- Inkscape Board of Directors

Developer Meeting June 27th 2025
by Martin Owens 27 Jun '25

27 Jun '25

Dear Developer team, Meeting: June 27th https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: Martin, Adam, Ishaan, Mikekov, Philip Next Meeting: July 5th 2025 https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Mikekov has been working with Willy (ltlnx) to test and fix bugs in his MMR (mega merge request) for the object properties dialog and worked with René to fix a macOS issue with Gtk. Adam asked Fatama to test the branch too but was not able to run it on macOS. Philip has been working on building support for Inkscape and some Gtk and OpenGL bugs. Ishaan has been learning some more C++ this week. Adam has been guiding their Google Summer of Code project, it's working pretty good and are at the stage of deciding the user experience. Martin and Adam have a brief talk about color management and color experimentation workflows and how the two bits of work can fit together and hopefully build on each other. Martin has been working on the color interpolation and Cairo color rendering planning. Which is taking some time. Philip asked Mike what the estimated time of arrival for the properties dialog, no timeline specified, following the testing results. We talk about how to manage a large change and deciding on when to merge vs polishing it up later. For example the spin buttons and if they should be changed for all existing spin buttons. The project's experience is that updates should be done as globally as possible to avoid technical debt building up over time with half-implimentations and good intentions gone to waste as the project moves forward without the improvements being examples for new contributors. Thanks to everyone for coming! Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Request for funding for marketing materials stash for India and Germany
by Maren Hachmann 19 Jun '25

19 Jun '25

Hi PLC members, Vectors in Germany and India (specifically, Ishaan and myself) would like to order marketing materials for distributing / using them in upcoming conferences. Ishaan (India) calculated that he would need 8300 INR (~ 100 USD, see details below) to order a rollup banner and stickers. I would like to refill the 'German' stash with stickers, business cards, and keyboard cheatsheet handouts for about 115 € (~ 130 USD). In summary, we would like to ask for 270 USD (included some wiggle room for price changes) for marketing materials. On behalf of Ishaan and myself as members of the Vectors team, Maren Details: -------------- India: * 1000 stickers on silver foil ~ 3750 INR (~ 45 USD) * 800 beverage/landscape stickers ~ 2600 INR (~ 30 USD) * 1 banner (+ rollover standee with stand) ~ 1900 INR (~ 23 USD) for IndiaFOSS 2025 (https://platform.fossunited.org/indiafoss/2025) and future events --------------- Germany: * 250 foldable business cards 30 € * 350 stickers on white background 33 € * 220 stickers on silver foil 30 € * 40 keyboard-cheatsheet handouts (1/2 A3) 20 € for Kielux 2025 (https://kielux.de) and other events in Germany

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Developer Meeting June 3rd 2025
by Martin Owens 03 Jun '25

03 Jun '25

Dear Devs, Here is the meeting notes for this week's meeting: Meeting: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Martin, Charlotte, Marc, Jonathan, Mikekov, Tav, Willy, Vaibhav Next Meeting: June 11th https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Tav at the summit he spent most of his time getting the right to left text working which has three different bugs. Everything from aligment, to the wrong buttons and a third unnamed issue. Also reproduced the windows bug with the grid flashing in and out but hasn't fixed it yet. Martin worked on SPCSSAttr and he wants to refactor it away, a small discussion on doing that. PDF input extension having it's own preferences and getting them to use the standard set of preferences. Also worked on the UX policy for toolbars and focus on click, making sure we can test our UI and help future developers keep things consistant. Mikekov, still working on the object properties dialog taking new designs from Adam and Henrique in the UX/UI team. There was a good preentation at the Inkscape Summit. Martin recommends doing more UX research on a more grand redesign that involves repositioning all the toolbars, Mikekov will be doing a smoke test with the internal community to find out if there's anything massively wrong with it before continuing. Charlotte, introduces themselves and has been poking around the PDF import and try and make the import process so groups reflect the PDF. Martin talked about PDF too. Marc talked briefly about LGM and it will be a discussion for the next LGM, the meeting is on June 11th. Willy hasn't been up to much because of the exams, but is involved in the discussion about PNG comments which have attribution. We talked briefly about if this feature is desired and the consensus is that we don't really want to allow the user to export a PNG without Inkscape attribution, even from the command line. Jonathan has a meeting on Thusday with the Google Summer of Code students open to all. Jonathan reports about the meeting to get 1.5 released, which will include external help to fix issues in Gtk4 especially for macOS and windows. Jonathan asked Elendil if we should have a 1.5 alpha just on Linux to get more test coverage. Has a proposal which needs some more work and will be brought back to the developer team next week. Vaibhav, has been working on context menu taking a long time to open but can't reproduce. And working on the adding stop color in gradients tool. The developer team expresses that only contiguous nodes should have new stops added. Some discussion of our steam contract and following up with the SFC. They are looking into it as they now realise how important it is to Krita and how important it could be for us. Thanks for joining everyone! Martin,

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Vote: Create Steamworks account, authorize Direct Fee
by Jonathan Neuhauser 26 May '25

26 May '25

Dear Board, == Background == Since quite some time, Krita is available on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita/). They are "selling" Krita there to support the project financially, while clearly stating in the description that everyone can download it for free on their website. Our developer working group member Vaibhav is looking into setting up something similar for Inkscape. For this, we need a Steamworks account. Apart from that, we've received a request for revenue sharing from a game developer who's using Inkscape for their in-game graphics. This also requires a Steamworks account. The onboarding steps for Steamworks are described here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/onboarding In particular, there is paperwork needed (which we need the SFC for), and there is a one-time 100 USD "Direct Fee" for publishing a product on steam for the first time. This fee will be refunded once the product surpasses 1000 USD in revenue. (This is probably intended to avoid spam publications.) I've briefly brought up the topic with Tracy from the SFC today, and she suggested to go ahead with a vote to encourage a fast processing of the paperwork. ;) == Vote == Sign up for a SteamWorks account and allocate 100 USD for the direct fee. After the paperwork has been done by the SFC, Inkscape will be published on Steam at the discretion of the Developer WG / Release manager. a) Agree b) Disagree c) Other: ____ Best regards Jonathan

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Vote: Apple Developer Program
by René de Hesselle 22 May '25

22 May '25

Dear all, Background: ----------- Creating properly signed and notarized releases for macOS requires a paid membership in Apple's developer program. This membership comes in the form of a yearly subscription. So every year we get to decide anew if we see enough value in signing macOS releases to warrant the expense of 99 € that comes with it. It is possible to distribute and use unsigned apps on macOS just like on Windows. The downside is that a user has to take additional (but not overly complicated) steps to make this work while macOS itself discourages people from using unsigned apps. Proposal: --------- We've been creating signed macOS apps since 1.0 and I propose to continue this practice at the expense of 99 €. Additional information: ----------------------- Last year, concerns were raised about me requesting a reimbursement after I've paid for the renewal, stating that this would impede a free choice because people might feel some form of obligation towards me. The vote still passed. You should know: I never followed through with the reimbursement, I ate that cost myself eventually. You are welcome. This year, I'm calling for a vote one month before the renewal is due. Votes: ------ a. Agree to spend 99 € on the Apple Developer program b. Disapprove participation in the Apple Developer program c. Other: ________ Vote closes on May 31st at the latest.

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Inkscape Developer Meeting, May 10th 2025
by Martin Owens 10 May '25

10 May '25

Dear Developers, Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ Attending: RdH, Martin, Anu, Aarav Oswal, Tav, Adam Belis, Marc Next meeting https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ is the late meeting on a Sunday. Bare this in mind! Release scheduling; René and Martin talk about the building of the 1.4.2 macOSX release. The tag is ready so he'll be uilding those after the meeting. Marc says everything looks good when he looked two days ago, so he went ahead and made the installers and tags. There's over 50 commits of translations because of how weblate works there tends to be multiple commits for each user. We formalise that each protected branch has a translation branch with the pot file updated to that protected branch so translations can happen as soon as posible. Tav has been working on context fill and context stroke which fixes a bunch of issues for inheritance. Including some crashes. Martin and Tav had a disagreement about how tests should be done and did not come to an agreement. Some discussion around the PDF output with various issues that has been spotted. Tav has worked on a crash when text flowed into space and you export selected item. Marc has been trying to draft some stuff on the future of LPEs. Martin suggests meeting to talk about the design. Tav suggests using a switch statement. Generated Items is the more generic name. A discussion develops that goes into some of the possibilities and details. René has been working on the move to the new mac statium infrastructure. Master is already working on the new system. 1.4.x is currently stalled as there are some issues remaining. His next tasks is working on that after the release. Up next will be looking into providing remote access to developers who don't have a macOS machine themselves. René needs to work out how to do it network wise and will provide a proposal for everyone when ready. It can be slow for openGL and we should explain this to people who use the system. Martin asked RdH about the process for doing capypdf in macOSX. We expect a 1.5 release in a year so we have time to work it out at the very least we will have a version for the very latest version. We check upstream macOSX version limitations. Marc reports on the GSoC. We have 5 students who have been accepted. On-Canvas spell checking, UI-Free Inkscape, AI file format support, Recolor Art Work, lib2geom improvements. Martin has worked on some PDF fixes as well as the next steps in design for color management. Running a design meeting this week. We talked about the hotel being paid and the trouble with getting the SFC to make sure this important aspect is finalised safely. Thanks everyone for coming.

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Developer Meeting; May 2nd 2025
by Martin Owens 02 May '25

02 May '25

Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Mikekov, Martin, Tav, Jonathan, Willy, Velfel, Elendil Next Meeting: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ (May 10th) We start by welcoming Velfet; from Serbia. We talk about topics. They've started by looking into the code and getting familar with how things work. We share advice. Mikekov; Is back to working on the object properties dialog. Will be presenting at the Summit and will hopefully get something deliverable. Jonthan; Announces that he will be stepping away from Inkscape after the Nuerumberg Summit. He's also been working Illustrator work and waiting for GSoC. Tav; Has been working on context-fill and context-stroke issues in rendering and PDF export. Martin has also been working on context work for the new PDF output. Willy; Has got his first feature merged this week. Congratulations! A new settings component which allows a folder to be changed and opened. Has added a new async method for checking if files are valid. Elendil; Has been traveling. Martin; capypdf work and getting frustrated with the CI build system. We talked briefly about the OPSOSL situation and that the PLC is working with the SFC about solving it. We worked on merge requests for 20 minutes, reviewing tricky code requests. Big thanks to everyone! We talked about the introduction of an AI policy in the developer team. We want to know if the quality of contributions will impact review time. Martin brought the question of the roadmap team. He's collecting feedback in order to put together a proposal which can encapsulate the guardrails of what a team would do, and what it's limitations would be. It would involve meeting at least quarterly, and not being a closed team that made up all of the ideas itself, but would instead be responsible for sourcing and combining the ideas in our community into a roadmap. He's asked everyone to think about it and get back to him if they have ideas or want to talk further. Thanks everyone for coming to this week's meeting. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Today's Status Meeting is Cancelled
by Ted Gould 02 May '25

02 May '25

Hello, Today we're not going to have an chat status meeting. As folks paying attention to the chat will know there's been a funding issue with our hosting provider so we're having an emergency meeting with SFC to discuss options in places of the regular status meeting. Sorry for the late notice. Next status meeting will be June 6th, 2025. Ted

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Funding for OSUOSL, Was: [Hosting] Future of OSL in jeopardy
by Martin Owens 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

Dear Board, Please read the attached request for help from our hosting provider OSUOSL. I'm proposing that since Inkscape is in the position to help, we should commit to giving them $20k in a one off amount, and commit to something reasonable for a yearly grant. Since they run our website, this mailing list and email provision for our various services. And have been working on our new matrix chat server. Their support has always been courteous, smart and fast and we've depending on them for a long time. I'm presenting an ambitious proposal, but I believe that getting them over this emergency situation would be in our long term best interest. We have given to them in the past. But I believe this is our time to put our resources behind an important bit of infrastructure. This isn't a vote, we'll do that later. Possibly after next Friday's meeting. Related Social Media post: https://floss.social/@downey/114428216313195235 Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Inkscape Developer Meeting 16th April 2025
by Martin Owens 16 Apr '25

16 Apr '25

Dear Developers, Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Marc, ltlnx, pbs, Jonathan Apologies: Tav Next Meeting: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/64/ (earlier) Inkscape Release 1.4.1 is removed because of crashes and we need release 1.4.2. We want to be more courteous to other teams such as documentation and translations so they have some time to prepare themselves. Marc will send out a message to everyone explaining our situation with the plan. Martin explained what happened in 1.4.1 and why it couldn't be released. The splash screen was loading too early causing macOS to crash and causing an error with command line uses as the CLI wasn't read in by the time the splash screen was being loaded. The developer team is basically ready but will give two weeks for other teams to get themselves into position for the point release. this puts the release at the end of April, start of May. The bug Accelerator program met today and there isn't a lot of bugs fixed yet in April as Martin took a break to work on PDF and Tav working on LPE issues. Blog posts for March are available on the website. Willy has been busy doing the documentation project, Inkscape manual. He's modeling it on the Blender manual and the end goal is to have it in the UI interface, not just in the help menu. Jonathan has been organising the GSoC review meeting. The details for the discussion were disclosed but were not added to these minutes as they are confidential. PBS wanted to ask about how exporting symbols. Inkscape for windows is hitting the limit on the number of symbols and so PBS created a branch to experiment. This shows that almost everything can work, except for Plugins which are the under-used C++ based code since the API would need to be available. We could ask the projects using plugins to design what the inkscape symbols API should. Martin has been working on PDF output dealing with Markers and context paints, wrote some more tests and is happy with the test output so far. PBS has some ideas about how it might be possible to make a static version of capypdf, but this would be highly experimental. We talked briefly about cppgir, but the problem is that it takes so long to load; but it's a good API and with gtkmm being not as maintained this might be a good future option. See you all next week! Best Regards, Martin Owens

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