Developer Meeting Notes - July 24 2023
by doctormo＠geek-2.com
Hey Everyone,
Thanks to everyone who came to the developer meeting this week.
Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/
Present: Rafael, Marc, Martin, Thomas Holder, Mikekov, Gre, Nicco, Rene,
Jonathan
Next Meeting: Tuesday, August 1st 2023 (1 hour after the SFC catch up
meeting)
# New Stable Release
Congratulations everyone for the release. We've had about 25k downloads
today.
The responses in all the social media and news sites has been very
positive so far. We're all very happy with the release, although we
understand there are still some rough patches. Martin wants to say that
he’s very proud of being able to work with everyone this last year and
hopes everyone knows how much they rock.
Request for the website developer: Add all the download numbers together
from the releases into the download page. Maybe cache the number so it's
not so over requesting.
This time we made the RC and final installers days before the final
release date so we have a lot more buffer than usual and could fix
issues with the msi build without too much stress. Even the windows
store creator didn't crash this time. So this year’s release went much
smoother.
Marc - Made the windows installers signed, self-signed so they still get
a warning about trust. But the notice dialog will now say it's by
"Inkscape" which is slightly better than "Unknown"
# Ongoing Fixes
The 1.3.x branch is unfrozen, so please apply fixes and things which you
can apply to the 1.3, including backports which couldn't be applied to
1.3 in time. Don't spend too much time making features which can only
apply to 1.3 even if we have some disruption with 1.4's Gtk4 migration.
Rene wanted to ask that we keep 1.3.x issues tagged properly so Martin
can work on them with his bug fixing contract.
# Other Developments
Nicco has been working on the AI contract extension. He's been working
on live path effects for rectangles which works quite nice. He'll be
working on styles next, gradients and other elements. Jonathan has been
unavailable because of parental leave.
Rafael has started looking at some problems in lib2geom, specifically to
do with arcs, there was a good implementation which didn't have all the
cases covered. We've worked on stabilizing the numerical stability of
the current methods, but we're reaching the end of what can be done with
these methods. There are some new mathematics which use a degree four
polynomial the basis of which has been added already. This is all to fix
the intersections of two ellipse/arcs.
Rafael we may add a rotate box in the select tool. Marc has some
concerns that it might be cluttering. Martin suggests that a
configurable toolbar would allow non-default features which could be
switched on. Although some users think this is essential, Marc thinks
they could use the transform dialog instead.
Thomas has joined us to congratulate us for the new release. He was
trying out some new features and hit some limitations so has coded it.
Martin hasn't been available because of a bereavement; wants to thank
everyone for covering him while he’s been away. Has made a poll for his
sponsors what they want him to work on for the coming year. He'll be
focusing on CapyPDF for CMYK PDF output and the secondary project will
be the connectors tool which has been waiting for a while.
Jonathan joins us to congratulate us on a great release.
# Gtk4
No one was available to talk about Gtk4 this week.
# Infrastructure
Marc reported our CI builder minutes usage on GitLab skyrocketed. There
is some discussion about the possible future CI configurations, running
them ourselves etc. Intel machines for macOS, Linux machines, etc.
Rene reports that the Gnome project is having isolation problems in
their CI builder but they don't have anyone to look after the machine.
Rene has concerns that the Gnome project isn't committed to macOS and
might not be trustworthy. So even though he could spend time helping
Gnome, he fears it might be a waste of his volunteer time. There may be
some interpersonal or cultural issues that need to be unpicked. Marin
suggested we need to get together with the Gnome project and try and
talk it out. He's got an open ticket so they can use his macOS CI runner
for glib.
# Events
We have some interest in tracking FOSSDEM and LGM events. And seeing if
we can run a dev room, or a booth or what might be possible. Lots of
interesting topics for a dev room. Editable SVG, Gtk4, and other
cross-project collaboration.
Awesome meeting everyone. Lots talked about. See you all next week.
Best Regards, Martin Owens
4 months, 1 week
Inkscape 1.3 released!
by Marc Jeanmougin
================
= Inkscape 1.3 =
================
Thanks to all the work from our community, we are proud to announce that
Inkscape version 1.3 is now released.
----------------
You can find out about the new features at:
https://inkscape.org/news/2023/07/23/inkscape-launches-version-13-focus-o...
and download it for your platform on:
https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.3/
then, if you want to support Inkscape, donate to the project at
https://inkscape.org/support-us/
----------------
Inkscape 1.3 is the latest major release of Inkscape, following more
than one year of development after the 1.2 major release.
The highlights of this release are:
* Improved performance thanks to fully asynchronous, multithreaded
rendering
* Shape builder (NEW) - a new tool for building complex shapes
(Boolean tool)
* Improved On-Canvas Pattern Editing
* Pattern Editor (NEW)
* Page margins & bleed
* Document Resources Dialog (NEW)
* Return of Search, opacity & blend modes in Layers & Objects dialog
and of an optional persistent snap bar
* Font Collections (NEW)
* Syntax highlighting in XML Editor
* LPE dialog - Redesign
* Better PDF import
* Many crash & bug fixes
We also introduced a long list of new features outlined in detail and
illustrated at
https://media.inkscape.org/media/doc/release_notes/1.3/Inkscape_1.3.html .
-----------------------------
Join an Inkscape project team
-----------------------------
Inkscape is always happy to welcome new contributors in various areas:
code[1], translation[2], UX[3], testing and bug triaging[4],
documentation[5] or even outreach[6]!
The main ways to get involved are listed onhttps://inkscape.org/contribute/
The preferred points of contact are:
[1]https://lists.inkscape.org/postorius/lists/inkscape-devel.lists.inkscap...
+ https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel (or
libera.chat/#inkscape-devel)
[2]https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_translation
[3]https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_ux
[4]https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_testing
[5]https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/documentation
[6]https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_vectors
A warm thanks to everyone involved in making this release possible!
-- The Inkscape team
4 months, 1 week
VOTE: Remaining funds in the Bugfix Accelerator Program 2023
by Jonathan Neuhauser
Dear PLC,
In the meeting with Pono on June 14*, the present PLC members have
discussed* the extension of the bugfix accelerator program, and based on
this discussion, I've created the following ballot.
*Background*
The PLC has previously allocated a total of USD 20.000 for both
contractors, but Rafael dropped out very early into his contract. On the
other hand, Martin has made huge efforts to get the 1.3 release as
smooth as possible, fixing - if my stats are correct - 52 issues within
the contract, including 2 blockers and 10 crashes. (You can see the
progress over time on this page:
https://gitlab.com/groups/inkscape/-/milestones/11#tab-issues)
With this vote, I propose to repurpose the funds that have already been
reserved for the Bugfix accelerator program for a contract extension for
Martin so that he can fix issues at the project's discretion for the
bugfix releases of the 1.3.x series.
This is based on the understanding that the contract is not intended to
pay for Inkscape development per se, but for the project's ability to
decide which bugs the contractor work will work on. This includes issues
outside of the contractors "comfort zone", as was the case with the
already-fixed issues.
Regarding a possible repetition of the bugfix accelerator next year: a
poll will be conducted to find out how uses perceive our recent efforts
to spend the project's resources, and where they would like to see our
resources go. Much like the internal GTK contractor position, we would
properly advertise the job posting on the mailing list, and have an open
call for applications (from within the active developers).
* As per the SFC Conflict of Interest policy, Martin was not present
during this part of the meeting. He has stated that he would be available.
*Ballot*:
a. Extend Martin's contract under the terms of the Bugfix Accelerator
Program 2023. The contract volume will not exceed the remaining budget
allocated to the Bugfix Accelerator Program 2023.
b. Do not extend the Bugfix Accelerator Program 2023, the remaining
funds are deallocated.
c. Other: _____
Best regards,
Jonathan
4 months, 4 weeks
Stipend Policy
by Ted Gould
Howdy folks,
Updating finances for Friday's meeting and noticing that we have a few open stipend opportunities that folks have decided not to take. No criticism there, but we have no way to close them off our books (and I don't feel I can do so unilaterally). It feels like to me that they should have an expiration similar to the SFC travel policy, which is 90 days. Would folks support that as a policy? Or do we think it should just be included when allocating them? Or just a "clean up" vote every few months?
I'm open to whatever, just trying to clean up our books.
Ted
4 months, 4 weeks
