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Inkscape Version 0.91 Released
Bryce writes: Four years since the last major Inkscape release, now news is out about version 0.91 of this powerful vector drawing and painting tool. The main reason for the multi-year delay is that they've switched from their old custom rendering engine to using Cairo now, improving their support for open source standards. This release also adds symbol libraries and support for Visio stencils, cross platform WMF and EMF import and export, a native Windows 64-bit build, scads of bug fixes, and much more. Check out the full release notes for more information about what has changed, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.
Oh wait, it's free? Clever Inkscape, very clever.
Inkscape is one of the handful of apps (along with The GIMP, Firefox, OpenOffice, and some others that could round out a nice top-10 or top-20) that together make up a good base set of software that's more than good enough for most people's computerizing needs. (And, in keeping with that idea, it's included in the defaults for many distros, which is appropriate.)
What's funny is how limited / limiting the default software set is on Windows (a bit better on Mac OS X, but still falls short), if you're used to the kind of apps that come with a typical Linux distro, or are available for instant free download. The GIMP is not PhotoShop (you know how you can tell? You don't have to keep buying it each month ... ), and Inkscape is not Illustrator (ditto), but they're both *good,* and mean you / the 900 students in the school down the street / etc. can be playing with and using them now, for free, forever.
No one can make anyone care about this or much of anything, but quality open-source / Free software has a lot of person-hours behind it, and its worth celebrating, especially when the releases are separated by such a long time.
Serious answer for a question I suspect is pure troll, but Hey, it's my day off, and everyone needs a hobby ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
One of the coolest things about Inkscape is that it does a good job of converting bitmapped images to vectors, which is especially nice if you want to combine source elements created in a raster-art program at wildly different scales. This capability is found in other software, I know, but Inkscape makes it relatively simple and (at least if you're going to use the results *in* Inkscape) saves some steps.
This is also a fun way to decompose images into constituent color layers, separate them, and then play with the resulting layers -- cool high-contrast results sometimes in combining just 2 or 3 of the resulting layers.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Since this is really a slashvertisement I may as well add some more fuel to the fire. If you're already brave enough to use Inkscape as your bread winner, perhaps you've thought about branching out into making signs? If this is the case then you should definitely check out Inkcut http://sourceforge.net/project... Just add a vinyl cutter to the mix and you're rolling. GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut, all you need to start making signs on the cheap.
Well, for Inkscape we at Slashdot just take a small percentage of the purchase price for every copy shipped; maybe we could work out a similar deal for your product -- what it is? This works best if your product is high-quality open-source software ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Inkscaper Alexandre Prokoudine provides a nicely visual article about the release, including a video to demonstrate some of the new things you can do with it: http://libregraphicsworld.org/...
The portability of the Windows and OSX UI frameworks could properly be called "utter rubbish", because they're not intended to be portable at all.
He wasn't comparing GTK+ to single-platform frameworks. He was comparing GTK+ to Qt. He said that Qt is a far better framework if you want cross platform, and he's right. And Qt is hardly just a "windows or OSX" framework. Qt really wipes the floor with GTK+ for cross-platform /especially/ if you want an application to run on Windows, OSX, Linux, Sailfish, Embedded Windows, Windows RT, Android, and Blackberry, QNX, and VxWorks.
--
BMO
For Windows, the UI will seem to lag or not redraw in real-time while drawing or using it.
Disable Rulers (ctrl + r, or Menu: View -> Show/Hide -> Rulers) will fix it.
I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ink...
This may also apply to some versions of The G.I.M.P.
My current business depends on Inkscape. I use Inkscape's 'gcodetools' plugin to generate gcode for a CNC mill. I can go from designing to cutting in five minutes flat. I'm not sure if it is included in this release, but you can get it in the beta.
he portability of the Windows and OSX UI frameworks could properly be called "utter rubbish", because they're not intended to be portable at all.
What exactly do either of those have to do with a discussion of Qt vs GTK+?
In contrast, GTK+ apps can and do run on both Windows and OSX, and many applications work quite well on both platforms.
I've use GTK+ apps on both Windows and OS X and they do not work "quite well". Many OS X GTK+ apps still require pulling in X11 which adds extra hassle and more dependencies whereas Qt does not have that issue (even if Qt apps still don't look completely native on OS X).
Sweet! Happy for you and that's great information. By the way, do you use Blender http://blender.org/ (Free and Open Source 3D and Video editing) too? Here is a sweet tutorial on how to generate 2D artwork (SVG's) from 3D models. http://goinkscape.com/use-blen... if you ever need it. That's the great thing about Blender and Inkscape, there are so many free and great tutorials on the Internet as well as a wonderful community of users you can most likely get an answer from when you get stuck. Something I really want to learn myself is how to run a CNC milling machine (or Plasma cutters) as well as how to 3D print. I mean if you learn Blender, GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut one can be very versatile and valuable to a lot of companies in a lot of situations. Or like yourself, run your own business.
This last comment is very insightful and addresses something I've thought about from time to time.
You pay whatever it is that Windows costs (no, it isn't free just because it's bundled on a computer), and then what do you have? Actually, not much. You have an operating system and a few tools (and maybe a bunch of bundled demo crapware).
You install Ubuntu or Mint or similar, and you have a suite of tools, and the means to easily install more, for free. Like Inkscape, as the lead article discusses. Within half an hour or less you can have full-featured computing that should meet at least 90% of the needs of 90% of users (maybe even better than that). I'm not going to get into the arguments about specialized tools or high-end features or cutting-edge gaming; if you truly need such things, go buy them and put them on your Windows system.
Linux has served me for many years. In the early years, things were rougher around the edges, but today, it's night and day difference. As I'm not much of a gamer, there is little or nothing that I need Windows for. I "get by" just fine with GIMP, and the new Inkscape is amazing, as is LibreOffice ... not to mention EMACS, of course :)
Sorry but I just don't see a personal need to spend money on software.
the last time I checked, [GIMP] still lacked the support for color matching that would make it viable for creating images that were print-ready.
Have the patents on practical methods of color matching expired yet? If not, then it's impossible for free software to support proper color matching.
I love Inkscape and want to use it, but as long as there is no proper CMYK / printing support it's pretty useless for profession work.
Xara Designer Pro is still the only viable alternative to Illustrator at this point.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Inkscape 0.91 64-bit uses 0% CPU (as far as Task Manager is concerned) when idling on my computer. I did uninstall 0.48 and tell it to delete my personal preferences though.
My time has value, so if I have to spend 3 extra hours researching stuff on Linux that either Just Works or that I know how to do on Windows, Linux ends up more expensive. My last handful of attempts to switch to Linux ended taking a lot more than 3 hours, and I never got to a working config, or to a nicely working config, for a vareity of reasons (grub2 choking on AMD controllers, nice multiscreen handling and video support requiring different drivers, Upstart having no end-user doc,...).
Sorry but I don't see a need to spend hours and tear my hair out over software.
I really don't understand this. You're complaining about 3 hours? Do you have someone else doing your windows setup/installs, app installs, updates, etc? Every time I setup a windows box (it is rare, but it tends to happen at least once every 2 years, and last two happened a month ago - one win 7 enterprise and one win 8.1 pro)... every time, the updates alone take forever (days). Then there's finding and setting up all the programs that I need (which isn't much - browsers, email client, pidgin, putty, vim, some music players, video players, virtualbox, etc). We're no longer talking hours. I keep hearing people saying windows is much better now, and that they can go from bare metal to fully updated with their standard apps installed in hardly any time... I don't believe it. And whenever I ask those same people what the right thing to click is to make it go the fastest, it's exactly what I'm doing and they go, "oh yeah... just reboot and let it pick back up while you go get some food or something". Ok, so let's ignore that for a bit and just pretend that's all my little edge case and it's something I did...
If you don't want to learn, that's fine. However, you can go from bare metal to installed and fully updated linux desktop WITH 99% of the apps you need, all within a very short time (~30min) and 2 reboots total: ...whatever stuff you want... ex: firefox libreoffice gimp inkscape vim emacs
* install (from whatever media you want: usb, cd, dvd, network, etc... those are all standard and easily supported without jumping through hoops for all versions)
* reboot into OS
* sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
* sudo apt-get install
* reboot so you're into the new kernel. you're done.
Note that all that can be done faster and with fewer steps (ex. using kickstart or other tools like that), or can be done fully with GUI's, and anywhere in between. I know windows can be installed via deployment scripts, or manually, and a variety in between as well, but those things are not very accessible to most people.
When windows changes again (as it does every 2 releases) and things change significantly and what you know no longer "just works", do you also say it's more expensive? You're welcome to stay with that, but claiming that Linux is more expensive because your stuck in your ways is a bit disingenuous. You could easily learn most of the applications well ahead of the switch and make the migration much less abrupt. You probably know many of them already (Firefox, LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, pidgin, chrome, vlc, inkscape, etc). Many others also run on windows, like much of the KDE suite. Find replacements for your apps before switching, and use them if you can (in most cases, you will be able to use them). Then setup a vm and run it full screen as your desktop. In this way you can identify any issues that affect your workflow without damaging your workflow... if you hit an issue, just drop back to windows and get the job done, then review how to do that in Linux when you have time. Eventually, you'll want to switch that setup: linux as base OS and windows in a vm... but the linux in the vm can work very well for a very very long time (especially since you can drop back to windows for native games, one of the few things with thorough support in linux).
When installing windows, updating, sourcing all his various apps and licenses, and getting them all installed and updated, all takes many times longer than either the 3 hour example or an analogous operation in Linux land, then his money argument is horribly flawed.