- Inkscape Board of Directors

Developer Team Meeting, April 19th 2026
by Martin Owens 19 Apr '26

19 Apr '26

Hey everyone, Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Martin, Vaibhav, Ishaan, Philip, René, Tav Next: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ CI builds with 26.04 from Ubuntu 24.04 and there are some breakages which will need attention. This was highlighted by a PPA failure with test failures. There were some ASAN issues, these might have effected our CI, but don't appear to be. The test failures appear to be related to fonts. Martin talks about how capypdf works with fonts and how the system in the CI might be failing in it. We talk about the test failures for antialiasing and improving robustness. Vaibhav has been working on backports. Wants to talk about a merge request for a crash ready for review. Ishaan wanted to talk about the issue in Gtk4 clipboard and the missing functionality. We talk about the C++ bug fixing program and how much the contractor will have to fix bugs in upstream projects like Cairo, Gtk4 etc. There's Gtk4 demos which we can test to see what can be fixed in Inkscape for 1.5. Martin has continued working on the new rendering engine with a full separation of SPstyle using templating and a consistent API use they are now developing a way to allow the current rendering engine to print out the code for a running svg file so we can copy paste those outputs into test files to make sure we are getting the same output in the new engine. Philip and Martin talk about the new engine's place, and how the discipline could help with using a GPU rendering engine in the future. Pillip wanted to ask René about the CI improvements for pinning. The linux CI is not pinned and asks about the setup in use for the repository for ci building. There are details which this note taker does not understand, but it looks like a bunch of work are possible but would take time with GitLab. Philip asks Tav about his color font merge request. There's an open merge request which can be fixed; any cairo version before 2027 would deadlock instead which we can patch in windows and macOS but not on Linux. Martin requests checks to avoid the new fix from causing the deadlock for users who might paste emoji into their document. Philip finishes with the lib2geom test case issues; there's been a build up of test issues for various platforms. There's some slight differences between archetectures and Philip believes some of the features can't be fixed at all. Martin advises to contact previous lib2geom contributors at the same time as investigating the issues and seeing what is possible to fix and what tests will have to be disabled. Tav is planning on a refactoring branch to cleanup the namespace use of Inkscape. Martin suggests that using namespace Inkscape is valid for a lot of code since it's part of Inkscape. Ishaan reports that the 1.4.4 release in on schedule and thanks ltlnx (Willy) for their work on backporting. René would like to understand how the python interaction works for macOS for 1.4.4 but this might not be possible in the time. Thank you everyone for coming to this week's meeting.

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Inkscape Developer Meeting Notes, April 11th 2026
by Martin Owens 11 Apr '26

11 Apr '26

Hey everyone, A smaller meeting from last week, but some heavily topics. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: Martin, karliss, Mikekov, Tav, Elendil Next: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Tav has been fixing bugs with the svg font, a crash. May have found a problem in the regex where strings are defreferenced. We talk about cairo bugs and the need to pay close attention to the versions. We will need fixes from code that isn't even released upstream yet, but we should still specify we need that future version. With a critical problem hanging around for developers, testers and future 1.5 users. Elendil talks about the poppler drama with versions constantly needing IFDEFs and Martin talks about the problems with the upstream poppler design making font interfaces private. We have an indepth discussion about the problem with depedencies and upstreams and how receptive they are to accommodating our needs. Karliss has been doing some pixel alignment and some other issues. Martin has been working on unpicking the Gradient paint servers and trying to allow the rendering engine to work without needing to include th whole of the SPObject tree and SPStyle. These includes prevent proper unit testing. Mikekov has been working on his object properties dialog. We had a longer discussion about the AI policy. Mikekov will probably stop contributing to the project if and when we stop allowing AI contributions. He believes that the project would benifit from having merge request reviewed by AI and that the capabilities of these tools are quite a bit more capable than the project believes. Martin has his own issues with AI and a frank discussion is had about some of the many dimentions involved in the discussion. We get into merge requests and the history of trying to have enough people to review code being submittd to the project. If a proposal is before the project about using a new tool, then we'd be looking for something ethical, pen source and capable; no matter what it's tooling was. Thanks everyone for coming to this week's meeting!

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Vote: budget for Windows CI evaluation
by René de Hesselle 07 Apr '26

07 Apr '26

Dear PLC, the developer team wants to evaluate cloud provider Clouding.io <http://clouding.io/> as a more powerful and flexible compute backend for Windows CI. This evaluation is scoped to a fixed budget of 150 € that we assume to last for 3 months of Windows CI (pay-as-you-go compute minutes, depends on development activity). That will give us enough time/jobs to make an assessment afterwards. I ask you to vote for either: a) Approve budget request for 150 € b) Disapprove this budget request c) Other, please explain Background: We are looking for a scalable solution to provide ephemeral Windows runners that is more powerful than GitLab's fleet and that does not rely on community members sponsoring hardware and utility bills. The evaluation will be managed and the budget spent by me (there will be a regular invoice to be reimbursed). Thank you, René

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Developer Meeting Notes; April 3rd 2026
by Martin Owens 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

Hey everyone, Big thanks to everyone who was able to join our dev meeting which happened at the same time as the PLC meeting. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: René, Karliss, Charlotte, mgmax, Philip, Tav, Martin, Vaibhav Next Meeting: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ René; update on hiring process for bugfix accelerator, applications are coming in and official deadline is soon. Also updating dependencies for Win/macOS for upcoming release. Pointless reporting of security issues by AI agents who don't understand the codebase and can't answer questions about the problem. MC provides access to Windows ARM, René will test that will look into offloading Windows CI with budget of 150 Euros to pay for cloud provider. Tav asks if Inkscape will run on new "cheap" mac, Rene says yes it should, the architecture is the same. Less powerful chip and 8 GB RAM, but Apple claims to use memory more efficiently. Vaibhav has no problem on 8 GB low-end macbook. Charlotte, has been doing some windows testing. Failed successfully. Philip tried to do a fix for this specific static threading windows bug but it's quite a difficult problem. A couple of people have tried to fix it. He thanks Charlotte for the testing and asks follow up questions. Has a limited machine to do development on. Karliss, pixel alignment related issues. Links us to an issue related to security issues which allows svgs with unsafe problems in them. Philip has looked into this issue too; it's partly an upstream issue in Gio and similar pathways. Martin asks if it's possible to deal with the issues on a case by case basis. Tav; getting back into some old merge requests. Some specific libnrtype changes which now have a merge conflict thanks to some recent unit testing work. mgmax has an old merge request which they were asked to present at the meeting. It's a windows script which sets up everything for you. (https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/7557) it also allows a virtual machine for testing. Martin has already looked into it, and wants to get more visibility on the changes. René wants to know if this is based on the CI toolchain which is based on making a fixed image with better stability. This new script uses the developer instructions which is a rolling release. Max and Rene will get into contact to get the MR merged and to get the scripts and documentation changed to use a fixed MSYS image instead of rolling release. Vaibhav has continued their performance optimisations, in existing issues. An LPE specific issue using simplify (https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/7833) the reason is because of update signals that happen on every selection change. Martin has been working on text on path and text in shape to catch up to the big improvements in Krita text handling. Tav and Martin talk about the SVG spec support, and Krita using SVG for their vector layers giving the spec two implemetations which is important. The new text functionality is basically ready, but will need more testing. We talk about the steam issues and move on to talking about our relationship with the SFC. See you all next time! Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Vote for LGM travel support.
by tavmjong＠free.fr 29 Mar '26

29 Mar '26

Committee members, your response is required: a) Approve this proposal. b) Disapprove this proposal. c) Change this proposal. Background: We have been sending people to LGM for many years. It is the premier open-source conference for graphical design software. This year's version takes place in Nuremberg from April 22nd through 25th. It's a great place to network with other open-source graphics software people. https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2026/ This proposal is to provide support for members of the Inkscape community to attend this event. In the past we have held Inkscape Hackfests/Summits before or after the event. I did a quick survey and there wasn't enough interest to hold a Summit this time. (It was rather late to organize such an event.) Proposal: - Allocate funds of up to $1250 per person to cover travel expenses to attend LGM (transportation, accommodations, meals, misc. expenses). (This is half of what we've allocated in the past for attending a combined Inkscape Summit and LGM.) - The total reimbursement for this event will be limited to $7500 on a first come, first serve basis. Attendees must contact Tavmjong in advance with an estimate of their expenses. Attendees must make their own travel and accommodation arrangements, subject to SFC rules. - Authorize Tavmjong to approve applications for travel support.

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Developer Meeting Notes, March 26th 2026
by Martin Owens 26 Mar '26

26 Mar '26

Dear Devels, This weeks meeting was quite interesting. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: Martin, Lola Egherman, Mikekov, ltlnx, Vaibhav Ted introduced Lola Egherman to Inkscape at SCaLE; they are a worker for a non-profit which helps people get into Free Software projects and learn to code. Has joined us to learn about how to contribute to Inkscape to hopefully guide people into contributing. We talked about all the conferences in the world like SCaLE, FOSDEM, the difference between cultures in various places and the interesting people who work on FOSS. Martin points to the python extensions as a good introduction to contributing and we talk about the various ways in which you can get into inkscape and how difficult various types of contributions are. Mikekov has been working on the same sorts of things. A paint widget refactoring which uses the SPObject directly was a mistake and this caused Mikekov to have to rethink the solution to the problem. The issues with the style system as a whole was discussed. Martin talks about the problems with getting merge requests approved and merged and we talked about the problems with a lack of senior developers involved in the project as we've had a big attrition this year. Martin has been working on text inside shape and text on path and gives a little demonstration. There's some refactoring and some ancient bugs which have cropped up need fixing but it's fairly nice to use. Vaibhav has been working on speed problems, flame graphs and things are improving. Running individual test units multiple times to get data for speed testing. Ltlnx has been working on some design work and is impressed by the speed of 1.5 compared to 1.4. Has been working on fixing 1.4 issues for 1.4.4. Next meeting is April 3rd, thanks everyone for coming! Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Inkscape Developer Meeting, 18th March 2026
by Martin Owens 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Hey everyone, Attending: Tav, Martin, Vaibhav, Mikekov, ltlnx Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Vaibhav has been working on speed, producing flame graphs. Martin and Vaibhav talked about making speed tests for unit testing, with cmake and CI integrations which could be optionally run. Tav is working on Inkscape again and has got their merge requests up to date. Tav and Vaibhav talked about search improvements, especially with speed problems. It's creating a new widget by loading a glade file for every action in the search. Causing significant delays. Tav says there newer widgets that would be useful, Martin says theres ways to use widget tree as a template. For 1.4 it could just be brought into C++ instead of using glade at all. We talk about using ListViews and other such constructs. Martin has been working on a small feature improvement to the Measurement Tool to take a break from all the engine work. It allows angles and curve length to be measured in a more useful way and has involved a bunch of users and designers testing everything. Mikekov has worked on the Document Properties dialog. Now the object properties is more featureful it's useful to rename it to maybe just "Properties". Martin suggests that speed issues would be increasing important as the dialog's main design requires and suggest it should be always open. And thus is should never cause speed issues. Vaibhav did some speed testing already which we reviewed in the meeting. It's building all the patterns, even when patterns aren't being used. Tav and Mikekov talk about tspan updating issues with position and what it all means. Martin tested the issue with x,y coords being ignored in tspans and we narrowed it down to sodipodi:line attributes which cause our svg rendering to diverge from the way the svg would be rendered anywhere else. Ltlnx has been starting the work for 1.4.4 and organising the point release. There's some things to backport. He's negotiating a date with the vector, documentation and translations. This should get these fixes out by end of May. Thanks to everyone who could come to this week's meeting. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Inkscape Developer Meeting March 10th 2026
by Martin Owens 10 Mar '26

10 Mar '26

Hey everyone. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: Martin, Vaibhav, Tav, Mikekov Next Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Tav hasn't done much programming but did conclude there wasn't enough people interested in an LGM adjacent event to warrent a seperate event. Instead he'll make a vote to allow contributors to go to LGM itself if they want to. Vaibhav has some questions about how to attend. Vaibhav has been fixing some speed issues trying to learn about flame graphs, profiling and finding out why certain things in Inkscape are so slow. Mikekov and Vaibhav talk about the tooling. Mikekov has been finishing up work on the Object Properties dialog for Text support to allow users to access text properties from the omni data access design¹. He's also looking at information for the document properties. the goal for the document properties is to allow it to be docked on the side without taking up too much space. Martin has been working on removing SPStyle from drawing-rendering, the libNRType is already split out in a new MR so that's waiting to be merged. Last night they added a feature for the measurement tool to measure line segmentss in paths. Thanks everyone, sort meeting this week! Martin, ¹ https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/7784

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Developer Meeting Notes 2nd March 2026
by Martin Owens 02 Mar '26

02 Mar '26

Dear Devels, Another week and another great developer meeting. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Mikekov, Martin, René, Tav, Peyton Murray, pbs, Vaibhav Next event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ René starts with his CI improvements project for windows. He's made a project at https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/7796 the main problem for GitLab GI is that it's a type of headless windows system which doesn't have the graphics stack needed event to run -- version. To current solution is René is running a machine in his parent's basement which is unsustainable. He's found a provider who can solve this issue for us. But it will cost us money to run this. We discussed how much compute time we would need and René will make a vote with the plc for a 3 month trial for 150 euros to get a sense of the resources needed. The developer team is in agreement. Tav wants to organise people to go to LGM and maybe meet up beforehand. Martin recommends creating the budget and assessing interest so we know who would like to go. We talked briefly about the hotel costs. Mikekov has been working on a text panel for the object properties which is different from other style properties in it's complexity. Thinks he may have to make a new style handler. Martin talked about the engine work, they are working on separating out the drawing item layer into unit testing involving the SP-Style and NRType interactions. The only issue is pixbuf use in FontInstance which they're working on splitting out. The work on unitising more of inkscape code to improve our ability to maintain the project. Phlip asked about the marker work, is continuing his work on recovering Rafael's marker refactoring code. Tav was asked about the specification for svg for marker. We talk about context style. Refactoring is part of that work which needs to be extracted out. Vaibhav has been finishing the Refactoring LPE Mask branch and would like testing. Is working on the flowed text speed differences between 1.4 and 1.5 there are only small differences. We talk about the best practices for logging and preformance testing. Peyton talks about looking at issues to fix. We talked about the trace bitmap functionality. We talk about the milestones, and the gtk migration and the dificulty of editing ui files now that Gtk no longer. We briefly coverage support and performance testing now we have units. Thanks everyone! Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Bugfix Accelerator 2026.1
by Martin Owens 20 Feb '26

20 Feb '26

Dear Project Leadership, The developer team discussed requesting a fund for bug fixing in the 1.5 branch specifically. This is before a release, it's more about focusing our attention on the many issues in the 1.5 branch and giving us some funding for administration to the bug tracker. Because this may need to be an ongoing program, I will request funding in blocks of three months and we can re-vote the next block on review. I request a budget of $36,000 for 2 x 280 hours of engineering work targeted at bug fixing in the 1.5 release which is approximately 20 hours per week. And like last time $13,500 for 180 hours (15 hours per week) of administration, writing, issues management, priorities, testing and merge requests. Total budget: $49,500 If fewer hours are used per week they can be used and we don't have to vote quite so soon. The recruitment team will be made up of myself and one other Inkscape member who will not be allowed to bid for the work. We will send out a call for interested and available workers to apply for one of the three positions. Reports and meetings as described in the attached document. a. Approve the budget for BFA 2026.1, b. Disapprove c. Something else Thanks everyone. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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