn't claim that commercial software couldn't be free software. It did claim that Inkscape is currently far from being a replacement for commercial software, whether free or proprietary. Of course it's possible that "commercialware" is defined elsewhere in the text to mean proprietary software or some subset of it, but the quote certainly didn't make any such claims.

For a typical /. troll, I'd not be surprised, but for you, this is an astounding mistake.

Re:Keep in mind

[Tet]

The fact that it's really for SVG will hold you back, too - many commercial printers are tied to Illustrator

Not a problem. I've been doing all of my vector work in Inkscape for a while now. I export it to EPSF, which I hand to my printer, who opens it in Illustrator and takes it from there.

Re:Keep in mind

[Roxton]

Any production-ready vector graphics program should be capable of producing postscript and/or PDF output that's good enough for a print shop. There is lot more print-essential functionality in PDF and postscript than just drawing vectors and sampled images.

Re:Keep in mind

[morgan_greywolf]

Yes, while it's far from being a replacement for commercialware, the codebase provides for a large portion of basic vector editing capabilities.

Its much better than it was, definitely. It's much closer to the functionality of earlier versions of programs like CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator than any of the previous versions. With support for

• layers (very important!)
• manual text kerning
• Put text on path
• flow text into frame
• 'live' gradient editor
• bitmap tracing
• support for union/difference/etc. of objects (already in 0.3x, but added late)
• export support for .eps and .ps formats

Inkscape is on par with older versions of commercialware, with some support for newer-style features like the live gradient editor.

Some features that are still sorely missing (compared to commercialware) are:

• Object/text morphing via 'envelope' and 'perspective' type functions
• support for automatic drop shadowing
• more export filters that just .eps and .ps. Specifically, support for Windows Metafile (.wmf), Adobe Illustrator 88 (.ai), AutoCAD DXF (.dxf) (for 2D and 3D CAD conversion), HPGL and/or HPGL/2 (for output to plotters)
• ability to import at least .eps, .ps and .wmf. .dxf and .ai would be nice.
• better clipboard support ... ability to integrate with desktop environments so that SVG objects can be embedded in other applications

with those additions and a few more, Inkscape could be well on its way to being a complete replacement for Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Already as a graphic designer I could probably spend most of my time in Inkscape and only have to bring in commercialware for a few little features.

Re:Keep in mind

[labratuk]

That's why you can export to ps.

Re:Keep in mind

[morgan_greywolf]

support for automatic drop shadowing

Apparently if you turn on 'scripting' you get an automatic drop shadow. But it doesn't work, at least on Windows. I'll try it later on Linux.

Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[whovian]

Check out the screenshots and grab your package for Linux, Windows, or OSX."

I just don't go around grabbing other guy's packages. Let us leave that to your *.so and S.O.

Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[steelfood]

It says to grab your package, not somebody else's.

I would hazard a guess that it's some strange form of cheer equivalent to the more common form of clapping one's hand. Perhaps it's symbolic of male fertility.

What I don't understand is why we're cheering for Windows, unless it's actually an insult not unlike the middle finger, in which case I'd wonder if this was not written by a BSD fan.

Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[lo0ol]

Check out the screenshots and grab your package for Linux, Windows, or OSX."

Well, at least we know the /. crowd won't have any problems with those instructions.

Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[aaza]

I just don't go around grabbing other guy's packages. Let us leave that to your *.so and S.O.

You let your S.O. grab other guy's packages?
Can you give her the address of guys on this site? They'll thank you for ever.

It's humour. Laugh. Nothing offensive I say is serious.

Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[moranar]

Well, here in Italy you grab your package to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. Dunno why, though.

Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo'

[Tim Browse]

It's just an excuse.

Pretty Neat!!

[ad0le]

I need to do a control panel layout for my WIP mame cabinet. This may be just the tool I need.

This might be the most useful thing I've seen between on slashdot in months.

Re:Pretty Neat!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint. Come back tomorrow and relive your enjoyment!

Re:Pretty Neat!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want vector art for your arcade cabinet, check this website :
http://www.localarcade.com/arcade_art/

I was wondering what SVG was

[ReformedExCon]

Inkscape's FAQ describes the software package as a way to create SVGs. So I was curious as to what exactly "SVG" means. It turns out that it is a type of graphic that is Scalable because it is based on Vectors (Scalable Vector Graphics, heh). Like TrueType fonts, the graphics itself is described in a data file and the rasterization engine figures out how to plot each line and curve.

Another common type of graphic is the raster bitmap in which the data file describes the absolute positioning of pixels in the resulting picture. Scaling (changing size) of such a picture is troublesome because it requires some loss of data if the graphic is shrunk and some interpolation of data if the graphic is stretched.

Vector graphics do not have this problem as they do not exist as mere picture elements in a determined plot. Since they are described in terms of elements with properties, the plotter is able to render the resulting graphic as it sees fit, to any level of resolution it can handle. In some ways, it is very much like povray graphics which are as detailed as you want to make it, at any resolution.

Using this type of graphic is especially helpful in document layout design like brochures and pamphlets where you don't know exactly how big your eventual product will be. I've never used it personally, but this seems like a very cool alternative to more unwieldy software packages like PS and Gimp.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[professorfalcon]

Welcome to 1961.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[steelfood]

I can't help but note a strange karma whoring smell. I don't mean to encourage these types of posts (which, while related, only provide superficial information an a subject that almost everyone knows about), I do wish to point out one thing with which I cannot come to terms.

Vector graphics is not an alternative to raster graphics. Raster graphics and vector graphics have two mutually exclusive applications, even though both offer visual sensory input as an end result.

Using only the Adobe product names for the two different digital graphic forms, it is not difficult to recognize this. Photoshop's specialty is manipulating raster images, and the main application would be photos. For example, PS is great for doing things like white balancing and color filtering, i.e. post processing of captured images. Illustrator, on the other hand, is great for creating scaleable and animated visual medium (cartoon-like illustrations like clipart, or flash movies).

The tradeoff is realism. BTW, one subset of vector graphics is in fact 3D modeling, and this relation becomes especially apparent with NURBS. 3D models aren't very realistic plainly rendered, even with simple materials. They require textures, which are bitmaps (rasters), to create the illusion of continuity.

Finally, on a tangent, it should be noted that vector graphics are mathematically intensive to render, whereas raster graphics tend to be memory intensive to render.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[superpulpsicle]

There are alot of folks (like me) who would never go the photoshop/illustrator route. For those with a medium to realistic budget, Paintshop Pro has been THE solution for years.

This Inkscape program sounds like it's worth trying. If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[ReformedExCon]

"these types of posts...only provide superficial information an a subject that almost everyone knows about"

Well, to be absolutely frank, I didn't have any idea what Inkscape was about, neither after reading the initial writeup nor the supplied links. Only that it was some sort of "SVG tool". Which was great if you were one of the "almost everyone" who knew what "SVG" meant. Unfortunately, that group doesn't include me, so I went and dug up some quick information about it and tried to explain it as well as possible with my limited information.

Thank you for your additional information! Every day is a chance to learn something new.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[-kertrats-]

For those with a medium to realistic budget, Paintshop Pro has been THE solution for years.

Translation: I'm on dialup and/or can't find a decent torrent.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[modecx]

Gimp and Inkscape have *nothing* at all in common, in practical terms.

Inkscape is pretty much strictly for working on vector graphics (aside from vectorizing a bitmap and rendering an SVG to bitmap I doubt it has any operations on raster formats--it didn't last time I used it), like the grandparent said. The Gimp is for doing raster graphics, though it does have some basic vector operations (paths and fonts, etc.), but they don't compare in strength to Inkscape's functions.

These tools do not have the same function or scope, and (naively) saying so implies that a chisel might work as well when the job calls for a hammer. Of course, when you realize that you can use two tools together, (hammer and chisel, Photoshop and Illustrator, The GIMP and Inkscape), well, there's alot less that you can't do. I.E. You can be effective at chiseling wood with your hands and a sharp instrument, good luck with granite, though.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and even better, Firefox should support SVG in 1.1, with Opera already doing it, at least SVG Tiny.

For those who don't know, Mozilla Firefox (originally known as "Phoenix" and briefly as "Mozilla Firebird") is a free, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers.

With Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation aims to develop a lightweight, fast, intuitive, and highly extensible standalone browser based on the Navigator component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has become the foundation's main development focus (along with its Thunderbird email client), and has replaced the Mozilla Suite as their official main software release.

Firefox includes an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, support for open standards, and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although other browsers have introduced these features, Firefox became the first such browser to achieve wide adoption.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[strider44]

Gimp and Inkscape aren't direct competitors. One is raster (doing things per pixel), the other is vector (using lines and curves between point a and point b). Most distros already include both pieces of software.

Bitmap, JPG, PNG, GIF, TGA, et al are raster. SVG is vector. Vector can be changed to raster (with loss of information) but not visa versa.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Metaphorically]

It's not an either/or thing. The Gimp does rasters (mostly) and Inkscape does SVG. There's no reason to ditch the Gimp.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[cduffy]

If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit

To give a more concrete example of what the other folks are saying:

If you're designing graphics for a print brocure or (as in my case recently) wedding invitation, and you're not trying to do photographs, a vector graphics program is just the thing: You can edit your work easily, and the final result can be rendered at whatever resolution it's going to be printed at. Many effects which are a PITA if possible at all via raster software (such as shaped text) are standard features in good vector editors.

If you're retouching a photo, you need a raster editor. Period. So really, you can't replace one with the other. They both have their place, and both are necessary.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Metaphorically]

While you're totally right about the vector/raster distinction, SVG defines filters that do some of the things that are associated with retouching a photo. One example would be a colour transform, here's an example. SVG can also include a raster image with an image tag and crop it (another photo retouching function).

Not saying that Inkscape or SVG are great for photo editing, just wanted to point out that some of these things can be done.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[steelfood]

Don't feel too offended. Being the good hypocrite that I am, I must admit that my post was largely filled with superficial information too. BTW, wikipedia will definitely offer more specific information on vector and raster graphics, especially with regards to the different standards and types for both.

As I might have hinted, my interest in this area lies in why these two formats, being completely opposite in nature, would also end up complementing each other so perfectly, and of course, how to maximize the results of such a pairing--except, on a much more abstract level.

Well, no need to bore you with details, but to give a better example of how these two are completely opposing in nature, note that where one is discrete, the other is continuous, and vice versa. Vector graphics use curves defined by mathematical functions to generate an image (known as rendering). Yet, every element is discretely defined, as is the nature of curves from mathematical functions.

On the other hand, raster graphics are comprised of discrete pixels that, when put together, form a coherent image. Yet, the elements within the image are continuous--that is, there is no absolute position where one can assert that an element in the picture ends and another begins.

Yet only through combining the two forms in the manner I previous described can CG achieve an accurate visual representation of reality.

This kind of thinking, unfortunately, is at best ungeeky, and tends to bore or amuse more than interest.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[martinX]

If you have an SVG capable browser or the SVG plugin (from Adobe, IIRC), go here http://www.inkscape.org/doc/examples/text-on-path. svg. Then marvel at how you can select the text. Then peek at the source. It's all good.

This is the start of something big in web graphics.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[AKAImBatman]

The tradeoff is realism. BTW, one subset of vector graphics is in fact 3D modeling, and this relation becomes especially apparent with NURBS. 3D models aren't very realistic plainly rendered, even with simple materials. They require textures, which are bitmaps (rasters), to create the illusion of continuity.

Just to be pedantic for a moment...

Textures in 2D and 3D applications are not necessarily bitmaps. While Bitmaps are the most common form of texture, highly realistic scenery often uses procedural texturing, with the Perlin Noise Function being the most popular method of generating such textures.

What makes procedural texturing so appealing is the fact that they tend to be a vector scaling algorithm that allows the detail to increase or decrease with the object's perceived size. This is in direct opposition to bitmap texturing where the scalable object has a very particular size range before scaling artifacts begin to become noticable. :-)

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[stuuf]

If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit.

No, if mozilla ever includes a full-featured SVG renderer (in my experience it always draws gradients as solid black), and the format catches on for web graphics, and linux distros start packaging Inkskape _in addition_ to the GIMP, then it will be a hit. Not that SVG doesn't already have uses; there's a large selection of SVG-based icon themes for Gnome, etc...

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[J. Random Luser]

Yawn...... Macintosh QuickDraw, & vector PICT format, ridiculed in 1984 for being too geeky, PostScript(TM) too with a programming language thrown in for free. Photoshop, Gimp, and all the other bitmap programs are good for making each pixel perfect, and humungous output files. SVG is in theory device independent. If your device can't scale vectors that's not Inkscape's (et al's) fault.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Anonymous Coward]

Inkscape's FAQ describes the software package as a way to create SVGs. So I was curious as to what exactly "SVG" means. It turns out that it is a type of graphic that is Scalable because it is based on Vectors (Scalable Vector Graphics, heh).

Dear Slashdot,

I haven't asked much of you over the years. I have bemusedly (but amiably) chuckled at the inanity of your editors, and the non-conformance of your HTML. I actually tried to read and appreciated Jon Katz, until my eyeballs desiccated, necessitating my current use of a screen reading parrot. I have contributed my share of stories, of helpful posts, of flamebait, and of trolls. When you and your followers have asked questions, I have answered, and throughout these years, I have asked for little in return.

Now I have but one small request: Please cat all posts from those with log_10(UID) > 5.0 to /dev/null.

I know that you try to be inclusive, and that is noble. However, this pool has been peed in for long enough, and your long-time minions longingly reminisce about the days when people who actually knew what they were writing about, or could at least bluff well, committed posts into your mighty disks. Perhaps after this cleaning some of us, your prodigal children, might even dust off our passwords and log in again.

Please, wise Slashdot, save us from this pestilence. Cure yourself of this disease and your diaspora will return.

Your humble servant,

A. Coward

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Anonymous Coward]

If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit

Actually, Inkscape and Gimp complement each other. They're totally different tools. I use them professionally all the time. I design logos and such in Inkscape and export bitmaps to Gimp. Also, for bitmap-to-eps conversions, I take apart images in Gimp and load the different elements into Inkscape for tracing and then put them back together to create vector images. Occasionally I'll import these vectors as a base for models in Blender. Clients loooooove 3D animated logo effects! Great stuff. Inkscape r0xx0r :)

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that's like saying "blah blah blah, if Adobe dropped Photoshop in favour of Illustrator, blah, blah", right?

They don't do the same thing, they never have. One will never replace the other, and both are a far, far more powerful tool when combined, than either is on it's own.

The more simple way I've found to explain the distinction between the two, is One is for paiting, and one is for drawing.

And just an FYI, Inkscape has been found in the package repositories, and distributed with quite a few distros, along side the GIMP, for quite a while, since it was forked from Sodipodi.

And PSP doesn't do the same things as Inkscape, nor does it have the same pupose, so I fail to see how it's been THE solution for someone in need of a vector drawing app, specifically of the SVG handling variety (always fun to have an XML editor in the form of a drawing app (SVG being XML-based and all)).

You don't use a paintbrush to draw, and you don't use a caligraphy pen to paint, it's quite simple.

Re:I was wondering what SVG was

[mysticgoat]

I've used PSP for years and was very pleased when vector graphics were added to it (v7 IIRC). I find it easy to mix vector layers with raster layers.

While we wait for the Inkscape site to recover from the slashdotting, is there anyone who can comment from experience on whether Inkscape's SVG offers a better production environment than PSP's vector features?

WTF is Inkscape you ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the poster didn't bother to tell anyone what Inkscape is (a common affliction lately) here's the poop straight from the site: Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional planned work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development process.

Re:WTF is Inkscape you ask?

[fitten]

Thank you.

#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Raul654]

Stability. Inkscape is good a good program, but it crashes all the time. In fact, someone noticed that when installing it on windows, the *very first* file it copied was gdb.exe.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well, I've had it open and have been fucking around with it fro the last 2 hours, hasn't crashed yet. Very nice. Impressive. As an OSS project, much slicker than Gimp (yes I know, different thing, blaw, blaw, blaw).

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[phoenix.bam!]

hence version number 1.0

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Sandmann]

At his presentation at the Desktop Developers Conference in Ottawa, the Inkscape guy said that unlike previous versions, this one should be very stable. YMMV.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

Come On. If you get a crash, REPORT IT! Right here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=604306&group_ id=93438&func=browse And please note that we never have more than a few confirmed reproducible crash bugs in the tracker. (Currently just 2 I believe, and not fully reproducible at that.) We simply don't tolerate them. We, you know, fix them. Quickly and mercilessly. (Other types of bugs get fixed too, so don't worry).

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[mrchaotica]

I haven't used .42 much yet, but one great thing I've noticed is that dragging stuff works now (.35 used to not drag horizontally for some reason).

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Tom7]

Fine, but reproducible crashes are easy to fix. They are also generally easy for people using the software to avoid, once they are known. The really bad bugs are the ones where the program crashes unpredictably, and I have experienced that several times with Inkscape on win32 so far. Do you really want a bug report like "once when I selected the caligraphic brush and drew some lines, inkscape crashed/exited immediately"?

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

That's why we ship with gdb.exe! Why don't you just make a shortcut to always run it from GDB and send us the backtrace when it crashes.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

> .35 used to not drag horizontally for some reason

Wow, what a jump you are making :) The 0.35 is truly *prehistoric*.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using the zoom tool. I zoomed in too much, too fast, apparently, and killed glib.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[syousef]

Hmm the text tool is less than intuitive and hangs the screen for a little while (application not responding) the first time it initializes. I realize you're still pre version 1.0 here, and I'm willing to cut you a lot of slack. This certainly has potential of being a great product when it matures, and I can't argue with the cost.

But illusive and hard to reproduce bugs are not something to brush off. They drive the users insane just as much as they annoy developers. However a user with no time or effort invested in the product is just going to move on if there's no quick fix or if you brush it off and say it works on your machine and you've only got 2 bugs you can even partially reproduce. You've provided them with something for free but they don't owe you anything and they don't have to use it.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[torpor]

i've used inkscape extensively to create a large library of content for my development work, and i can tell you that it is very stable. i run it both on OSX and linux. i've crashed it, maybe, twice in about a years worth of use..

perhaps its your system.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

> Hmm the text tool is less than intuitive and hangs the screen for a little while (application not responding) the first time it initializes.

Known bug on Windows, we even have a patch for it but that patch must go into Freetype, so it's not there yet.

> But illusive and hard to reproduce bugs are not something to brush off. They drive the users insane just as much as they annoy developers.

Sure. But many bugs only _seem_ elusive at first sight. For 100 users that will uninstall the program after getting an "elusive" crash, there will be 1 who will be motivated enough to help us debug it.

> if you brush it off and say it works on your machine

If I do that, and if the crash is real, I'll keep getting more and more reports on it from different people. So eventually it WILL get fixed. But in any case, we never "brush off" bugs without trying to get at least some useful info from the user.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[vmahrra]

I disagree about Inkscape crashing all the time. I've been using 0.41 on ubuntu to design tshirts ( http://www.cafepress.com/urunu ) and it has been very stable, only crashed once or twice and that was when i was using it under Windows.

I thoroughly recommend Inkscape.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird, but I use it quite regularly and it crashed exactly once so far.

However, there are important issues that need to be adressed. Well, at least there is one thing that is quite a showstopper: PDF/PS export. PS export misses gradients and transparency. PDF export is missing at all. Without it, Inkscape is far from being my number one vector app.

But I am looking forward to google's summer of code (http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html). There is a task by the inkscape people to implement pdf export (by extracting the pdf export stuff from Scribus) and others. Hope some clever guy will implement it properly. Oh, well, it seems that no one will do it: http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SOC_Accept ed_Proposals

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about that, but does PS support transparency and gradients? I think PDF does, but I'm not sure about PS.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want better PDF export then please help test the gnome-print integration

Alternatively you can export the SVG and use Scribus to produce high quality PDF from the SVG.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's the developers fault your spyware ridden, improperly maintain OS is their fault. Try cleaning up your system; Norton Utilities, or other cleaner/registry tools will work. Go through your registry and remove all unnecessary junk in the various startup paths.

Or just re-install and stop clicking on links that ask you to run this kool n3w appz!

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[Anonymous Coward]

How can one help?

The vector illustrations I created so far were not trivial at all. The imported svg in Scribus was messed up quite a lot. Don't know if this was Inkscape's or Scribus' fault. I also tried FOP with Batik, but I had not much success. Mostly because I haven't found much time for that, I guess.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[syousef]

Known bug on Windows, we even have a patch for it but that patch must go into Freetype, so it's not there yet.

See you've lost the average end user right there. They couldn't care less about the technical details of which module needs updating and how. They just know there's been a problem using the software and that there are likely to be more problems. If they consider the problem serious enough or inconvenient enough they'll avoid the software all together. If they don't they'll still curse every time it happens.

Here's an analogy: Do you care why the seats are uncomfortable on a plane? That the seat designer had a budget or a set of physical specifications. No, you just hate uncomfortable seats on planes. Now if the problem was more serious, say in the engine, well we're talking life and death so you'd be a lot less likely to fly on it.

People just want stuff to work. Even the act of reporting the bug is a pain to them. The average end user will take the stance that it shouldn't have happened in the first place (even if they pay nothing for the software). Harsh and unfair. Yes. But that's life and that's what you'll need to deal with if you want the program to see wider use (which you do seem to want).

If I do that, and if the crash is real, I'll keep getting more and more reports on it from different people.

At that point it's too late. If you've fobbed off a few people, they'll tell their friends, put it up in message boards etc. and you'll lose more than just those few people.

Look, I admire what you're doing and I don't want to be a pain in your behind. I wouldn't post this long just to hassle you or if I didn't think what you were doing was good. But you and every other Linux developer with these attitudes need to either stop complaining that Linux hasn't taken off or address these issues and realities instead of brushing them off.

Personally I'll be looking at your product again in the very near future. I don't have a use for it just now so it's not worth my effort dealing with bugs, but it's good to know that it's around and will get better.

Serious question for you. How hard would it be to adapt the product to deal with Visio style drawings? There are Visio clones out there but none are very good (although I don't know what patent issues there would be in creating a better one). I'd look at the code for myself but my speciality is Java enterprise apps and frankly I don't have the time to invest in this to be of much benefit to anyone.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

> See you've lost the average end user right there.

So? Are you proposing to hold off releases until all bugs are fixed? And not only our bugs but also bugs in the libs we use (and these bugs are a very significant share of the total)? This will never happen.

> At that point it's too late. If you've fobbed off a few people, they'll tell their friends, put it up in message boards etc. and you'll lose more than just those few people.

I doubt that. People rarely bother to complain. If something does not work, they shrug and forget it. If it does work, and works better than expected, then they will remember it and tell everyone. We just need to get the critical mass of people for whom it works better than they expected, and then it will be a snowball.

I hate to say it but it will never work perfectly for _everyone_. Even single-platform commercial software with years-long release cycles does crash and misbehave all the time. People put up with it because it "basically" works for them and the good they get from it is bigger than the bad.

Every crash scares people away, but every cool feature or smooth usability trick lures them in. Our release policy is a matter of finding an optimal balance between these two, unfortunately inseparable, trends. Obviously, over time we'll be shifting this balance towards more stability and conservatism, as all apps do in their lifetimes. But at this point in time I see it as more important to register our claim to fame and get more people excited about us.

And finally, note that at this stage, a majority of bugs (and nearly 100% of crash bugs) are caused by platforms and configurations that are different from those of the developers. For example on my system Inkscape is ABSOLUTELY stable, I can run it for days and days and do absolutely anything to it. Problems only start when other people run it on their own wildly different systems. And so the ONLY way to fix these problems is to get it out there for as much people as possible to test and abuse - even at the risk of "alienating" some users by crashes. That's why we make releases with known bugs.

> How hard would it be to adapt the product to deal with Visio style drawings?

If by that you mean connectors that follow object around, then yes, we have a Google-funded student working on this right now. Hopefully the results will go into the next release.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[syousef]

So? Are you proposing to hold off releases until all bugs are fixed? And not only our bugs but also bugs in the libs we use (and these bugs are a very significant share of the total)? This will never happen.

I'm proposing you don't proclaim this as a stable release unless it's rock solid so you don't lose your users.

I doubt that. People rarely bother to complain. If something does not work, they shrug and forget it

If it doesn't work and they do bother to complain and you treat them with suspiscion until its repeatable (which is what you implied in an earlier post), you can bet they'll just toss the software.

Look, honestly I'm not trying to put you down here. I'm trying to help you understand that you need to not come across as abrassive or indifferent to user complaints if you truely want your product to succeed.

You seem to be an intelligent guy, and dealing with people is not easy nor is it a natural skill to everyone (otherwise we wouldn't have marketting and customer relations departments). Be very careful what you say and how you say it and you and your product have a healthy future. Ignore this point and plough through with only the technical side and I guarantee no matter what the technical merits of the product it will remain a fringe product and you won't find many people getting excited about it.

You can take what I say on board or you can consider it flamebait and ignore me. That's up to you.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[bbyakk]

> I'm proposing you don't proclaim this as a stable release unless it's rock solid so you don't lose your users.

Heh. Some people complain that we use a less than 1 version number. Others complain that we "proclaim it as stable." Will you please argue it out between you, first? :)

In any case, this is in all probability the MOST stable of all releases we've ever had. And I see no reasons for us not to say so.

> If it doesn't work and they do bother to complain and you treat them with suspiscion until its repeatable (which is what you implied in an earlier post)

You may try to read into my posts what you like, but what I really said was that we go to great lengths to extract useful information from each and every bug report. Which is often difficult because a good share of them is anonymous and provides almost no details, sometimes even no platform. Only when an anonymous bug report with developers' questions remains unanswered and unconfirmed for a long time, we close it. Where you found "suspicion" in this process is a mystery to me.

> Be very careful what you say and how you say it and you and your product have a healthy future.

I don't think I said anything which is untrue or insults anyone, which is what matters to me. As to the rest, I'm indeed not the right person to discuss "marketing strategies" - I'm not interested in this sort of stuff. I'm convinced that being honest and open is the best marketing strategy anyway. Future will tell if I'm right or not.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing

[syousef]

Heh. Some people complain that we use a less than 1 version number. Others complain that we "proclaim it as stable." Will you please argue it out between you, first? :)

Okay first how are these two things mutually exclusive? I think both are reasonable requests though you'd have to assess whether or not you have time for a stable and unstable build. As for complaining about it being proclaimed stable but not being stable when you try it out how is that an unreasonable complaint? Whether or not you said it was stable the way you worded it you implied the product was ready for public consumption.

I'm not interested in this sort of stuff. I'm convinced that being honest and open is the best marketing strategy anyway.

That's why I don't think your product's going to take off. It may not be fun to you but it is necessary to manage the people side too when you're delivering a product. (A hell of a lot of Linux developers don't understand this or choose to ignore it then wonder why Linux hasn't taken off). I didn't say you had to be dishonest in any of my posts - just tactful. It is actually a lot harder to build a product honestly (but personally I think that's worth it).

As I said at least you used a below 1.0 product number and posted to a technical board, but man get your act together and work on your people skills and you'll be much happier and more successful.

I'm with you.

[shmlco]

I'm with you. The /. introduction seems to have been written by an ex-politician's speachwriter. It used lots of colorful words but, in the end, I still had no clue what the program did or who it was for. Sounds exciting though. Heck, I'll vote for 'em!!!

Re:I'm with you.

[steelfood]

What I find particularly funny is that the summary is almost begging for the homepage to be slashdotted. If everyone knew what inkscape was beforehand, it would make sense that they'd all go to the sourceforge site to download the binaries first. After all, given the number of people who RTFA here, it'd make more sense that everyone would go to the homepage to troubleshoot their problems only after trying out the program first.

Perhaps it was written by a politician after all.

OS X version not Aquafied.

[Yaztromo]

For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.

I'm a bit disappointed, as this does make it somewhat less nice to use on OS X, however it isn't v1.0 yet, so I'll remain hopefully optimistic.

Yaz.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a program for its functionnality; not because it doesn't have transparent blue buttons !

I sure it not a priority for inkscape, and that really ok for me.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having a working system clipboard is a functionality problem.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[prockcore]

For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.

Well, if Apple didn't make it damn-near impossible for C and C++ apps to use Aqua, then maybe more cross-platform apps would use it.

As it is, you'll have to rewrite a good chunk of Inkscape in ObjC in order to use Aqua.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[michaeldot]

Well, if Apple didn't make it damn-near impossible for C and C++ apps to use Aqua, then maybe more cross-platform apps would use it.

This is a nonsensical statement. Photoshop, and most other cross-platform apps are written in C/C++, use Aqua (of course), and have no code at all in Objective-C.

Mac OS X has two main APIs: Carbon (C/C++) and Cocoa (Objective-C). Both have full access to the GUI.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Rylz]

This brings up something I've been wondering. If GTK had an Aqua version, Inkscape as well as a LOT of useful programs could run natively in Aqua. Hey, it's been ported to Windows, porting to Aqua shouldn't be too much harder... But then again I have no experience with developing for Aqua so I guess I can't really talk.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Trillan]

I think you need to revisit your assumptions. I code only in C++ and have had no problem making Aqua-looking applications.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[J. Random Luser]

Never mind Aqua, X11's OK for starters, .... if it starts. I just d/l'ed, unpacked, pushed the go button, saw X11 start, thought "uhuh..." then nada, zilch, rien de tout. Que? An Inkscape menu that offered choice to Hide Inkscape, Hide Others, Quit. Preference files had installed in expected places. Went back to inkscape.org in case I'd missed something. Then twenty-whole-five-minutes of browsing later a new inkscape document window springs from heaven. There's more to this than meets the eye, Gunga Din...

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[merphant]

I have been using Inkscape on OS X a lot lately, and it works pretty well; there is an Inkscape.app so when you open an SVG file in the Finder, it will open X11 and then open the file with Inkscape.

The unix binary is somewhere inside the .app (which is really just a special type of directory) so you can call it from the command line. This is useful because you can convert SVG files to PNG or PS via the command line with Inkscape. This is really nice for me since I have been making a lot of technical illustrations lately; I do them all in Inkscape's GUI and then I run a Makefile to batch convert them into PNGs or PS files for inclusion into documentation, web pages, etc. Someone also got sponsorship from Google's Summer of Code to work on auto line routing, e.g. for connecting pieces of a schematic; I am really looking forward to this.

There are a few minor glitches; the most noticeable to me is that Inkscape.app won't open a file from the Finder if Inkscape is already running.

Also, Hubert Figuiere, one of AbiWord's developers, has been working on a GTK port to OS X, although it's not in usable shape yet, from what I understand.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Yaztromo]

Then twenty-whole-five-minutes of browsing later a new inkscape document window springs from heaven.

Just FYI, I'm seeing similar behaviour, although in my case I think it was more like 5 minutes before it popped on screen. Ugh.

Yaz.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[DoubleEdd]

You can call any application from the command line... 'open -a Inkscape' f'example.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Anonymous Coward]

Patience! The three people in the world that code for Mac are busy. They will get to it, shortly.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[alanQuatermain]

Actually, the graphics routines in Mac OS X are all C. Check out Quartz 2D for the raw graphics APIs, and the Human Interface Toolbox, particularly HIView and the base class (and methods for designing/registering your own classes), HIObject.

Windows are created using the Carbon Window Manager, and then you use the Quartz-based HIToolbox methods to manage and manipulate UI objects themselves. Documentation for all this (along with a porting guide from Mac Toolbox to HIToolbox) is available here.

On top of all this, the HIToolbox APIs are built around the model-view-controller architecture, so are well-suited for use in a segregated UI layer within a cross-platform application -- such as Inkscape.

-Q

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[TomorrowPlusX]

Not only that, but you're absolutely free to use C++ with Cocoa, via Objective-C++.

In one of my programs, with about a 60 kloc codebase, I have a full and I'd like to believe rich 100% Aqua gui, written in Cocoa, acting as a front end to the engine which is 100% cross platform C++ ( brought over from linux where I originally wrote it ). In fact, my program's about 90% pure C++, and the binding to the Cocoa gui is fairly clean and extensible.

Apple has done a wonderful job, I found it a real pleasure to develop. And, to all the haters, if they care to listen: It took me about 1 weekend to become comfortable with ObjectiveC.

If ObjectiveC is your primary complaint, then, please burn your programmer hat. You don't deserve the title. Any programmer worth his salt can generally pick up a language fairly quickly ( admittedly, funcitonal languages are a different matter ).

Finally, ObjectiveC & Cocoa are hardly new, or creaky. They've undergone *years* of development and R&D, starting in the 80's with NextStep. They make for an amazingly solid and robust development environment.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a secondary platform, deal with it.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[MenTaLguY]

He's talking about e.g. using it for automation in shell scripts though. You can use Inkscape non-interactively to batch-render SVGs and stuff.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[MenTaLguY]

Any programmer worth his salt can generally pick up a language fairly quickly ( admittedly, funcitonal languages are a different matter ).

I dunno, once get proficient in your first functional language, they're all pretty much the same, just like imperative languages are. Just a different set of commmon tools to pick up.

Admittedly, functional languages do have less uniform syntax; in the imperative world, the syntax of Algol 60 (and often its descendant, C) tends to dominate. But syntax is just icing.

Side note: it is getting interesting now that "traditional" languages are becoming increasingly functional. Ten years ago, in how many commonly-used scripting languages would you have expected to find first-class functions, lexical closures or first-class continuations? I expect functional languages (with convenient impurities) will be the norm in another 10-20 years.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[MenTaLguY]

Known issue, though as far as I know we've not been able to track it down yet. It appears to happen only on the first invocation.

Happened to me too, though the delay was much shorter.

How many fonts do you have installed, OOC? Two of the current working theories for the delay are prelinking and font cache building.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[MenTaLguY]

Hey, it's an issue on the other platforms as well. Give the guy some slack, it's a valid complaint.

Re:OS X version not Aquafied.

[merphant]

Sure, you can call 'open -a Whatever' to run a Mac program from the command line but I was specifically talking about the unix binary; the open command won't pass command line args like --help, --version, etc. to it. You have to run the binary explicitly AFAIK, like '/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin /inkscape --help'

side-to-side scrolling

[hjo3]

With as much as these guys must know about graphic design, you'd think they could make a web site where you wouldn't have to scroll from side to side... and I'm at 1280x1024... man.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... get a better web browser buddy.. the site renders just fine, and I'm at 1280x1024.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, need a new web browser. Such as Opera. The web site works fine for me at window sizes down to 120px wide, which is as small as it will let me go.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[VoidWraith]

An IE user? Well, the reason it doesn't work is because IE doesn't feel like complying with standardized web design. So go get yourself a browser that does, like Firefox (unless you want to pay for Opera, or tolerate ads, in which case, go for it.)

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[anagama]

I'm also at 1280x1024. In my SuSE 9.1 system with an old mozilla (1.6), and a newer firefox (1.0.4) and an older konqueror (3.2.1) -- whether windowed or full screen -- I have no sideways scrolling at all.

Ok, let's try harder: G3 433mhz clamshell ibook, 800x600 resolution, safari 1.3, running at full screen (I didn't try shrinking the window): no sideways scrolling. How about my 15" 1.5ghz G4 powerbook: no sideways scrolling. Firefox 1.0.4 on my powerbook also doesn't have sideways scrolling despite not being run full screen.

Finally, firefox 1.0.2 (hmm, better upgrade that) on a toshiba pIII laptop, 1024x768, running Ubuntu Hoary -- again no sideways scrolling, windowed or full screen.

Oh, and for what it's worth, no sideways scrolling using lynx either. ;-)

Just what is it you are using?

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[shadow_slicer]

That's odd. In my (Mozilla 1.7.10) browser their website only does side-to-side scrolling if I set my window to less than 661 pixels wide...
(and that's with the text at 100% -- I usually surf at 90%...)

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

this might be a brilliant troll, but the site works fine for me in the newest firefox.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

So far I've tried IE 6, 5.5, 5.01, 4.01, and 3.0; Mozilla 0.8 to 1.7.8; Phoenix 0.4 and 0.5; Firebird 0.6.1 and 0.7; Firefox 0.9.1, 1.0, and 1.1 and NCSA Mosaic 2.0 (doesn't even show the correct page...silly HTTP 1.0 =/) all at 1280x1024. None of them showed a horizontal scrollbar. When I tried Netscape 4.72, it finally displayed a horizontal scrollbar, but the page didn't render well at all. If you're using Netscape 4.72, it's time to upgrade.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[hjo3]

Sorry, forgot where I was... how many days at the pillory is it again for using IE? :P

But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?

(FTR, I don't use vanilla IE; I use the Avant shell. So I still get tabbed browing, mouse gestures, ad-blocking, etc.)

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

For reference, I could replicate with IE Version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[ocelotbob]

Point still stands. Stop using that prehistoric rendering engine. Quit holding back web features for insisting on using that old-ass broken web browser.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[tehdaemon]

FWIW, the firefox in hoary does have all the security updates backported to it. This actually causes a minor problem 'cause the firefox guys won't let you get new extensions for the old versions. - there is a workaround for hoary though.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Bryce]

But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?

Not really. First off, I think people are going to judge Inkscape's value not by its website but by how good the application itself is.

Second, our "audience" is not just any random user, but rather those good users that are likely to also contribute to Inkscape in some way - testing, bug reports, PR, patches -- or even just helping us improve the website. People who are unable or unwilling to install a proper Open Source web browser are probably also not the type of good people that would be contributing Inkscape. Thus, IE users are probably not our target audience anyway.

Third, building a huge userbase is not really among Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great application that helps make Open Source successful, and we want to promote Open Standards and do what we can to help other Open Source projects. Thus, while we'd like to look good in all browsers, it's most important that we look good in the Open Source browsers, even if (especially if!) they represent only 15% of the marketshare.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?

I doubt that 85%+ of inkscape.org's web traffic uses IE. I would put the number at 60% or less for an open source site like inkscape.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[J. Random Luser]

But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?

No. I'm on an Amaya list, and it's pathetic to watch the wimpering about W3C compliant stuff that won't work for IE. Come to think of it SVG wasn't invented in Redmond either, so don't expect Inkscape files to be readable by anything else on a windoze box.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[typical]

when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser

I keep forgetting that there's a Windows port of this thing.

Just as an aside, I've been underwhelmed by reliability of Windows ports of a number of open source software packages -- dia, the other day, was regularly crashing on some guy trying to use it on Windows.

Of course, on my Linux box, no problems.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you make websites harder to create because developers can't use lots of useful parts of the seven year-old CSS 2 specification.

Yeah, lots of other people use Internet Explorer too. Stop being part of the problem.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[starwed]

Using Firefox, try increasing the text size a few times (Ctrl + Scrollwheel down, or Ctrl + Plus). Something weird happens at a certain point. ^_^ Not quite sure why, but it amused me.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I would put the number at 60% or less for an open source site like inkscape.

Any other figures you'd like to pull out of your ass?

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[nagora]

But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?

Not if it doesn't work, no. Supporting it simply means that MS have no pressure to fix it. Look at it this way: MS don't give a toss about web designers complaining, but there's a lot more users. They might listen to them if there's enough complaints. On a good day. With a tail wind. If the intern answers the phone...

TWW

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[DMadCat]

Let me get this straight...

You're actually berating a site for not breaking with W3C standards so it can conform to one corporation's attempt to control standards?

Because your horribly insecure, outdated browser doesn't display it properly?

And your attempt to further support your reasoning is to argue that the rest of the herd uses it?

o.O

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, he's in good company. Everyone knows that 63.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Thenomain]

> Third, building a huge userbase is not really among
> Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great
> application that helps make Open Source successful

As much as I like Inkspace so far, isn't popularity a rather large standard for judging success of a product? Especially one with such a P.R.-minded goal as "making Open Source successful"?

The only other option I see at the moment is to make tools that would make other Open Source projects easier to accomplish.

I guess I don't readily know the terms of "success" that Open Source has. If it's not to be reasonably widely accepted, easy to use, and able to help other open-source projects, I don't know what it is.

Re:side-to-side scrolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Same version over here and no horizontal scroll. Strange behavior =/

OSS Threats

[null etc.]

Good thing Bill Gates doesn't run Adobe... Otherwise he'd be releasing a press statement proclaiming how dangerous open software is.

Re:OSS Threats

[-kertrats-]

Yes, because he hasn't had reason to proclaim such a statement yet.

Re:OSS Threats

[Crayon Kid]

Good thing Bill Gates doesn't run Adobe... Otherwise he'd be releasing a press statement proclaiming how dangerous open software is.

Actually, I was just thinking of Adobe and Corel when I saw this piece of news. It's become obvious, to me at least, that eventually the open source model will produce worthy competition even in those fields that had always been lacking. You know, games, graphics editing, video editing and so on.

Given that most people aren't professionals, they can probably move from their [coughpiratedcough] copy of Illustrator to Inkscape and not miss much.

Of course, professionals will still keep buying the big thing, at least for another while. So you can say that the likes of Adobe and Corel won't miss much. But I have to wonder anyway if they'll take this lying down.

Re:OSS Threats

[Eivind Eklund]

I've programmed in each of these areas (through a past as a commercial games developer) - and I've been heavily involved in open source projects for a long time now. Open source competing in the area of graphics editing and video editing seems likely. Competiting in the area of games? Much less likely. From a development point of view, today's games are not a programming proposition. Graphics, sound, and story are more work than programming. The development work division are closer to that of movie production than that of traditional application development. In addition, games generally get "spent". People play them for a while, then throw them away, rather than doing ongoing use of them (and thus ending up fixing things in them). The distance between enjoying playing a game and enjoying fixing things in it is much, much larger than for an application. There are a lot of amateur movies being produced, and while these can often be fun to watch, calling them "Worthy competition for the Hollywood movies" just isn't true - simply shown by almost everybody choosing to watch mostly Hollywood movies instead of the low budget ones, including the kind of people that *do* know a lot about the amateur films produced. These things might change over time, of course - media production gets simpler all the time - yet it still seems that gap between professionals and hobbyists is widening instead of tightening. Eivind.

Oh sweet mistress

[azdruid]

As an avid user of Inkscape, I have followed the Inkscape development process closely throughout all the betas released leading up to this version. This is probably the OSS application I use the most, aside from Linux and Firefox of course. Inkscape's original base code was from the Sodipodi vector editor, which had an interface resembling that of the GIMP. The primary goal of the Inkscape project was to take that codebase and write a GTK interface conforming to the GNOME standards, as well as adding many new features. Even though the early releases were notoriously unstable, the feel of 0.42 is significantly improved over past builds. Even if you are remotely interested in drawing or vector graphics, I recommend you take a look at Inkscape. It still doesn't have any of the fancy features in Fireworks, which I do hope will someday be added, but right now its probably the best FOSS vector editor. And it uses SVG too, a nice opensource XML standard. Downloads are available for Linux and Windows.

Re:Oh sweet mistress

[syousef]

Hmmm. I downloaded it and put nice pretty shapes into a blank document. But every time I select the Text tool and click on the page the application freezes and does not respond. (I'm on Windows XP SP2 here by the way).

I hope this is an unimplemented feature. Given that I can't add text to the document I'll skip this until it matures.

Re:Oh sweet mistress

[bbyakk]

> every time I select the Text tool and click on the page the application freezes

Known bug on Windows, we even have a patch for it but that patch must go into Freetype, so it's not there yet.

Re:Oh sweet mistress

[pbhj]

Me too!

I came to Inkscape from Sodipodi for the same reason - the GUI.

Have been using it extensively on WinXP and Slackware Linux (now on v.10). It does have some instabilities but I haven't found it any less stable than Firefox.

When 0.41 came out with patterns and text-on-a-curve I was actually excited - I use Inkscape for doing advertising stuff and for designing pngs for my websites.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Not 1.0?

[NachoDaddy]

Nice looking program and all, but WTF is it with all these 'less than 1.0' releases? I mean jesus, enough with the beta mentality. You've let this program out into the wild, so it's released. Number it appropriately. Seems like every other FOSS project out there is too gun shy to finally call it 1.0

Re:Not 1.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just take it as a challenge - learn numbers between 0 an 1. It's not that hard you know...

Re:Not 1.0?

[khellendros1984]

Under 1.0 doesn't necessarily mean beta...in many cases, it just means that the program hasn't had a re-write/major change yet...
[x].x.x for BIG changes, x.[x].x for feature additions, x.x.[x] for bugfixes.

That's how the version system worked traditionally, anyhow.

Re:Not 1.0?

[Bryce]

Despite all the features added to Inkscape, we still are not 100% conformant with even the most minimal SVG specs. We figure that it makes sense to keep the version number

Thus consider achieving compliance against one of the specs to be a BIG change worthy of a full point rev. We also have x.x.[x] releases for emergency bug fixes, but thankfully these have been rare, thanks to the meticulous testing that users contribute in the run-ups to our releases.

So, be patient, and expect to see a few more 0.xx releases before we hit 1.0. Meanwhile, enjoy the program. :-)

Re:Not 1.0?

[Punboy]

Well, lets see here... Its buggy, its non feature-complete.

Lets all get off the must-have-production-version-now mentality and actually have betas and non-1.0 releases BEFORE production releases, to work out the bugs. Do you have any idea how much better Windows would be if it operated like that? :-p

Re:Not 1.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice looking program and all, but WTF is it with all these 'less than 1.0' releases? I mean jesus, enough with the beta mentality. You've let this program out into the wild, so it's released. Number it appropriately.

So, you're saying that as soon as a program is released, it should be called 1.0?

/* ManuCAD, the perfect Autocad clone */
/* Release 0.0.1, oh sorry, 1.0 */

int main() {
/* FIXME: Add code here */
                return 0;
}

Re:Not 1.0?

[typical]

Well, it's because the open source world doesn't suffer from version inflation, as the closed source world currently is, because it doesn't need to push its products through marketers.

V1.0 is when the thing is feature-complete, usable, and ideally "done" in its current form.

V2.0 comes if people decide that the architecture of the program needs to be redone and redo it.

Re:Not 1.0?

[NachoDaddy]

If you release a version to the public, you need to call it 1.0. I'm not suggesting going crazy with versions like closed source software driven by marketing, I'm just saying you have a version out there in the wild, call it #1. Add a few minor features, call it 1.1. Fix a bug, call it 1.01, same as everyone else, just start at 1.0. Numbers are free, and I'm pretty sure what my calculus teacher was saying is that you'll never run out of them.

I can understand you have put some artificial goal on yourselves to be 100% SVG compliant before it's done, but there is no software god that will strike you down for being 50% SVG compliant, and still calling it 1.0. You even call them 'releases', and have testing that goes on before a 'release'.

Only reason I bring it up, and I'm not saying you guys do this, but I have seen FOSS developers hide behind 1.0 for several years, and every bug, crappy UI, or anything wrong, the excuse is, 'Well it's beta software, if you don't like it you can wait for 1.0'.

Re:Not 1.0?

[shiller]

That'S so right. An extreme exampleof a 'less than 1.0' releases in my opinion is Wings3d. It's now for years 0.9X.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=33028&package_id=25098

But, of course, it's the developers choice whenever to go 1.0.

Re:Not 1.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

What gives you the right or expertise to tell the developers what version something has to be. If they choose to call it 1.0, 2.6, "blue edition" or "NachoMomma", what is it to you?

F/OSS development does not operate in a vacuum, and frequent prereleases are part of the model and slapping a 1.0 on something does NOTHING to stabilize or improve it.

You come off as a pinhead with an axe to grind.

User experience

[Anonymous Coward]

My daughter was helping a friend, at the friend's house, with a magazine layout. The friend didn't have a decent graphics package. My daughter did a google and Inkscape popped up. She downloaded it and installed it on the friend's Windows box.

It was enough like CorelDraw that there was essentially no learning curve. The result was excellent.

So there you have it. Unaware that the program existed to professional graphics in around three hours. Not bad. Actually, there was a lot of other research taking place in those three hours (yes, magazine layouts require research).

Naturally, my daughter wanted it on her computer at home. I couldn't get it to install under Mandrake 10.0 (I tried everything) so I nuked that and installed Mepis. Even then I had to modify sources.list. My daughter is quite good with CorelDraw and that is one of the things she missed when she moved to Linux (Sims is the other). She is very pleased to have Inkscape.

Pressure

[Solder Fumes]

Yeah, that's great and all, lots of work, but I'm still not that interested while the application continues to not support pressure sensitivity for my tablet.

Re:Pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. I agree with you. How dare these people donate all this time and effort into producing an open-source vector drawing application and have the audacity to not include pressure sensitivity for your tablet.

I'm not using it either until Solder Fumes demands are met.

Re:Pressure

[Solder Fumes]

I'm not saying the software sucks, I understand the amount of work put into it so far. I'm just saying that until they include pressure sensitivity, I'm not going to get excited about it because I'm not going to be switching to it.

Re:Pressure

[KylePflug]

That's where I am too. I'll probably download and play with it, but pressure sensitivity is important to me. Come on, even Windows Journal does that ;)

Re:Pressure

[temojen]

Why do you need pressure sensitivity for a vector graphics package?

Re:Pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

Line widths and other effects can be tied to pressure. Various techniques are impossible (or at least tedious) without pressure sensitive effects.

Re:Pressure

[dreamer-of-rules]

Acceleration.

Re:Pressure

[maxmg]

Easy - the "Calligraphy" tool. With pressure sensitivity (or some of the more advanced angle/tilt stuff found in high-end graphics tablets), this allows you to vary the width/angle of the stroke.

Look at any comic book - the ink lines (which are normally drawn with a brush) vary a lot in width to give the drawing a much more dynamic feel.

This is something that can be very useful for a vector-based drawing program.

That said, I have been using Inkscape for quite a while and am extremely happy with it. I wasn't even tempted to pirate illustrator or something similar. Big kudos to the Inkscape developers.

However, one very notable missing feature is the "Gradient Mesh" function found in illustator. After looking at the SVG standard, I understand why it is not there - the standard in its current form cannot support free-form gradients. I have been thinking of how to implement this, but I cannot think of a clean, non-hacky, non-workaround way of doing this...

This is very unfortunate, as this prevents you from drawing things with gradients that are not linear or circular (for example a shaded tube, where the shadow should follow the curve). I noticed in one of the screenshots (the chrome "pills") that the gradients on the pills seem to do just that - however, looking more closely (at the one pill in the bottom left corner), it appears that the caps on the pills are simply separate objects with a circular gradient applied.

Re:Pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want a feature (especially a simple one like pressure sensitivity) in an open source app, the best way to get it is either write it yourself (if you know how) or convince/pay someone else to do it.

Whining on /. probably has about the same chance of success as most slashdot readers have of finding second girlfriend

Re:Pressure

[WWWWolf]

One thing that bugs me about vector apps is that vector apps generally have objects that have solid width edges. If I want to draw an object with variable width edges, I have to draw two objects, one slightly larger than the other, place it underneath the smaller one and color it with the "edge" color, then remove stroke from both objects. It's an illusion, and a hard to manage one at that, because if I want to change the shape, I need to edit both objects.

But what if I could also control the width of the edge at each of the bezier handles? That, integrated to the tablet pressure support, would make the vector graphics editing a lot more flexible and pleasant!

There has to be a feature like this in commercial apps, I think there was such feature in Corel or something... Not sure if it's really doable in SVG, but how about extending it and proposing it for next revision of SVG if it isn't here already?

Re:Pressure

[WWWWolf]

Look, Inkscape rocks, it's just that without some key features, it's going to be far less glorious than the competition. What Inkscape folks are done so far is amazing, and the new features added here are going to please those who long for more features previously only found in pro apps. Everybody just hopes they'll keep on introducing more such cool features.

When Inkscape has pressure sensitivity all around, it's going to instantly go from "neat, but could be better" to "good enough for me, and where can I get my fanatic membership card?".

Pressure sensitivity is a pretty important thing for pro graphics apps. I got easily caught into using GIMP, they got pressure sensitivity in fairly early on (in 1.1 series, I think) and honestly think they would have been far less cool if they hadn't done that; I sure hope Inkscape's pressure support will be there and will rock just as much.

Why not sodipodi

[Bitsy Boffin]

One wonders why inkscape was started when we already have sodipodi which is a pretty good GPLd SVG drawing package already.

http://www.sodipodi.com/

Re:Why not sodipodi

[Bitsy Boffin]

Guess I should have RTFWebsite...

Q: Why the split from Sodipodi?

Mainly just differences in objectives and in development approach. Inkscape's objective is to be a fully compliant SVG editor, whereas for Sodipodi SVG is more a means-to-an-end of being a powerful vector illustration tool. Inkscape's development approach emphasizes open developer access to the codebase, as well as to use and contribute back to 3rd party libraries and standards such as HIG, CSS, etc. in preference to custom solutions.

For background, it may also be worth reviewing Lauris' Sodipodi direction post from Oct 2003, and his thoughts on SVG, licensing, and the value of splitting the project into two independent branches.

Oops.

Re:Why not sodipodi

[Anthony Boyd]

In addition to your own response, let me just add this: Inkscape is the answer for "why Inkscape?" In other words, it is really proving to be both easy to use and powerful. I can get things done with Inkscape. It has readily justified itself.

I could get things done with Sodipodi, too. I was using it back when it was the only FOSS option I could find. At the time, Sodipodi's interface was "meh" at best, and what I heard was that you needed that kind of interface to do such complicated stuff. When Inkscape forked, I nearly whooped with glee -- they did more, did it better, and made it easier.

I couldn't believe it, but I was pretty damn happy. So, why Inkscape? Well, Inkscape is friendlier, Inkscape is growing faster, Inkscape is proving its worth.

Now all it needs is stability. I've never had it crash on me (or at least, I don't recall it), but I have had it just suddenly eat up hundreds of megs of RAM and start paging to disk. I'm (sadly) patient enough to wait an hour for it to settle down, then keep going. But ugh. Needs more work on that front.

-Tony

Re:Why not sodipodi

[Makzu]

Then there's the fact that Sodipodi apparently hasn't had a release in almost a year and a half, and the nightly builds linked from their front page only go up to about November of last year.

Sounds a bit like abandonware to me, especially in comparison to Inkscape (which has been under development like crazy for a while now).

impressive

[minus_273]

this is a very impressive open source application. I widh they were all made like this.

Re:impressive

[LupeSpywalper]

this is a very impressive open source application. I widh they were all made like this.

What's the fun in having 50000 SVG editors ?

Ink

[Continental Drift]

I swear, when I saw this I thought it was a joke entry for someone publishing a pen. I imagined that April 1st came late this year.

What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[a whoabot]

What's the best open source(read: usable on Linux) replacement for Corel's Painter? The GIMP?

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[TomHandy]

By replacement for Painter wouldn't you be looking for something that had Painter's focus on replicating various forms of natural and artifial artistic mediums, paints, etc.? Seems like that would be something other than the GIMP. Not quite sure exactly what else is available out there though.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[nitemayr]

Ah, I think you'd be looking for Artrage Maybe. It's free and is a nice "natural paint" type art application...
I hope this helps!

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[TomHandy]

That looks pretty interesting. Not quite sure if it's a Painter replacement, but does look like a good focus on natural media (at least painting).

Not sure if that will be what the above poster was looking for though, as this seems to only be available for Windows and OS X, not Linux.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the best open source(read: usable on Linux) replacement for Corel's Painter? The GIMP?

Sorry, but I don't think the GIMP can replace anything. I really, really, wish it could, but the interface it way too fucked up.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[TomHandy]

Sorry, have to correct myself. It does offer some other choices (pencil, crayon, etc.). The natural media effects seem to be pretty impressive. Not saying that anyone's going to ditch Painter for this (i.e. no layers, none of the advanced stuff, the shear variety of control over tons of different natural media), but it definitely seems pretty nice, especially for free.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[Chandon Seldon]

Yea... a shareware package that runs on Mac OS and Windows is a good response to a request for open source software that runs on Linux.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[typical]

There are currently no usable open source natural-media art programs that I am aware of.

Your best bet, if you need/strongly want to use Linux, is to use WINE.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be Corel Painter for Linux.

Ask Corel for one.

Cheers.

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft bought out the remains of the Fractal products. The drawing program is now offered as Acrylic (previous name was Expression): http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[nitemayr]

Hey, that's pretty brilliant, the way you criticized my post without offering anything even slightly constructive information. You must be some sort of pundit. Is this *really* Sean Hannity or are you Nancy Grace?

Maybe you can follow me around and take back my cash for me when I give it to the Salvation Army, then throw it in the street, remiding me that spare change is not as good as stocks and bonds?

Perhaps you might slap the fries from my daughters mouth if I take her to McDonalds, because fries aren't really good food?

Maybe, it's just maybe you are simply an ass who decided that since I offered something you didn't like as an answer you'd jump on me.

I cede the high ground to you, oh mighty one. What software can you suggest?

Re:What's the best replacement for Corel Painter?

[Chandon Seldon]

I think that Gnumeric would be a perfect fit for this situation. It performs a useful function, and it's open source software that runs on Linux.

Oh, wait. No. If I suggested that I'd be doing what you did - posting completely random and off topic suggestions because of distant similarities with the topic at hand.

Re:Grab your package....

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.... I prefer Linux just like most of us, but I like my GF better.

Yeah, i like your GF better, too.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Heaven forbid...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that they actually tell us what the fuck the program does in the story!

Window Decorations

[chris_eineke]

Take a look at the screenshots and tell me that you didn't notice some really /ugly/ window decorations. Yeah, I know -- it's the inside that counts --, but come on? ;)

Re:Window Decorations

[dave420]

Seriously. It looked like complete ass. I had to stop looking at the screenshots.

What was the question now that ultimate answer

[Anonymous Coward]

is revealed to us mortals?

This looks REALLY slick!

[5plicer]

It's high time someone put out a decent alternative to Adobe Illustrator :)

Plus, it's build on SVG instead of PostScript, PDF, or Flash!

Well, is aqua open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, then port it. If not, TFB.

What would be more revolutionary...

[kuzb]

...is the poster actually letting people know what inkscape is so we don't have to click on the link to figure that out.

Re:What would be more revolutionary...

[CrosseyedPainless]

My most recent guess is, that the submitter gets paid per click on the explanatory page. The editor is complicit, or clueless, take your pick.

Re:What would be more revolutionary...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that overwhelming effort of a single click to enlighten you is just too much?

Or are you annoyed at having to put down your slice of pizza in order to do so?

Re:What would be more revolutionary...

[kuzb]

You mean, like how you couldn't be bothered to log in to make your flame?

Well, I did click, and since vector drawing is of absolutely no use to me, it was a waste of time. Generally when you talk about software in the article body, you give *some* indication as to what it's about. Giving the impression that it's something that every user simply can't live without is absolutely stupid.

In other news, it's really good pizza!

Mozilla 1.5 will have SVG

[XBL]

The development builds supports SVG already. There has been basically a broken implementation around for a while, but they rewrote the SVG back-end for Mozilla 1.5. Link here.

SVG in Mozilla should really rock when they get Cairo implemented! Its Mozilla's bridge to OpenGL 2D acceleration.

Re:Mozilla 1.5 will have SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr, Mozilla 1.5 has been out for... long. You mean Mozilla Firefox which currently has version 1.0.6 of which the new stable will be called version 1.5 as announced earlier this week.

Re:Mozilla 1.5 will have SVG

[temojen]

It seems to REALLY eat CPU on my system.

Athlon(tm) XP 2200+
768MB Ram

mozilla-firefox-1.0.6
cairo-0.1.23
gtk+-2 .6.7
libxml2-2.6.19
XML-Parser-2.34
glib-2.6.4
xorg-x11-6.8.2
nvidia-glx-1.0.6629
linux-2.6.10

Re:Mozilla 1.5 will have SVG

[Nadir]

I think you are referring to Firefox 1.5.

Re:Mozilla 1.5 will have SVG

[maxmg]

And if you look at the Inkscape roadmap, you'll find that in the (distant) future, they intend to use Cairo as the rendering library for inkscape as well.

Re: Scribus

[mpapet]

Scribus is the closest thing that really pursues the print market. Good enough color management and real effort in conquering cmyk. Ties in pretty well with Gimp too.

www.scribus.org.uk

Hmm...

[Tom7]

Exactly at the moment I thought, "hey, this is pretty slick," Inkscape (win32) crashed/exited on me without warning. That was only about ten seconds after launching it. After launching again, it froze on the "open" dialog. Still, I am looking forward to using this when it becomes more stable.

Also, what's wrong with using the standard keyset that Adobe and Macromedia apps use? For example, holding space should enable the panning tool, and holding alt (not shift) should make the zoom tool zoom out rather than in. Also, double-clicking on the zoom tool should revert to "standard" zoom--not open the preferences panel. (??) I realize that these are arbitrary choices, but there is substantial value in making the same arbitrary choices as everyone else, especially if this seeks to be a replacement for those applications.

Wonder why...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I've had it open for about 2.5 hours on WinXP (a machine which freezes regularly when I load PhotoShop). I have several other applications open as well. Still going...

When Does AdobeMedia Sue Them?

[mpapet]

Seriously.

They can't let this kind of thing go on for too long. They sued Macromedia and countless other competitors when they started to look viable.

Creative types might discover there are legitimate alternatives to their pirate>upgrade monopoly. They can't let that happen.

Re:When Does AdobeMedia Sue Them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, sue for what? Copyright infringement?

Please, enlighten us.

If even I can use it effectively...

[HorsePunchKid]

It's sad to me that people do not seem to know what Inkscape is yet. It's a wonderful tool. Others have already made the Inkscape:Illustrator :: Gimp:Photoshop analogy. I would point out, though, that despite my preference of Photoshop over Gimp, Inkscape is far, far easier to use than Illustrator and yet still covers all of the basic vector graphics bases.

Even with my very minimal skill, I've managed to create some decent graphics. Here are a couple of traces, a decent Domo-kun, some calligraphy, and all of the non-photo graphics on this page (hypercube projections) I did in Inkscape. I love it, and it's only on version 0.42!

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[chris_eineke]

Did you just post screenshots of you using a OSS application on Slashdot?

You sick, sick freak.

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[eddison_carter]

I hate to make you sadder, but I don't even really know what illustrator is (I basicly started reading the comments to see the ones on "wth does this program do"

And, btw, why does the fact that people don't know what Inkscape is sadden you? Maybe if this was an all art site ... Should I be sadded that most people have no idea what I'm talking about when I rattle off the tools I use regularly (primarly digital hardware and printed circuit design)

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[HorsePunchKid]

It turns out slashdotting myself was not a good idea. Way to go, self.

If you're trying to load the images, just open a few of 'em in tabs in the background; you'll get through eventually. Sorry about that! :(

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[HorsePunchKid]

It saddens me because I believe (though I have no hard evidence) that the Inkscape team has put vast amounts of work into making their interface easy to use. Usability in the Free / Open Source realm has been getting a lot of negative press lately, and Inkscape should be out there being touted as one of the positive examples, even at this early development stage.

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[eddison_carter]

OK, that I'll give you. Hell, usability in the professional software market isn't great either. I saw a program (for VLSI chip design) that crashed when you clicked on zoom in twice in a row. On a Sun, sometimes totally loging you out of the system, other times killing it off totally. For a $100K/user/year program. (Last year btw).

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[Bryce]

It's sad to me that people do not seem to know what Inkscape is yet. It's a wonderful tool. I would point out, though, that despite my preference of Photoshop over Gimp, Inkscape is far, far easier to use than Illustrator and yet still covers all of the basic vector graphics bases.

No need to be sad! This is easily fixable, but your help is required. Find people who don't know about Inkscape and educate them about it (and about Open Source in general, if needed.) Or write up articles about your experience with it and send them to online or print magazines, blogs, news sites, etc. Or demo it at a LUG or a convention.

Each release, we try to push to reach a slightly larger audience, and we rely on the Inkscape users to help us spread the word.

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[Anonymous Coward]

The interface looks pretty horrible. Sorry.

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[MenTaLguY]

Yes, usability is a deliberate major focus for us.

Not that we're perfect by any means. c.f. the preferences dialog... *shudder*

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[veliath]

Ack!

My anecdote:

I needed to create posters and had just one day to do it. I browsed around for a vector-graphics based drawing tool, hit up on inkscape, tried really hard to compile it and its pieces, but couldn't.

After some more browsing I realize gentoo supports inkscape-0.41 in its portage collection. So I download the gentoo boot-CD and after 2hrs gentoo is ready. In another 2 hrs inkscape-0.41 is ready.

I now had to "learn" inkscape. After about two hours I was comfortable with it. Not obviously intuitive, but intuitive alright. In another four hours the poster was done.

Thank you inkscape and gentoo!

veliath

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[HorsePunchKid]

My anecdote, from the opposite direction in a sense, was that I needed to make a poster, and it also had to be done the next day. What I expected to only take a couple of hours basically turned into an all-nighter, just trying to get Illustrator to do very simple tasks like alignment, path editing, and whatno.

And as I've said, this is from someone who is quite adept with Photoshop; you'd think picking up the Illustrator interface would be easy (even if some of the concepts were rather foreign). I wish I had known about Inkscape then!

Re:If even I can use it effectively...

[veliath]

Me, I work on UNIX kernels for a living. I needed to create posters for an IP Expo where my work was to be demo'ed. The InkScape UI was so natural that after a couple of experiments I managed to make exactly what I wanted.

I even moved my desktop to Gentoo after that - and have been tracking InkScape ever since.

veliath
PS: I own an E-20:-)

Re:I also hate it when...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The amount of new features in this version is astounding."

sounds ok to me?

SVG rasterisation

[csirac]

Inkscape is utterly fantastic, so is SVG.

SVG is an XML format. You can describe arbitrary shapes using basic polylines, circles, squares, etc. and animate it too - all using XML. It's a W3C standard. You can even use CSS for your vector graphics!

I've been working on a very complex piece of software that does some work vectorising bitmaps. It has a non-standard (but basic) intermediate file format that I needed to visualise in a hurry.

By using Perl and installing the SVG lib from CPAN, I was able to write a program in just 3 hours that parsed this app's crazy intermediate line-vector files and turn it into industry standard SVG files that can be viewed with a web browser, or with Inkscape.

Because every element (every line, piece of text, circle, etc.) has an object ID, and being XML you can mash your own custom properties onto things, I found Inkscape very useful for not only visualising these files but exploring other non-visual things I was able to mangle into the line segments (open .svg file in Inkscape, right-click, go look at "object properties").

SVG and Inkscape have been invaluable for exploring how my refactoring of this application has affected the output...

There was just one problem: For a program that uses .svg natively, it sure as hell depended on bitmap formats for exporting to alternative formats properly... I see now that postscript and .eps support has been enhanced, hopefully the transparency/gradient stuff won't bork the output too much now.

Also, I still cannot find a way to export .SVG files to a rasterised image format such as .PNG without the lines being anti-aliased - I've even tried the "crisp lines" properties in the .xml file, and Imagemagick's "convert" program with the "-antialias" switch, but nothing seems to work... all the output is always antialiased... any ideas?

Re:SVG rasterisation

[bbyakk]

> I see now that postscript and .eps support has been enhanced, hopefully the transparency/gradient stuff won't bork the output too much now.

Gradients in PS/EPS export work now (with some limitations, see Release Notes). But transparency does not work simply because PS has no such thing, and "emulating" it is an enormous hassle.

> all the output is always antialiased... any ideas?

That's one of the problems with our renderer currently. It only has the AA mode. Hopefully this will be fixed when Inkscape is ported to use Cairo.

Re:SVG rasterisation

[csirac]

Do you know of any way I could export .svg to a bitmap format without anti-aliasing?

Perhaps with the improved gradient support, a .eps export is now feasible for my purposes... and could then be rasterised into .png without the antialiasing by some 3rd-party program, like convert.

Re:SVG rasterisation

[gouldtj]

Not off hand, but if you rendered it with a very large dpi you would minimize the effects of the anit-aliasing. Then you could just reduce the file's size afterwards. Wouldn't be perfect, but you'd get sharper lines.

Re:SVG rasterisation

[BiggerIsBetter]

Later versions of PDF seem to support transparency and translucency... sounds like hard work though. There's a couple of notes about clipping paths in PS too. http://www.answers.com/topic/transparency-in-graph ic-files

Re:SVG rasterisation

[koalemos]

I just had a look at convert for you and it's a little confusing but to turn off antialiasing you need to use "+antialias". Using convert with "-antialias" actually turns antialiasing on.

Re:SVG rasterisation

[ishmalius]

I know it sounds like a crappy workaround, but it is quite easy to get a sharp bitmap: use the Gimp to get a screen capture. Then you get a WYSIWYG bitmap rendition of the vector drawing.

Re:SVG rasterisation

[koalemos]

Just use convert with "+antialias" instead of "-antialias". It's counter intuitive but "+" turns off antialiasing while "-", the default, turns antialiasing on.
Ben's Questions and Answers

Re:SVG rasterisation

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, that's good to know. And whoever decided that "+" turns off antialiasing rather than turning it on really needs to be slapped with a large trout.

Re:Developers. Did it all free too.

[almostinsane]

WTF does that mean?

Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

They see the "1.0" release as being good enough to effectively replace it's commercial and closed-source equivelent.

It's a big hurdle to jump, but if they ever do, it'll bring a tear to my eye. All 1.0 F/OSS releases do.

Also, it's not just that releasing it into the wild qualifies it as branding it the big 1.0, but they think it's just not good enough to be branded 1.0, as that is the coming of age for a F/OSS product (and any product as it is, or should be), and they'd rather it be something to be very proud of, not just a proud in this releases case.

Adobe Illustator is BETTER

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source fails again....! LOSERS!!!

So the ultimate questions to the Universe is:

[roman_mir]

What is the OSS choice for a illustrator application?

Exporting

[Anonymous Coward]

You can nicely export your files to .EPS or .PS files. It works well. Most print shops can use that.

When I hear vector...

[hackwrench]

I think Corel Draw!

MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE!!!

[ryanov]

Until that post, I spent nearly all of my time reading Slashdot wondering "what the fuck is Firefox?!"

What do you mean...

[amake]

..."craps out?" It launched just fine on my machine (10.4.2). I didn't play with it much, but it certainly didn't crap out for me.

Re:What do you mean...

[turbogeek]

Mine dies. Tried it from the command line

[G5:~] daniel% /Applications/Inkscape.app/
tcsh: /Applications/Inkscape.app/: Permission denied.

For grins I looked at the permissions. Since I am admin, this seems to be something else.

[G5:~] daniel% ls -l /Applications/Inkscape.app/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 6 daniel admin 204 Jul 25 19:50 Contents

Re:What do you mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you should be modded +5:Funny, that was so mindbogglingly, incomprehensibly stupid.

On the Mac, .app extensions signify application wrapper directories, not the binaries themselves. You cannot "run" a directory. Likewise, you'll fail with:

[G5:~] daniel% /Applications/TextEdit.app/
tcsh: /Applications/TextEdit.app/: Permission denied.

[G5:~] daniel% /Applications/Mail.app/
tcsh: /Applications/Mail.app/: Permission denied.

Try instead:

[G5:~] daniel% open /Applications/Inkscape.app/

Re:What do you mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

App bundles are directories. You can either launch them from the interface by double clicking or launch inkscape from the command line with:

/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/sc ript

but you obviously can't run a directory. You'll find the same thing happens with all apps that aren't just a single executable, but a bundle.

Re:What do you mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it occur to you to double-click on it? I mean, it is a Mac. Worked great for me.

Have been using .41 for day to day stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

And even that one has been pretty stable on windows xp. Did some complex mapping and brochure covers with it and all was well.

I think the stability problems are overstated here.

Wow! Amazing! Fantastic!

[cjwl]

Looks very cool! I can't remember the last time I used Illustrator. I use Photoshop all the time though, too bad all this talent didn't go into the gimp.

CAD

[Trogre]

One feature all these drawing packages seem to be lacking is the ability to produce decent CAD drawings, with pop-up measurements and plan production.

Dia, blender, inkscape, OOdraw, even QCad are all good drawing/modelling packages, but none of them let you easily draw a scale 3D model and print out plans complete with dimensions to construct said model.

Re:CAD

[bigberk]

Something I have wondered about as well. Can Inkscape (maybe in the future) include support for say printed circuit board (PCB) design or more importantly, electronics schematics or digital logic diagrams (with the gates etc)

I don't currently know of any good free software that can do this. The universities would be all over software that can do these kinds of schematics.

Re:CAD

[Vo0k]

People, keep engineering stuff away from Inkscape! We need a decent vector gfx ARTISTIC program! XFig is for tech vector drawings, add this kind of stuff there!

Re:CAD

[Bryce]

Something I have wondered about as well. Can Inkscape (maybe in the future) include support for say printed circuit board (PCB) design or more importantly, electronics schematics or digital logic diagrams (with the gates etc)

We do intend to improve some of the technical drawing capabilities, such as line auto-routing, over the next couple releases.

Beyond that, well... we're quite open to patches. (I personally would love to see more technical/engineering drawing enhancements added to Inkscape.)

Re:CAD

[delire]

There is a BlenderCad currently in Pre-Alpha. Find it in this page of CAD related software for Linux.

Re:CAD

[ScislaC]

Why not do both though...

See my other post in this thread if you're looking for artistic use of inkscape. The technical stuff will be a bonus for when I need to do diagrams and such at the office though.

Re:CAD

[mrchaotica]

The way I see it, there's exactly two fundamental differences between "artistic" vector graphics programs and diagramming tools: stencil libraries (i.e. groups of defined objects) and magnets (i.e. points where things can "attach" to each other so that when you move one the other moves too). I think both of these things would be useful in Inkscape, even for artistic stuff.

Besides, there's nothing that says the engineering stencils can't be made available separately from the main body of the program.

Exaggerate much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimate... astounding... revolutionary... mind-blowing?

Doesn't that all seem a trifle... hyperbolic?

Hmmm

[mark-t]

In this version we closed 404 bugs

I would hope they would do substantially more than fix bugs pertaining to the http resource not found error code.

Okay... that was lame. I know. I realize what they meant. But really, that's the first thing that popped into my head.

Holy cow!

[Anonymous Coward]

this thing's less than 10 MB!!!!

SVG (& hence Inkscape) excites me

[tyroney]

Especially with Firefox adding native SVG support (I hear it's in Deerpark, though I haven't wanted to mess with my current install to try it out) all this scalable vector action is really cool. Just visiting Adobe's SVG demos (which I assume are still up with the (now) old version of their SVG browser plugin) gives you a good idea of how incredibly cool web pages could become. Considering animation possibilities, I start to drool even more. Yeah, yeah, Macromedia Flash - blah blah blah...

Re:SVG (& hence Inkscape) excites me

[LnxAddct]

Its in deerpark and its really nice, I use it daily.
Regards,
Steve

Great work ... But still "too many" palettes?

[isolationism]

I still use Xara X2 for all of my drawing needs (I do web work, primarily, although it works excellent for making everything from roughs to faked screenshots) although I've been eyeing Inkscape with increasing interest as it improves. It has now far surpassed it's parent fork project, Sodipodi, in terms of capability and appearance.

One of the main reasons I found Inkscape in the first place was because it was a branch of Sodipodi for what I felt were "the right reasons" -- Frankly, Sodipodi's interface is dialog hell. However, I still feel that Inkscape has too many dialogs that "hang around" on the screen. Why have a big dialog that takes 1/7th of the screen to handle color selection when it could be done more effectively with a temporary window that is half the size?

I also couldn't stand the fact that Inkscape didn't have named colours (e.g. colours that you can define, use, then change later and affect the entire drawing) although maybe that's changed now. I also know all of the previous versions I have looked at in the past literally take 10-15 seconds to open a file dialog window (no hyperbole here. Seriously); while my interest in Inkscape has been primarily to get me using a package that looks and works the same on Linux (so I can finally make the switch on the desktop -- Neither Xara X / Xara X2 run on CrossOver Office, unfortunately) I can't help but notice it will save me money from upgrading Xara X every couple of years, too. As a little aside -- I even went so far as to contact Xara Corp. and ask if they had any plans to release a Linux version of their software or even contribute assistance to getting Xara X to run on Wine/CXO. Their response was "No, we're too busy, and anyway people who use Linux seem to expect everything to be free." Well, that put me in my place...

Anyway, thanks to the original poster for pointing this new release out; it's worth taking another look to see what these guys have been up to. The new features look great; I hope stability and improved GUI design are some of the "unsung heroes" of this and future releases.

Re:Great work ... But still "too many" palettes?

[MenTaLguY]

Yeah, we could do a lot better with the dialogs. We're still paring down that stuff.

One of the next things we plan on doing is moving most of the "Text and Font" dialog functionality into the secondary toolbar for the text tool (which is currently empty).

So, that's one less huge dialog you would need to mess with.

The layer situation is kind of the opposite, funnily enough. We've currently got a tiny layer selector at the bottom of the window (which we will be keeping, it's handy!), but still need a full-fledged layer dialog. I'm certainly going to try to minimize the amount of screen real-estate it requires, though.

Re:Great work ... But still "too many" palettes?

[isolationism]

Wow, thanks for taking the time out to reply. I appreciate that you probably took the time not only to reply to my thread but potentially hundreds of others too (assuming anyone had anything to say besides "Looks good but I don't draw, so...".

Definitely anything you can do to keep the workspace clean is very much appreciated -- Moving things like font dialogs (or basic font features, at least) to smaller, docked (or even better, context-sensitive) positions is a great idea.

I don't want to suggest any more until I get a chance to really sit down and experiment a bit. Is there somewhere good to get in touch with Inkscape's developers to participate in community discussions about such things? I'm definitely interested in doing some testing and providing some usability feedback from "the field" if you guys are receptive to suggestions.

Thanks again for responding, and keep up the great work.

Re:Great work ... But still "too many" palettes?

[MenTaLguY]

Yep, we listen.

We've got mailing lists for users and developers, as well as an IRC channel (#inkscape on freenode) and a Jabber conference room (inkscape on conference.gristle.org). The developers frequent all of them.

Just understand that the main developers are usually pretty saturated with work (e.g. I only get to do coding for Inkscape on some nights and weekends). Non-trivial suggestions, even if we like them a lot, may lie fallow for a while until a volunteer programmer finally adopts them.

As a result, after discussion it's a good idea to record your suggestions in our Sourceforge RFE tracker so we can keep track of them.

Re:Developers. Did it all free too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows API?
This program is crossplatform and written using GTK.

A mink, not a ferret

[ciurana]

Howdy,

I can't remember the name of the painting off the top of my head, but that's a mink, not a ferret.

The symbolism of the painting is that the woman is so pure that a mink, usually very, very, very fastidious about the cleanliness of its fur, lets her not only touch but even hold it. These little critters don't like *anything* touching them.

If I remember the name of the painting in the morning I'll come back and post a follow-up.

Cheers,

E

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[WindBourne]

Even more pure the Ivory Snow girl: Marilyn Chambers?

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[obispo]

the animal is an ermine, the painting is the "ritratto di dama con ermellino" ("portrait of a lady with an ermine") by Leonardo da Vinci. it's part of the princess Czartoryska collection in Kraków.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[RWerp]

The title says it's an ermine, but is REALLY is a ferret. Just look at it.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[ozbon]

If it's an ermine (which really is just a stoat in winter clothing) then it's closely related to the ferret, but still not a ferret.

And yes, I need to get out more.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[aebrett]

All I can say for certain is that it isn't a weasel, because a weasel is weasely wecognised, whereas a stoat is stoatally different ;)

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[Hydrogenoid]

Woman holding a ferret is a famous painting in the Discworld universe, actually.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[Anonymous Coward]

No its neither. It's a pussy.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[pnutjam]

She's actually the mother holding the baby, not the baby as some people have believed. http://www.snopes.com/risque/porn/chambers.htm

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[WindBourne]

I know. I was trying to be funny. I guess I failed.

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's the lesser of two weasels...

Re:A mink, not a ferret

[ozbon]

I was trying to resist using that joke...

Still funny?

[Pac]

Allright, I am no graphic artist, but I've been using Gimp 2.0.3 to draw icons, image buttons and work on images for many kinds of programs for a long time.

The interface may take a while to get used to, but once you get there it is very professional and very clear. I believe this kind of joke may be historically funny, but eventually everybody who one day worked with Gimp 0.8 will be retired or dead and no one will remember exactly why it is funny. As I said, even today, someone who never used another drawing program would not see anything wrong or strange in Gimp's interface (any large program has a complicated interface - Photoshop's interface isn't exactly easy to learn).

Re:Still funny?

[tooth]

I'm with you, gimps UI isn't as bad as people make out. I learned gimp before I tried photoshop and I don't know why everyone thinks it's so great? I much prefer gimp, probably for the same reasons they prefer photoshop: familiarity.

As an aside I prefer ksh over bash as well :)

Re:Still funny?

[grumbel]

### I believe this kind of joke may be historically funny, ...

Its as funny today as it was half a decade ago. The fundamental flaws of Gimps interface are today still the same as they where on day one (namly the multiple window aproach, or as I prefer to call hit 'play hide and seek with your toolbox'). What the Gimp developers did was polishing this fundamentally flawed interface a lot, that however still doesn't make it a good interface. Even after six years exclusive Gimp useage, I still are far from comfortable with its interface and most likly never will get, simply because I already have used better ones a decade ago.

Re:Still funny?

[cduffy]

'play hide and seek with your toolbox'

That particular issue depends on your WM and usage thereof. If you can trivially set your toolbox to be always-on-top, then it's something of a moot point.

Re:Still funny?

[grumbel]

Would I set on-top for all Toolboxes, Palett windows and such my screen wouldn't have any more room to have place for a window, because Gimp toolbox are *huge*. Other programms don't run into those problems at all because they have things like context sensitive buttons, fixed location for often needed stuff (ie. palette at the side of the window) and special small window-decoration for the tool windows.

Re:Still funny?

[cduffy]

Hmm -- that's a mostly-valid point, and a good reason to consider dual-heading. Many WMs will let you set decorations on a per-window basis, though, and GTK widgets (inside the right kind of packbox) try to resize themselves as appropriate to fit the window size they're in -- but you're still generally right that they don't do as much as they could to minimize screen-area usage.

xfig

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe no-one has done a comparison yet. How does inkscape compare to the venerable xfig?

MOD DOWN PARENT

[WindBourne]

He is a spam.

Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to me

[dirtsurfer]

since it assumes I want the interface to be in incomplete/poorly translated Japanese language, and doesn't seem to give me any way to change it to English.

Nerd Erotica

[KrackHouse]

From the header:
"grab your package"
"fill long-standing functionality gaps"
"mind-blowing... 1.0 release"

Yeah, I peel the labels off my open source beer bottles.

but...

[oldwolf13]

does it run linux?

gimpshop seemed the same to me

[xmodem_and_rommon]

I don't know why, but when I downloaded and isntalled gimpshop, i happened to notice that the interface seemed to be exactly the same as gimp. The only difference I could see was the loading graphic.

much more detailed analysis

[mshurpik]

Apple was colossally dissapointed today to learn that Perl, 4th Ed. is a fun and informative way to introduce open source. A new IBook and Apple mini are expected to get a handle on Vista while also hitting the shuttle during launch. With the USA getting ready to pass its science crown to China, the Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta has gotten underway, leaving Microsoft and Google fighting for the skies. With the annual cost of the Microsoft monopoly predicted to top $10b this year, thousands and thousands of hours of PVR TV are being used to make new google homepage features the state of solid state storage. Where is the British EFF? Just around the corner, according to UEFI, formed to replace the BIOS after Microsoft began checking for piracy. With China releasing its 2nd generation MIPS chip just days after Sony agreed to stop payola, Voltron, Nerdcore, and the shuttle Discovery all will be coming to a theater near you.

Re:much more detailed analysis

[J. Random Luser]

Ahh, if only my morning paper could condense the day's stories into one succinct paragraph like that. Sure beats shuffling broadsheet on the Metro...

Re:much more detailed analysis

[Tekgno]

But... Where are the dupes?

Re:much more detailed analysis

[jacksonj04]

Can you do this daily?

Re:much more detailed analysis

[slapout]

In Soviet Russia, the analysis details you!

Re:much more detailed analysis

[Doctor Memory]

And my teeth have never been whiter!

Give Gimp a break

[symbolic]

Inkscape and Gimp are designed to meet two different needs, although there may be a small amount of crossover. Gimp isn't quite Photoshop, but I've used it for quite a while now. It's not perfect, but it's very capable, and I'm encouraged by its ongoing development.

Re:Give Gimp a break

[cavemanf16]

I have heard of Inkscape but not tried it out until this story appeared on Slashdot. I am quite fond of The Gimp, and Inkscape finally fills the void of trying to design a quality looking webpage using just the Gimp. The Gimp does image graphics and photo editing really well, but Inkscape will DEFINITELY do marketroid style print and web graphics well for me in the future.

We Killed It!

[Bellum Aeternus]

It was only 0.42 versions old and /. killed it.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!

Different.

[Vo0k]

These are two completely different programs.
While Inkscape is aimed at artists, for drawing clip art, chrome, posters, this kind of stuff (generally - Corel Draw audience), XFig is a technical drawing software, for techie people who draw schemes for papers, figures for tech books etc. Drawing a cute smiling girl in XFig will be just as hard (and inappropriate) as drawing a rotational stress graph of a railway car in Inkscape.

Bad Idea!

[temojen]

If you do the photo editing in SVG, the edited photo must be re-rendered every time it is displayed (unless exported to eps or something).

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vector drawing" .. so much for the lost art of drawing a straight pointy arrow

it's Windows, what do you expect?

[subtropolis]

And which version was crashing all the time and on what architecture? Come on man - give us some details - don't just whine about it. What was happening before it crashed?

Was it even ver 0.42?

Have you checked which site your reading?

[Pac]

Look at the white on green logo at the top of the page. Check the URL. Yes, this is Slashdot.

Fear the day they make a clear announcement about an application or gadget, one you don't actually have to click through the link to decide if you are interested. On this day Stallman will have sold FSF to Gates, Microsoft will have open-sourced all their code and a new company, Hell Inc., will have cornered the ice-cream market for good.

Re:Have you checked which site your reading?

[ScytheBlade1]

I browse with images off and in full-screen mode though. I can't see either :(

Re:Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to

[Bryce]

since it assumes I want the interface to be in incomplete/poorly translated Japanese language, and doesn't seem to give me any way to change it to English.

Sounds like you want this page. First scroll down to the bottom and read "Locale Testing" to see how to set the language. Then scroll up and learn the process of making improvements to an Open Source application's translations. Remember that translations only improve when someone (such as yourself) contributes a few hours to help improve them. ;-)

/. Call of the Free.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Their response was "No, we're too busy, and anyway people who use Linux seem to expect everything to be free." Well, that put me in my place..."

Well gee, I can't image what forum gave them that impression.

What the fuck are you talking about?

[a.different.perspect]

Mozilla Firefox 1.06
Gecko 1.9
The Gimp 2.2.8
Linux (kernel) 2.6.12
GNOME 2.10
KDE 3.4.1
Apache 2.0.54
XINE 1.0.2
KOffice 1.4
OpenOffice 1.1.4
amaroK 1.2.4
Abiword 2.2.8
GNU Chess 5.07!

It sounds as though you thought, "Gee, some open source programs aren't at 1.0 and" and, valiantly ignoring the possibility that those particular programs aren't finished, decided to post your magnificent discovery on Slashdot in general terms such as "this must be a problem with open source software." Honestly, WTF? Why would you post something so easily refuted, so flatly undercut by the most prominent projects of the movement you're trying to generalize about?

Re:What the fuck are you talking about?

[NachoDaddy]

Let's start with your first example. Firefox only went 1.0 about 9 months ago. At that point, there were already 8 million downloads. I would say it was pretty dammed released before 1.0! Ah, but it's not finished, they had been saying, "Firefox 0.8 is a Technology Preview. While this software works well enough to be relied upon as your primary browser in most cases, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability. It is a pre-release product and should not be relied upon for mission-critical tasks." So basically for Firefox, not having 1.0 was a big CYA in case someone finds a nasty bug. Other than the bug report, all other comments >>/dev/null. You see, here is the problem. Linux people want the Linux OS and Linux software to be more widely accepted, especially on the desktop. However having version 0.8 sends a message that, 'we're not worthy', when I know dam well that some of these programs are better than 6.0 of some commercial programs. Debian got it right, screw numbers, use names.

Performance Pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Good for you. I agree with you. How dare these people donate all this time and effort into producing an open-source vector drawing application and have the audacity to not include pressure sensitivity for your tablet.

I'm not using it either until Solder Fumes demands are met."

*sigh*

And people wonder why proprietary software is still being used.

Re:Performance Pressure

[labratuk]

Hate to say it, but I don't think proprietary software immediately implements random feature demands (sorry, requests) made by one person on some internet forum.

Mod Parent Up

[ZephyrXero]

I don't see why this got modded down. Not only is it a nice reference, and funny...but true. I thought pretty much the same thing when I heard it the first time. I've been putting it on some of my users' machines lately, but I make sure to call it "The GNU Image Manipulation Program" to help keep the confusion down. The Gimp is not a very professional name ;)

Re:Mod Parent Up

[calculadoru]

To make the irony richer, your post saying mine should be modded up gets modded up while mine gets down. As I was saying, never trust geeks...but I digress.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[ZephyrXero]

Mine wasn't modded up, that's just my Karma bonus ;) ...don't worry though, hopefully some decent mods will come through soon and correct yours. If not, who cares really?

Nice find....

[ShyGuy91284]

I didn't think there was an open source equivilant to Illustrator (What little I have used of it I liked). At first I just thought "oh great, another art program. Anyone can do cool things with them if they know a little bit about how to use them". But I didn't realize it was Vector based.

Re:Grab your package....

[Anonymous Coward]

You mispelled 'vulgar'.

Note: OpenOffice vs. NeoOffice/J on the Mac

[Nice2Cats]

For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.

Just so there are no misunderstandings here: Though there is an OpenOffice version for the Mac that is in fact only accessable via X11, everybody uses NeoOffice/J instead because it is aquafied to the point where it runs normally. Oh, and it is GPL.

And now back to your scheduled program.

If this is the "The Ultimate Answer"

[1shooter]

What was the question?

Re:If this is the "The Ultimate Answer"

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that would be something like : "Vector graphics?" :D

Re:If this is the "The Ultimate Answer"

[SporkLand]

How many roads must a vector graphics program draw before it becomes a vector graphics program?

Re:If this is the "The Ultimate Answer"

[arose]

"How do I draw a circle in the GIMP?"

Kind of shortsighted on their part

[mveloso]

Sticking your head in the ground and ignoring the de-facto standard is just irritating. I use Photoshop and Freehand, and have been since version 1.0 of both products. Ignoring their key combos means not taking advantage of a huge body of learned behaviors.

While it's nice to be all macho and shit, realistically speaking those key combos are like that for the simple reason that they've stood the test of time. Some of those key combos have a lifespan longer than linux. They've tried other key combos, and those haven't worked.

By ignoring that, the developers show that they're either (1) so young that they don't understand and take advantage of the past, (2) they've got NIH syndrome, or (3) they're so full of their own cleverness that they've gone pinhead.

In any case, that's really Bad News for the future of the app.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[bbyakk]

> In any case, that's really Bad News for the future of the app.

I've seen this very attitude ever since the start of Inkscape. It's not too frequent, but it does happen with surprising regularity. "You dare to ignore my beloved Illustrator/Freehand/whatever, you're DOOMED." I try to give them our reasons and show them _our_ way of doing it, but they just won't listen.

I think by now, Inkscape's explosive growth and the tons of comments from people who LOVE its interface are the best response to such doomsayers.

You simply _don't get it_. (Luckily you are in a minority, but the fact that you don't get it still saddens me.) We're not in the business of creating an Illustrator clone. We started this project because we want to make the best vector editor in the world. If you want to help us, you're welcome. If you just want to rant or whine without (I'm sure) reading our keyboard chart even once - then I'm simply not interested, sorry.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[nagora]

We're not in the business of creating an Illustrator clone. We started this project because we want to make the best vector editor in the world.

Well said. The keyboard on Inkscape is good; I couldn't care less how Illustrator works. It's not like Illustrator cares how I work, is it? I mean, where's the Linux version?

TWW

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[FidelCatsro]

They are taking advantage of learned behaviours , just not the behaviour you have learnt .
I find the interface and keyboard shortcuts most handy on inkscape and a lot more natural than than photoshops .

Perhaps you disagree and so may many others , but sticking to a de-facto standard that may be broken just because everyone knows how to use it is stagnation .
I am fairly sure if enough people care about having photoshop emulation in the keyboard settings then someone could make a source patch .

De-facto standards are by their very definitions something that need not be followed , if we all just followed De facto then we all be using windows .

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[MrMickS]

_sigh_ how does a rant back get modded as Insightful? Oh, this is slashdot and the rant is in favour of OSS.

Wouldn't it have been better to just have pointed out teh keyboard chart and explaining the reasons without having a go back at the parent?

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[10am-bedtime]

"you just don't get it." ... "luckily you are in a minority".

hmm, sounds like a programmer just lost the "it" that he acuses other of not getting. here, the "it" is access to source code and wherewithal to munge it to be most useful. when a programmer of such software says "our way is better" to a user, he challenges the user to become (or ally with) another programmer to fork the project. maybe that's what is desired, but the smoother way would be to separate mechanism and policy, concentrate your programming-fu on the mechanism and let the users twiddle the policy bits as they see fit.

happy users means less pressure to fork. of course, those who live by the fork you may wish to die by it, as well, for completeness or symmetry or whatever. that's fine, too.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[halivar]

Wouldn't it have been better to just have pointed out teh keyboard chart and explaining the reasons without having a go back at the parent?

No, I don't think so. If someone's going to rant all over someone else's work and call it crap, I think their comments bear scrutiny. If that means the OP looks stupid and is ridiculed, so be it. He should have investigated more.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[FooBarWidget]

Why is a fork a bad thing? Without forking, Inkscape wouldn't even exist.

So go ahead and fork it. If it suceeds, great, we have a better program. If the fork dies (like many, many, many forks of any open source program) then that just proofs you're wrong. It's the free market at work.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[metamatic]

hmm, sounds like a programmer just lost the "it" that he acuses other of not getting [...] the smoother way would be to separate mechanism and policy, concentrate your programming-fu on the mechanism and let the users twiddle the policy bits as they see fit.

No, you're the one who doesn't get it. Configurable options and keystrokes are the ultimate cop-out for bad application design. People don't want to sit and spend a couple of hours configuring the program to have a sensible interface; they want it to have the right interface from the start. And adding configurability to the interface both dramatically increases the complexity of the code and documentation, and increases the cognitive load on the user even if they decide not to take advantage of the configurability.

To put it in two concrete examples: Apple's applications are almost universally praised for their interface. *None* of them have configurable menus and keystrokes, in fact they have very few options for changing the UI behavior at all.

CorelDraw, on the other hand, takes the "allow the user to reconfigure everything" approach. And guess what? It's a nightmare to use and slow as hell.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[podperson]

Luckily you are in a minority

I'm *guessing* that Illustrator has a few more users than Inkscape, so this is a rather self-defeating definition of minority.

Direct dragging of the view (it doesn't have to be via the space bar, but this does seem to be common to a great many graphics programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Freehand, and so forth) needs to be available via some method other than the middle mouse button, since this is absent on many laptops (let's ignore the Mac's default single-button mouse).

We started this project because we want to make the best vector editor in the world. If you want to help us, you're welcome. ... If you just want to rant or whine without (I'm sure) reading our keyboard chart even once - then I'm simply not interested, sorry.

A laudable goal. But to be the best, you actually need to be better than other programs. In Illustrator, for example, you never need to read the keyboard chart because you are informed of the keyboard shortcut for any command when you mouse over it.

tons of comments from people who LOVE its interface are the best response to such doomsayers

To do good work you need to pay attention to people who disagree with you (as well as those who agree with you). E.g. it may be very convenient to scroll with the middle mouse button, but it won't hurt to allow the spacebar to do it too.

In general, ignoring standards and conventions which have either been explicitly established and followed or which have simply happened organically is just stupid. Maybe your system is a little more consistent (with itself) but ... unless you're planning on replacing every other program your users will work with, you'll just be hurting yourself in the long run.

I doubt Adobe Photoshop is going to switch to your zooming and panning conventions any time soon, I don't think your program will replace Photoshop, and I don't see why users of Photoshop and your program should need to remember two sets of keyboard shortcuts for the same operation.

As for the rest, Inkscape didn't do anything (it launched but had no Windows) for me (even after I reinstalled X11) so its usability is currently nil for me.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[bbyakk]

> I'm *guessing* that Illustrator has a few more users than Inkscape, so this is a rather self-defeating definition of minority.

It's much more self-defeating of you to include all of Illustrator users in your group, don't you think? :)

Of course by "minority" I didn't mean Illustrator users, but rather "those who come to Inkscape with expectations formed by other apps, and who refuse to try to understand our way of doing things, and who rant about our project's imminent doom as a result." Luckily, such people are indeed a small minority. And you know what, some of them even get converted to Inkscape ways after some time :)

> you are informed of the keyboard shortcut for any command when you mouse over it.

Have you actually tried Inkscape? It has tooltips with keyboard shortcuts ALL OVER THE PLACE. Plus its statusbar (something which does not exist in Illustrator) provides LOTS of helpful hints, including shortcuts.

>needs to be available via some method other than the middle mouse button, since this is absent on many laptops

Most laptops I've seen have an equivalent of a scrollwheel, which works just as well for scrolling in Inkscape.

> it won't hurt to allow the spacebar to do it too

True, and I normally never argue when I can simply implement the thing that the person is asking for, without disrupting anything else. The trouble with spacebar, however, is that we use it to switch to Selector, which is also a well-established UI tradition in at least one program (Xara X, and I think Corel Draw too). In fact I do remember people asking for spacebar to switch to selector (back when it wasn't yet done) but you are the first who is asking for spacebar to scroll.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[spitzak]

In Illustrator, for example, you never need to read the keyboard chart because you are informed of the keyboard shortcut for any command when you mouse over it.

Please explain how you get a tooltip that shows that holding down space will pan the image.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[mveloso]

No, -you- simply don't get it.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you're one of the developers. You still don't get it. Maybe you should listen to people who have actually used tools like yours for the last 10 years? Maybe your ideas really are better, and have sprung from your genius much the way athena sprung from Zeus' forehead.

However, that's really unlikely. Nobody working on inkscape is Kai Krause.

By lumping all comments like mine into the "oh, they want our app to be like their favorite app" you're ignoring real complaints and issues.

Blah blah blah. Go ahead, do your own thing, and ignore years of domain-specific experience.

Peh.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[bbyakk]

How typical. The only thing that makes me optimistic is that indeed those like you are a minority. Whiners cannot be eliminated completely no matter how we try, that would be contrary to the laws of nature. But we must be doing good job, judging by the fact that we don't hear such whines much more often.

Just to give you an idea, I'm not only a developer. I'm making my living as a graphic designer for 8 years now, and I've been deeply interested in this field for twice as much time. I've used a lot of different vector graphics software (probably unlike you, who seem to be pretty much locked into Adobe) and I've studied this field long before I started working on Inkscape. And yes, now I use Inkscape daily in professional design work.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[MrMickS]

No, I don't think so. If someone's going to rant all over someone else's work and call it crap, I think their comments bear scrutiny. If that means the OP looks stupid and is ridiculed, so be it. He should have investigated more.

Fair enough. Of the possible responses I just think that the one taken was the worst. In my mind its better to either ignore such a comment or deal with it coldly and informatively. Ranting back gives more legitimacy to the OP.

My original point still stands. How come the reply was modded as Insightful? It was at least as much flamebait as the OP.

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[halivar]

Ranting back gives more legitimacy to the OP.

Yes, but dispassionate sentence-by-sentence refutations not as amusing. Most of the time. ;)

Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part

[xintegerx]

Dude. Inkscape is the best piece of open source software I have ever seen. It is better than Photoshop for web site graphics. I followed your tutorials and created my commercial web site with it. 90% of the people commenting on it have not even used it. Inkscape is the best O.S. program and designed the way it should be--from the user perspective.

It is better than Firefox, Linux, and Thunderbird. Why? Because those are clones of software that already exist, so it's a waste of time to make those. No creativity there. As well, there's nothing to be creative about those software. However, with Inkscape, it doesn't try to clone anything. It simply tries to allow people free expression of their creativity, in the best graphics format ever, that you can s tretch and resize. Heck, the future Microsoft Vista will have these same types of graphics, and I bet Internet Explorer will go the same away again. What will firefox use to draw these things? That's right, they will probably integrate inkscape into it. What about a pdf replacement? That's right, inkscape can do that, too.

Promissing App

[The MESMERIC]

Definitely one of the most impressive and promising Linux application out there.
Corel Draw beware.

Re:Promissing App

[dJOEK]

Linux?

It's Multiplatform!

(btw, nice(unintentional) play on words: it's indeed a pro app that has been missing)

Re:Promissing App

[The MESMERIC]

oops.
just realized now.
I assumed somehow GTK Inkscape was a Linux app only.

Necessity: The mother of all inventions.
Assumptions: The mother of all cock-ups

Re:Promissing App

[The MESMERIC]

damn I am slow today
there I did it again,
promissing: an unintenional puns.

all my puns are weirdly unintenional
with me completely unaware.
when im overworked dyslexia kicks in.

Photoshop is hideous too, but Krita...

[CarpetShark]

Agreed; photoshop had probably my least-favorite graphics interface (most adobe stuff is horrible in that respect) until I saw GIMP. Krita, on the other hand, will solve all of that for me. Can't wait 'till it's in my distro :)

Re:Photoshop is hideous too, but Krita...

[Anonymous Coward]

debian stable?

Painful bad grammer

[Anonymous Coward]

The "amount of new features" should be the "number of new features" as there are an integer number of features.

A ferret, not a mink!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. That critter is 5 times the size of the largest ermine I've ever seen. Actually, I've never seen a mink that size either, though male ferrets get that size easily.

At the time the picture was taken, nearly all ferrets were albino - it was much preferred as a color for easy identification. It was some years later when ferrets began to catch on as pets and not just 'working' animals that color was bred back into the line from the tiny minority of pigmented animals.

Yes, the painting is called 'Woman with an ermine', but Da Vinci didn't label the painting himself, that's just the name it's been given over time.

That animal is far too large to be an ermine. Half a pound would be an amazingly large ermine, while male ferrets can reach up to 5 pounds. Females ferrets rarely reach one pound, and they're STILL all larger than ermine ever get.

Mink are also smaller than the mustelid in the picture, though larger than an ermine. I used to know a couple of people who raised mink and sometimes ferrets as well, and the mink were a good deal smaller, generally brown and rarely albino, unlike ferrets - and vicious as all get-out! There is no way anyone would get a mink to sit still in someone's hands long enough to pose for a picture, and whoever tried had REALLY better be wearing heavy gloves!

Re:A ferret, not a mink!

[RWerp]

Female ferrets easily reach over one pound. Mine weighs about 1 kilogram, that is ca 2 pounds. Many ferrets are greyish, or brown. Nobody could hold a ferret for long in hands (they're too lively), so Da Vinci would have to paint from memory. Apart from that, I agree it is a ferret on that painting.

Another nice program goes GTK

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they use QT? I really don't want to have to load GTK-things in my nice KDE environment!

Drawing arrows

[Anonymous Coward]

In drawperfect there was a tool for drawing arrows. Did anybody make something similar for inkscape?

Re:Drawing arrows

[gnugnugnu]

Inkscape has support for Markers which are essentially arrowheads by another name.

Inkscape developer Bryce Harrington mentions it in this comment
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157131&cid=131 77114

'Static' RPMs aren't static

[rklrkl]

I had no problem installing Inkscape 0.41 on Fedora Core 2 using their i686 "static" RPM. However, with 0.42, the RPM is now linked against libgc.so.1, which is not shipped with Fedora Core (any release, 1 to 4). So I trundled off to Dag Wieers repository, downloaded the Fedora Core 2 libgc RPM, installed it and now I'm getting "undefined symbol: g_option_error_quark". Lovely stuff - looks like I'm going to have to compile from source <sigh>. I think the Inkscape folks need to rebuild their RPMs...

Re:'Static' RPMs aren't static

[WankersRevenge]

You should try giving the .package file a whirl. It's built using autopackage which is a distro neutral linux based installer that also resolves dependencies. Even if you don't have autopackage installed, you just download the .package file and it handles everything. IMHO, it's best thing for Linux software development.

Re:'Static' RPMs aren't static

[HisMother]

That doesn't work either. Same problem. The .package doesn't seem to know anything at all about dependencies.

Visio alternative?

[PastaAnta]

Inkscape already seems to be an impressive application for artistic drawing, but personally I mostly do technical drawing for which Visio is my currently preferred application.

However if only a few functionalities were added, Inkscape could be used for 95% of generic technical/business drawings as well:
- Global Grid / grid snap
- Object connection / snap points
- Auto routing connector lines
- Configurable line ends (arrow heads)

I believe some of these are addressed in the roadmap though.

Re:Visio alternative?

[Bryce]

However if only a few functionalities were added, Inkscape could be used for 95% of generic technical/business drawings as well:

- Global Grid / grid snap

This is in there and has been there for a long time, but it takes some fiddling to get it to work right. Go to Document Properties > Grid, and then adjust the Spacing X/Y and the Snap distance until the snapping "feels right". This is sort of a pain in the ass to have to do, but at least the document remembers its settings, and it's actually sort of nice to have such fine grained control over the grid/snap behavior. However, I do think that this feature needs some tuning and usability work. No one is working on this presently, though; I don't think the coding is too hard, it's just a matter of fiddling with it to get the settings to work well.

Oh, and the shortcut key to turn grid/snapping on/off is '#'. ;-)

- Object connection / snap points

Yeah, this is definitely needed. There is actually some backend code for this, but it's not an advertised feature yet, because it's not usable and has no UI to interact with it. However, while there's some code there, it's not being actively worked on at present. I think this will be a revolutionary feature that will open Inkscape up to whole new audiences. If any developers think this'd be a fun thing to work on, you'd be quite welcome.

- Auto routing connector lines

This one is being actively worked on by one of our Google Summer of Code students, who is getting a doctorate in a closely related topic. He has some working prototype code in Java, and is planning to port it to Inkscape. So I think not only will we get this feature, but it will be very, very powerful compared with other drawing apps.

- Configurable line ends (arrow heads)

This is actually a pretty easy feature to add. The line markers are just loaded from an SVG file located in /usr/share/inkscape, and all the underlying code to allow for custom document-specific markers is there and works fine. The only reason it hasn't been done has been procrastination - the stock markers work "good enough" for most things, so it hasn't been a high priority. This is on my todo list, so unless someone gets it done before me I'll be working on improving this eventually.

There's one other issue with arrow heads, in that it's not easy to customize the arrowhead color. By default they're all black, but if you want to make lines a different color, having black arrowheads is less than desireable. Fortunately, the newest version of the SVG spec has a solution to this problem, so now it's just a matter of implementing it. Also on the todo list, but also not being worked on presently.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like inkscape killed off the motivation of sodipodi developers. Last cvs change seems to be 3 months ago.

If by better....

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any idea how much better Windows would be if it operated like that?

If by better you mean "unreleased", then yeah.

Wrong language, wtf?

[rubeon]

When I start Inkscape in XP, it's in German. My region setting is Germany, but my XP installation is English. It should take the language from the OS language setting, not the region setting, goobs.

Developers really need to re-think the notion that every living in a particular region all speak one language. It's a mobile, diverse world out there.

Re:Wrong language, wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

> When I start Inkscape in XP, it's in German. My region setting is Germany, but my XP installation is English.

That is interesting. If you report it in the Inkscape bug tracker the developers will probably look into it.

The easiest way to solve this is to delete the file de.po (or possibly de_DE.po) and entirely remove support for German from your copy of Inkscape.

> It should take the language from the OS language setting, not the region setting, goobs.

Now now, that is not at all helpful. You will catch more flies with honey than vinegar and if you ask nicely the developers might actually want to fix the problem but being rude certainly wont encourage them.

Re:Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to

[packman]

Same here, but it's not really the poor translation that's bothering me (well every translation in Dutch sounds silly to me) - it's the fact that I'm used to English terms in such programs.
I HATE it that it chooses such things for me without even a standard point&click way to change it. I happen to run an English windows here at work, configured to be the region "Dutch (Belgium)" cause I need a euro sign and decent date/time notations, but I DON'T want programs to be in Dutch, but here it automaticly detects this and automaticly assumes I want to see Dutch.

Well, deleted the dutch language locals, and now it works fine in english...

Any place in the market for this?

[qbert980]

With the gimp for raster imaging, Inkscape for vector imaging, and blender3d for 3d modeling and animation, there is no doubt in my mind that OSS has come a *loooong* way since my days as a computer artist. However, I don't see the production world moving away from Photoshop/Illustrator/Maya/SoftImage just yet. There are too many unknowns, and the last thing a production office wants to worry about is missing a deadline because the software stopped working.

As someone who may fiddle around with these programs in his free time, that is a little different than making my living and serving customers with it. The one guarantee the consumer has with pay-for-play software like Photoshop or Maya is support.

On another note, has the OSS community come up with an alternative to layout programs like QuarkXpress yet?

Re:Any place in the market for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scribus?

http://www.scribus.net/

Key bindings

[Wooky_linuxer]

Can't the keybindings be customizable? I always wondered why most productivity apps wouldn't include a way to customize their keybinding and interface in general, the way, say FPS games do. That would do away with all this "make it more like Photoshop/Corel/macromedia/whatever". Let the user decide which way work better for him. Throw in a nice graphical way of doing this in a later release, but keep the config file format simple so I can edit it by hand. Presto. No more "ALT + smthing should do this instead of that". I understand perhaps this might not be so easy to code in if the application wasn't intended to support it from the ground up, but it is a resource worth looking for, specially in a field which everybody is so picky about the interface.

Re:Key bindings

[bbyakk]

We do plan to make keyboard customizable. But it's very difficult because of the way the code is organized historically. We're making some progress, though.

Re:Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, deleted the dutch language locals,

And what did they think about that?

What is

[thallgren]

"What is Inkscape? Unfortunently, noone can be told what Inkscape is, you have to download and make install it yourself" :)

Inkscape rocks

[Ice Station Zebra]

I used it to de-uglify a bmp logo for a client. It looked like it had been run through Microsoft Paint with lots of jagged lines and such. Find a program called autotrace on sourceforge that converted the bitmap to svg. Edited the xml file to remove the objects that I didn't want (based on colour). Then loaded it into inkscape and cleaned it up and recolored it. Client was impressed. His graphics person had been unable to do it without recreating the whole thing. It only took me 1 hour.

Re:Inkscape rocks

[afd8856]

His guy could probably do it in 15 minutes with Corel Draw/Ilustrator

Re:Inkscape rocks

[bbyakk]

Heh, I can do lots of useful things in Inkscape while Illustrator simply LAUNCHES on my system. Inkscape is up and running almost instantaneously.

Re:Inkscape rocks

[MenTaLguY]

Incidentally, the current version of Inkscape has built-in bitmap tracing.

Re:Inkscape rocks

[afd8856]

That's true.

I know that you're a developer, so I'll point this as a constructive criticism: I was very excited about Inkscape today when I saw the article, so I had to try it. I'm already using it on Linux, in a LTSP setup. Unfortunately, on my windows, the screen refreshes are very slow and it chokes the cpu (athlon 3000, 700MB Ram). Otherwise, good work! Finally a possible replacement for profesional vector packages!

Inkwhat?

[Salamander]

Would it be too ****ing hard for the editors who promote stories to the front page to at least ensure that it contains some mention of what the latest stupidly-named OSS project actually does? The whole point of advertising - what such stories really are - is to reach the not-already-converted, and that just doesn't work too well if the audience does not in fact know they're your audience.

Yes, I know the answer to my rhetorical question. Any semblance of usefulness is too hard for some people.

It'd be nice if

[palndron]

Headings like this included a little description of what the program is.

Heaven forbid that some of us haven't heard of it.

Panning tool problem

[kahei]

We don't have a panning tool

That's a minor problem.


We don't have a panning tool because we have lots of other ways to scroll. The best of them are middle-drag and ctrl+arrows. Try them, you may like them better when you get used to them.

That's a major problem.

Middle-drag and ctrl+arrows may suit _you_, but try them while using a tablet. Using space to pan (real space bar, or map space to some of the buttons on your tablet/drawing tool) does not involve putting down your pen, using the mouse or cursor keys, and then picking the pen up again. I understand that it would be technically possible to operate the mouse with my foot or cover ctrl and the cursor keys all with my non-pen hand, but...

I realize that if you don't use tablets and zoom a lot there's no reason you would have thought of this. It's all a matter of individual working style. What you should have done is reflect on why other applications have panning tools and what use people might have for them. What you did do was announce that you have plenty of ways to pan that suit you personally just fine, and advise the user to get used to them.

The problem here is _not_ your lack of a panning tool; that's just a little problem that should be trivial to fix.

I love SVG but I think I have to mark my expectations for Inkscape down a notch if this is typical of the project philosophy.

Re:Panning tool problem

[bbyakk]

> Middle-drag and ctrl+arrows may suit _you_, but try them while using a tablet.

I do use a tablet with a pen. For everything. In fact I have no mouse on my desktop at all. Dragging by middle button (which is in the rear of the side button on my pen) is perfectly convenient - when I have a hand on the pen. When I do not, ctrl+arrows work even better. If I were using a mouse, I would be using the scrollwheel primarily.

> does not involve putting down your pen, using the mouse or cursor keys, and then picking the pen up again.

Hmm, have you ever tried a pen? Even a cheap one like Intuos has all of the controls of the mouse except scrollwheel, right on the pen. I never use mouse.

> reflect on why other applications have panning tools

I think that's mostly historic. They date from the times when most applications didn't use middle button for anything and when scrollwheels didn't exist.

> I love SVG but I think I have to mark my expectations for Inkscape down a notch if this is typical of the project philosophy.

Another doomsayer... welcome to the club :)

Here's a little observation for you. Such rants (sorry but it's a rant) about our "project philosophy" typically come from people who either have yet to try Inkscape, or have very little experience with it. Simply speaking, they are newcomers who have had experience with other tools and want Inkscape to be the same. But we never get this kind of feedback from those who really use the program every day (and there are plenty of such users). What such users propose usually makes sense within Inkscape's UI principles, and therefore gets implemented quickly. We never get "campaigns" by users trying to persuade the developers to implement something and stubborn developers refusing. This kind of thing just never happens in Inkscape. Think about it.

Re:Panning tool problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's telling me the login script isn't working. Better tell the Slashdot editors, I guess.

Here's a little observation for you. Such rants (sorry but it's a rant) about our "project philosophy" typically come from people who either have yet to try Inkscape, or have very little experience with it. Simply speaking, they are newcomers who have had experience with other tools and want Inkscape to be the same. But we never get this kind of feedback from those who really use the program every day (and there are plenty of such users).

Probably because many serious illustrators throw up their hands and say, c'mon, this isn't for me. If this is a rant, it's a well-founded one.

I love Inkscape, and have used it 95% of the time for illustration projects during the past 10-12 months. But to ignore a huge base of users and the acquired knowledge of how users do their thing that folks like Adobe have spent years on is simply myopic. Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at usability testing? Do you have 15+ years experience writing an illustration app? Working with illustration apps?

What such users propose usually makes sense within Inkscape's UI principles, and therefore gets implemented quickly. We never get "campaigns" by users trying to persuade the developers to implement something and stubborn developers refusing. This kind of thing just never happens in Inkscape. Think about it.

Then we need a user campaign that will help you to see that there's a base of people doing commercial graphic design work that would really appreciate an attitude that isn't simply "y'all are using those antiquated Adobe/Macromedia UI features, how silly..." instead of "hey, there are folks in this community for whom a significant barrier to entry is discontinuities between program interfaces, and we could reach out to them." I don't think the other poster in this thread is suggesting you completely overhaul your UI (nor am I), but we want you to make Inkscape friendlier to people who reach for the space bar so that they can pan or double click the zoom icon to get back to 100% while they sleep. These features matter a lot, especially because I am constantly switching (for various reasons) between Windows, Mac, and Linux and Inkscape/GIMP/Scribus and Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign. I like Inkscape and Scribus better, for my needs, than their commercial counterparts (though Photoshop is still way better than the GIMP, IMO) and I use them almost exclusively.

As for the stupid panning thing. There have been three button mice about as long as there have been two button mice. The point about using the keyboard to pan comes from the simple realization that if you can have both your hands actively working, you're more efficient. It's nice to know that my right hand is doing the drawing and my left is toggling the pan. Consolidating it all in my mouse hand may seem like a Good Idea, but it doesn't jive with much of what is known about human cognition.

Once more, I love learning useful new interfaces, and I love Inkscape. But somebody needs to convince you that some of the ways that the commercial apps do things are there because they work really well. Build your UI innovations within the context of those well-accepted and well-liked concepts, and your explosive growth will go from convential to thermonuclear.

Re:Panning tool problem

[arose]

Middle-drag and ctrl+arrows may suit _you_, but try them while using a tablet.

I do all the time, the second button of my stylus acts as the equivalent of the middle mouse button.

Re:Panning tool problem

[spitzak]

All modern tablets have a method to emulate middle or right click on the pen.

Re:Panning tool problem

[bbyakk]

> Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at usability testing?

That Adobe or Microsoft or whoever bases its UI on usability testing is a myth. It's disproven by many counterexamples. For Microsoft, there's Apple whose fans rightfully despise Windows. For Adobe, there are lots of other vector editors (Freehand, Corel Draw, Xara, Canvas) with very devoted user bases - who rightfully consider Adobe a clunky monster.

Maybe they do spend money on testing, but I guess that in the end, management has the upper hand. Some of the UI choices in Illustrator are truly horrible.

One of the most striking examples is Xara. It's a small company in the UK, obviously without a big research budget. But when I discovered Xara in 1997 I was astounded by its usability and features. It was miles ahead of Illustrator back then - so smooth and polished. Today its lead is not so pronounced but it's still much loved by many users. I borrowed a lot of good ideas from Xara into Inkscape.

So, doing things some particular way simply because Adobe does it that way would be rather stupid. Especially considering that, while Photoshop is pretty much a monopoly, Illustrator is far from that - there's a much healthier competition going on in vector editors.

> There have been three button mice about as long as there have been two button mice.

Yeah, but there were plenty two-buttons just a few years ago.

> The point about using the keyboard to pan comes from the simple realization that if you can have both your hands actively working, you're more efficient.

Yes, but how that relates to panning with Space? You're not panning BY spacebar, you still pan with your mouse and you have to use the other hand too - both hands busy! Does not sound like a timesaver to me.

Oh, and if you indeed prefer this way of scrolling, you have it - I forgot that we also have Shift+right drag for panning in Inkscape. Almost the same as space+left drag, just a slightly different key, and no problem on laptops either.

Re:Panning tool problem

[Tom7]

My Wacom ArtZ II only has two buttons on the pen. Does the Intuos pen really have three buttons on it? I thought it had a rocker switch like the ArtZ. I know they can be rebound, but I like the bindings as they are and they are important to the way I work.

But we never get this kind of feedback from those who really use the program every day (and there are plenty of such users).

One reason for this might be that those "newcomers" are turned away by their inability to work comfortably with the software, so they never become people who use the program every day. Kind of a, you know, pied piper situation.

That said, if you were to implement the ability to remap keys, and at least make sure that we could rearrange the interface to be compatible with the way we work, then we could have no possible complaint about this stuff.

Re:Panning tool problem

[bbyakk]

> I thought it had a rocker switch like the ArtZ Yes, it's a rocker switch. The front part is mapped to the left mouse button, the rear to the middle mouse button. I think this is the default. > "newcomers" are turned away by their inability to work comfortably with the software Sure that happens too. But it's inevitable that some percentage of those who leave will send us a rant. So, by intensity of such rants we can estimate the number of people who tried it but quit. We also monitor blogs and forums for any Inkscape feedback; notable postings usually get reported by someone on our jabber channel. Also, we can gauge our performance by the amount of people who, having tried both, say that they like Inkscape's UI better than Illustrator; such opinions are becoming quite regular of late. Finally, we just listen. For example since I saw at least two people in this discussion who claim that space-mouse dragging is critical for them, I'm now thinking about implementing it as a separate option, even before we make all keys reconfigurable.

Re:Panning tool problem

[Tom7]

Well, that is the purpose of my feedback: to inform you that I don't feel like I can use Inkscape comfortably yet, but that I am looking forward to the day (hopefully soon) when I can. I didn't mean to imply that you as developers don't care about users. I'm sorry if I gave that impression, since your very presence responding to deeply buried rants on slashdot certainly implies an impressive level of attention.

Inkscape and Ximian Evolution

[nimid]

I've been watching Inkscape intently.

I'm running Win2K and I currently use XaraX' (prime)

Were it not for Xara and Outlook I'd have ported over to FreeBSD by now. I have already started using OSS software to replace all my commercialware;

SQL Server - Postgresql
IIS - Apache
OfficeXP - OpenOffice (Except for Outlook as I need the calendaring and the iPAQ synchronisation)
Internet Explorer - Firefox
FTP - Filezilla
Website IDE - Eclipse (not ideal but it hooks in rather well with SVN)
Messaging - Gaim
Diablo II - Diamonin (Yeah, I'm just pulling your leg, though it is quite fun)

Congratulations and many thanks to the Inkscape team for bringing a completely OSS development suite closer to reality.

Keybindings

[Daily]

I have used both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator almost all day every day for roughly the last seven maybe eight years. (I work in various fields of design). I do however keep my eye on what is happening with the open-source equivalents. There are many reasons why I have not left PS and AI behind in favour of an OS solution, and I'm sure as the years pass by and the software matures many of these reasons will fade and disappear. MY (main) problem with both GIMP and Inkscape is that my productivity takes a significant dive when I try and get anything done in them.

Is this entirely the fault of the developers? Not exactly... .. . BUT, the decision to purposely use different key-bindings to those of PS and AI (because their way might just be better) is a real problem for me and anyone else who has become used to a certain way of working... old habits are hard to break and after the 10th time of reaching for the spacebar to pan around the screen (one example), and getting nothing, the programme gets dumped because although I am bright enough to learn to press a new button if I really need to, breaking a seven / eight year habit is a real pain (especially if I don't NEED to). There are people out there that are prepared to swap from PS and AI to an OS alternative, but if the price is too high for them, then it just won't happen.

Sometimes you have to acknowledge the short-comings of your potential user-base, and it is perfectly human to want certain aspects of familiarity in new and uncharted territory, especially if those familiarities have an impact on productivity. Many of us need to work with our hands ready at the shortcuts, our eyes on the screen, and our minds on the work at hand, instead of keep breaking concentration and remembering strange new key combinations. I do admit that this is a terribly negative and somewhat self-centered thing to say, and only really applies to those of us struggling to switch. It is however a both a real and valid point, depending of course who Inkscape / GIMP is actually aimed at.

I will keep returning to both GIMP and Inkscape, they are both great programmes and to those that are not already worked well into the groove of other applications these could one day be very serious PS an AI opponents.

Re:Keybindings

[Anonymous Coward]

It is part of the plan to allow for different keybinding sets and there were certainly people pushing to keep things closer to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is not finsihed, keybindings are not written in stone and can be changed so if there are specific keybindings you really miss it might still be worth filing bug reports and trying to convince the developers. Random comments on slashdot will not get you very far.

Re:Keybindings

[testerus]

Just use the Photoshop-ish Keyboard Shortcuts for The Gimp: http://epierce.freeshell.org/gimp/gimp_ps.php

Does it have shaped text support now ?.

[Gopal.V]

I have inkscape 0.41 but it does not allow you to edit text that is shaped inside a box or a curve.

It's really a pain to close inkscape and type it out in raw XML to get the shaped text working.

Re:Does it have shaped text support now ?.

[bbyakk]

That's why we announce 0.42 :) It's much easier now.

Does it work with Visio?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to use an older version to read SVG exported Visio diagrams, but Visio utilized the CSS features of SVG and the resulting images were all black in Inkscape. If the CSS support is good, could this be the only Linux desktop app that can read Visio files (if they're exported to SVG)?

Re:Does it work with Visio?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the SVG exported by Visio is valid and cannot be displayed by Inkscape this is definately something the developers would want to know about and it would be useful if you could file bug reports and include sample files. The Inkscape developers cannot fix issues they do not about, bug reports are essential.

Not true.

[Millennium]

Apple has several APIs which allow access to Aqua. C and C++ are typically expected to use Carbon, but Apple has been doing some interesting things recently with calling Cocoa from otherwise-Carbon code.

Good intro

[slapout]

I downloaded this a couple of weeks ago. I'm not an artist, but I was impressed. It had a good tutorial that walked you thru the basics. I was surprised that a .42 program had so many features.

Skencil, another Open Source drawing proggie

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nongnu.org/skencil/index.html - skencil is another system that has been around for quite some time. very cool - supports python.

Re:Skencil, another Open Source drawing proggie

[gnugnugnu]

Inkscape keeps a list of other projects and tries to find good ideas to learn from
http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OtherProjects

The question.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Now that Firefox 1.1 supports SVG, what do I use to generate SVG?

Problem on Mac OS X

[DavidMatuszek]

Inkscape looks nice on my PC.

On my Mac, opening Inkscape.app starts X11 and starts Inkscape, but no window opens, and the Inkscape menu bar has only Services, Hide Inkscape, Hide Others, and Quit Inkscape. Is this a bug or is there a secret to getting a GUI?

Thanks,
    Dave

Thanks

[MrCopilot]

Just wanted to say: Thanks for the continued development of an outstanding GPL'd App. My 8yr old daughter is becoming quite the illustrator using Inkscape. Can't wait to try the new one. 0.42 almost halfway there.

Here's a wacky thought!

[Mr.Surly]

How about the slightest inkling (ha!) of what the hell "Inkscape" is, and what it does, rather than the "OMFG!!!121 New version roxorz!!!" crap?

10 years of Illustrator and I'm a convert

[ScislaC]

I had taken a few years of graphic design classes and with that comes the mentality that Adobe is the best. Last year I found Inkscape and have used it and been contributing ever since. A few "artistic" examples of Inkscape that I've done (be sure not to miss the last link though):

My first piece done in Inkscape

Pure calligraphy tool

Clone tiler in action

Made much easier by the enhancements to node editing since .41

Simple

Detailed

And everything was 100% pure inkscape.

inkscape slashdotted

[BeatdownGeek]

Downloads are here

Re:Grab your package....

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about his videocard.

Speaking of which

[Pxtl]

Maybe now that people have heard of Inkscape, we can make the Open Clipart repository not suck.

Make clipart! Lots of it! Submit it to OpenClipart!

Cool, symmetry - but how?

[PhilHibbs]

I have been looking for an app to create repeating "wallpaper" patterns, but I can't find out how to do it! Anyone know how symmetry works in Inkscape?

Re:Cool, symmetry - but how?

[bbyakk]

Create a tile (which may be a group of several objects), select it and do Edit->Tile Clones. Set the parameters and create the pattern. Then you can edit the original tile and the rest of the pattern is updated automatically.

Offtopic: Sushi

[Zzyzygy]

Very nice write-up on your site.

-Scott

Re:I also hate it when...

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be:

"The number of new features is astounding."

"Amount" is for a continuous quantity (as "the amount of water"). Features are discrete entities.

Zero-point-something has always bugged me

[Bitmanhome]

Once you start releasing to users who aren't developers, call it 1.0 already. This zero-point stuff is just silly, especially considering how powerful and stable Inkscape already is.

Re:Zero-point-something has always bugged me

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you start releasing to users who aren't developers, call it 1.0 already. This zero-point stuff is just silly, especially considering how powerful and stable Inkscape already is.

That's funny because loads of people here are complaining about Inkscape not being stable enough!
I do think INkscape has more features and is more stable than some version 1.0 applications I have seen but I agree with the Inkscape developers that things need to be even more stable and rough edges need to be smoothed off before calling Inkscape 1.0 I would bet on around another year of development before 1.0 happening.

Re:Zero-point-something has always bugged me

[MenTaLguY]

Since Inkscape is supposed to be designed around the SVG standard, we're not going to have a 1.0 release until we've implemented the entire standard.

(we'd like to have some other things too, but full SVG support is an absolute requirement)

Re:Zero-point-something has always bugged me

[Bitmanhome]

If the devs spent all their time on stability, then I'd agree that 1.0 could wait for a fully stable version. But they're working on major new features too, even though they should really wait for 1.0.

The other problem is that zero-point means "don't use this software." But with so many people releasing usable software with zero-point version numbers, it loses its meaning. Numbers are free, just call it 1.0. That will give you legitimate claim to a high version number when things are complete and stable.

Would it have killed you to say...

[windowpain]

The amount of new features in this version of the open source scalable vector graphics editor is astounding.

Even on /. not everyone is going to know offhand what Inkscape is.

And excuse my ignorance but what's so "apt" about version number 0.42?

Re:Would it have killed you to say...

[theAtomicFireball]

And excuse my ignorance but what's so "apt" about version number 0.4

I'm guessing this is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything turned out to be... 42.

oblig. HHGG reference

[IceAgeComing]

People who complain about assembly language's difficulty level are usually the sort of people who think automatic garbage collection is a good programming idea.

Do they think digital watches are a pretty neat idea, too?

WARNING: Scary Barbershop Quartet Link

[IceAgeComing]

I just wanted to prepare everyone for the last link. If you haven't drunk your coffee yet and are not stable, DO NOT CLICK. Repeat: DO NOT CLICK this link.

Obligatory Coral mirror links

[marms]

Is it just me, or should every article include the Coral mirror links for any HREFs to avoid the SlashDot effect? So here they are for the links in the parent article (other than the link to the download page on SourceForge):

• developer community
• Release Notes
• screenshots

Re:I also hate it when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you skipped that particular english class. There is nothing at all wrong with the grammar you are complaining about.

The key concept you miss is that "is" applies to "amount", not "features", therefore singular NOT plural.

What you want is Quartz

[spitzak]

I agree with the above, having worked on this myself. It is quite possible to write a program using the Quartz drawing interface in just C (not even C++).

The toolkit (Cocoa) requires Objective-C. But it also means you are not writing a portable application (unless you intend to emulate Cocoa on the other platforms), so that is completely out of the question. Any kind of portable program can also easily avoid Objective-C.

Nice. But does it come close to ...

[Qbertino]

...the only existing professional 2D design/drawing/layout pakage on Linux?
I've been doing professional work with Corel Draw 9 for Linux - the Programm still is a first class industrial heavyweigth in the field. And it's a crying shame it's not available anymore.

So does this Inkscape release compete in some way?
Anybody with a clue about professional software care to provide expertise?

BTW: Slashdotters who've never delivered a professional print or foil-cutting job needn't even think about replying to this question.

Re:Nice. But does it come close to ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Inkscape does not "compete" it provides another useful tool for artists. Anyone who says otherwise is trolling, if you like Corel keep using it and please make suggestions to the Inkscape developers on how it could be improved.

Re:Nice. But does it come close to ...

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW: Slashdotters who've never delivered a professional print or foil-cutting job needn't even think about replying to this question.

STFU, another elitist who thinks that his "professional" printing is the only professional use of some tool. Just like the assholes who claim that professionals can't use GIMP until it gets full CMYK support. I got news for you Mr. Professional, there are professional computer artists who never have to make "professional" prints of anything including, but not limited to web designers, game artists and concept artists.

Re:Nice. But does it come close to ...

[Qbertino]

Thats why I specifically asked for a comparsion. Because I use Gimp for the one or other professional situation myself. That was (suprise!) web grafics. Gimp is limited (compared to PS or even Photopaint) but usefull none the less. Especially if you're prime workhorse is Linux.

Don't jump to conclusions to fast.

Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing -- PDF

[ishmalius]

One of the ideas, and possibly the one that will be used, will be to wait a bit for the changeover of the vector renderer from Inkscape's own (libnr), to using the Cairo vector graphics library. It is developing its own PS and PDF backend. If we use that one, the synchronicity will eliminate duplication of effort and produce a more robust output.

The Inkscape people are not ignoring this. They just need someone to do the work. Any volunteers?

"Aqua-fy" Inkscape.app on OS X

[wordtech]

Inkscape.app runs fine on my Mac (10.4.2), but it looked ugly. I decided to do what the developers of GimpShop and load an Aqua-style skin, Glossy P http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/571. It does a fair approximation of the Aqua appearance, and believe it or not, it helps: makes the contrast between Aqua and X11 less jarring.

To load Glossy P, open the app bundle, navigate to /Contents/Resources, create a directory called /share/themes/Default, and put Glossy P (which untars to a folder called Gtk-2.0) in there.

It would be nice to have a native Aqua version, but porting GTK isn't trivial. There has been a long-running effort to port GTK 1, which looks awful (hardly different from an Aqua-themed X11) and barely runs, and a more recent effort to port GTK 2, which is still in the early phases. Given this situation, I'll gladly use an X11 version in an app bundle. What a good idea! And, Inkscape 0.42 runs much better than previous versions.

Fix for fontconfig under OSX

[austad]

In your xterm as root, run fc-cache. Exit out of root, run fc-list to verify that fonts are listed. Start Inkscape. Works fine.

Re:Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to

[dirtsurfer]

Actually that link has nothing to do with what I was saying, and had to do only with translating the tutorials. There is no information there or anywhere about how to change the language of the menus and interface under windows.

Good job getting modded +5 anyway, though.

There's a whole lot more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Art software is oriented at "fuzzy logic" of an artist. Arbitrary brush strokes, easily accessible gradients, sexy color picker, lots of filters, extended use of digitizer tablet, canvas/ink flow effects, tools similar to real-life ones (pencil, paintbrush, airbrush), and general orientation at unrestricted and easy creation of content, precision be damned.
CAD/tech drawing software has some overlap but there's more differences than similarities. Grid, snap points, "approved" fonts, commandline input (instead of digitizer tablet!), norm-defined fills and frames, precise measurement tools, few sharply defined colors, precise line thickness, all the "fun stroke effects" replaced with "predefined primitives" for easy creation of strictly defined shapes.

An engineer would ponder picking circle-3-point, circle-radius, circle-diameter, circle-line-distance, arc-midpoint-startpoint-angle, arc-3-points, arc-line-endpoint-radius, arc-fillet, approximate-with-circle, and a bunch of others. An artist would slap a simple circle and cover unwanted area with freehand 0-border fill-white blob.

Here's one

[Jesus_666]

Apple was colossally dissapointed today to learn that Perl, 4th Ed. is a fun and informative way to introduce open source. A new IBook and Apple mini are expected to get a handle on Vista while also hitting the shuttle during launch. With the USA getting ready to pass its science crown to China, the Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta has gotten underway, leaving Microsoft and Google fighting for the skies. With the annual cost of the Microsoft monopoly predicted to top $10b this year, thousands and thousands of hours of PVR TV are being used to make new google homepage features the state of solid state storage. Where is the British EFF? Just around the corner, according to UEFI, formed to replace the BIOS after Microsoft began checking for piracy. With China releasing its 2nd generation MIPS chip just days after Sony agreed to stop payola, Voltron, Nerdcore, and the shuttle Discovery all will be coming to a theater near you.

Inkscape and Firefox!

[mabhatter654]

What would be really cool is if we could get the projects to work together on implementation.. so that feature were added at about the same time to both programs... The SVG spec is HUGE, and there's a lot to implement.. but if the KSVG, Inkscape, & firefox guys all got together [along with KHTML & apple, an the SVG Tiny guys] we could get this off the ground.

ferret

[nurfypoo]

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