July 2023 - Inkscape Board of Directors

Vote: Apple Developer Renewal 2023
by Jonathan Neuhauser 04 Jun '24

04 Jun '24

Dear all, it's this time of the year again! Background: ----------- René de Hesselle (RdH) has been preparing our OSX builds for a while, to do that he needs to be able to sign them with an Apple Developer Account. We have reimbursed him last year for this account so that he could continue to sign builds for Inkscape. This is to renew that account so he can continue to sign OSX builds. Proposal: --------- Reimburse RdH for the membership renewal expenses for Apple's developer program. This is estimated to cost 99€. Votes: ------ a. Reimburse RdH for the program b. No, cease participation in Apple's Developer Program c. Other: ________ Best regards, Jonathan

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Developer Meeting Notes - July 24 2023
by doctormo＠geek-2.com 24 Jul '23

24 Jul '23

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

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Inkscape 1.3 released!
by Marc Jeanmougin 23 Jul '23

23 Jul '23

================ = 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-org… 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.inkscape.… + 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

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VOTE: Remaining funds in the Bugfix Accelerator Program 2023
by Jonathan Neuhauser 07 Jul '23

07 Jul '23

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

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Stipend Policy
by Ted Gould 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

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

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