November 2003 - Inkscape Devel

Inkscape Project Status 2003-11-29
by Bryce Harrington 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

Inkscape Project Status Saturday, November 29, 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Much progress has been made towards the 0.36 release; in fact only a handful of tasks (mostly bug fixing and my arrowhead work) remains. The user interface of Inkscape has been completely redesigned, a heap of usability improvements added, and documentation and unit testing development is well under way. Our activity percentile on SourceForge has rarely dipped much below 99% and in fact we've been in the top 100 quite often. It is surprisingly common for an issue to be raised by a user, hashed out, and implemented in CVS within a day or two. Needless to say, the open development process has been paying good dividends. The downside to having such open development is that it's easier for new bugs to creep in, however they're getting identified quickly and added to tracking mechanisms, so we're optimistic that we can apply focus on them during feature freeze and make 0.36 at least as stable as 0.35 (and hopefully more!) Once this release is out, we will turn focus to codebase cleanup, including committing to C++ and dropping support for gcc. Next after that will come an aggressive bug hunt. These two efforts will gain us quality, code documentation, wider familiarity with the codebase, and a testing framework that will make the codebase more pleasant for developers to work in. These efforts will set the stage for a series of major architectural refactorings we will undertake thereafter. Statistics Nov 02 Nov 15 Nov 29 ========== ====== ====== ====== Lifetime Rank on SourceForge: 6103 4391 3676 (56.2%) (68.5%) (73.6%) Max Week's Rank on SourceForge: 6023 62 37 (Nov 16) (56.8%) (99.6%) (99.8%) Lines of Code in src/: 115,754 115,901 116,970 Lines of Docs in doc/: 1,135 1,135 2,100 Lines of content in website: 74 1,173 1,624 Size of the Inkscape wiki: 0 3,700 5,737 Hours since last ChangeLog mod: 90 6 2 Bugs open/total: 0/0 9/15 40/51 Features open/total: 0/0 18/18 23/24 Patches open/total: 0/0 1/ 6 5/20 CVS Commits (as per inkscape-cvs): 148 481 963 Inkscape-devel membership: 4 49 61 Inkscape-announce membership: 0 9 14

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printing doubles
by Robert Crosbie 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

I like my svg to be really clean and I always hand tweak my drawings to make sure all objects are where I want them to be. One think i dont like is when doubles are printed like this: x="200.000000" y="200.000000" Is there are reason why we store more precision than necessary here? This value comes from sp_repr_set_double which uses sp_xml_dtoa. Doesn't sp_xml_dtoa do the same thing as printf %f formatting? I have found that if I call sp_repr_set_double_attribute and replace the "%f" with a "%g" It will give a much cleaner output: x="200" y="200" Is there a technical reason why we have a custom dtoa function and keep the extra 0's? Cheers, Rob. http://members.rogers.com/rcrosbie _________________________________________________________________ Is there a gadget-lover on your gift list? MSN Shopping has lined up some good bets! http://shopping.msn.com

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Snap to grid
by Jonathan C. Sitte 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I was hoping that you developers were thinking about implementing snap to grid? Thus allowing you to move images around and have them line up in an orderly fashion. Another thing is what do you think of the current user interface? Just wondering what you were doing with that. I know that you are talking about making a layers menu. That will be real helpful. The export and save options are really archaic at the moment as well. Overall the program has allot of potential. I was using Sodipodi allot but now that I found out inkscape I really like the direction you want to take it. If there is anything I can do to help let me know. ;) - -- Jonathan C. Sitte <jcsitte@...67...> Digital Arts & Computer Technology http://www.staticnull.org/jcsitte/ 917.414.2559 M-F 8AM-10PM Public Key: http://www.staticnull.org/jcsitte/0x40E69A47-pubkey.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/uIlcbzreREDmmkcRAjR/AJ9hyQnN/cWI/4LszNhP9WAprE5r8ACgkbt+ 5R9ZLhUvqJIvtMjexw6fxm4= =9PI8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fast compiling with both gcc and g++
by Bryce Harrington 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

I documented a procedure for building both gcc and g++ copies of the codebase from the same cvs checkout. http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CompilingInkscape (Down at the bottom of the page) I would highly encourage developers to adopt an approach such as this, so you can help detect and avoid g++ compilation errors. Bryce

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Updated main roadmap
by Bryce Harrington 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

I've gone over our long-term roadmap and revised our list of milestones based on where it appears folks want to go. http://www.inkscape.org/roadmap.php M2 - I'm relabeling our current focus from 'features' to 'Interface Redesign' since between Mental and Bulia's efforts, this has been the lion's share of the effort. M3 - Since there wasn't any issues raised to my proposal to make the next release focus on the C++ and codebase cleanup work, I've formalized that as our next priority. As well, I've tentatively listed the layer dialog as the Gtkmmification objective. M4 - For milestone 4, I'm taking the suggestion of focusing on doing a bug hunt, as it really sounds like we need it. Of course, this doesn't mean we should put off bug fixing until this milestone, but rather at this point we should each set aside our feature implementation efforts in favor of focusing on clearing the bug queue. I think by tag-teaming the bugs all together, it'll be much more enjoyable than just tackling them as they sufficiently annoy us. ;-) Additionally for M4 I've committed us to doing a codebase-wide implementation of Mental's new unit testing framework. Doing it at M4 should give us enough time to get that framework well-tested. I figure doing this in parallel with the bug hunt will be synergistic and will readily leverage each other's work. M5 - Gtkmmification M6 - Plugin System M7 - New features. I figure with the new plugin system fresh out of the shop, focusing on implementing features will give it a good road test. M8 - STLification. M9 - Extract SVG Canvas.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] New win32 cvs build]
by bulia byak 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

> Concise descriptions or hints. Good point, I reviewed all tooltips and edited many of them. > Suggested addition to the view dialog. In the real drawing world the "fit > page in window" view is extremely useful. Equally useful is the view "fit > page width in window". This is especially so since much work is done in > portrait mode. Done, there's now a menu command to fit to page width. Someone has to draw an icon for it, then it can be added as a button. Feel free to suggest a keyboard shortcut too. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: Menu layout feedback [Re: [Inkscape-devel] Snap to grid]
by bulia byak 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

> 1.) Inkscape Menu - I agree with Bryce in that it should totally be > removed Agreed > 2.) Secondary Toolbar + Annoying Canvas Moving - I really think that the > secondary toolbar should never go away. Exactly, just leave it empty if there's nothing to show there, but I think ultimately all tools will have some secondary controls to put there. > Also, I think that the tools in the secondary toolbar need to be > differentiated as options extending from the primary toolbar's selected > tool. One way to do this might be to give more space on the left of the > secondary toolbar. Maybe the secondary toolbar should have a darker gray > underneath the buttons, or should be a smaller size. I think space at left plus some spacing between buttons plus, if possible, smaller button size on the secondary toolbar will do. > 3. Tool from Toolbar, Selection Not Obvious - It is not obvious once a > tool is selected that it is selected, visually. Not a problem for me, maybe try a different gtk theme? > 3.) Editing Nodes - When selecting objects and nodes in illustrator and > other programs, you usually can constrain whatever is selected by > pushing the shift button. Then when you move the items selected, they Sure, this is in Wiki already. Please view the KeyboardShortcutsToDo page and leave your comments there. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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GNOME HIG menubar
by MenTaLguY 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

Due to popular demand and sensible arguments, I've reverted the menubar to conform to the GNOME HIG. -mental

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [Fwd: Re: inkscape]
by bulia byak 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

> A good idea would be to talk to the gimp developers and work > together on UI usability issues in the future, the results would > be included in next revisions of HiG for similar types of apps. I agree with most of Marek's comments. In particular, the monster multisection toolbox is already removed in the latest CVS. As for working together on usability, I'm all for that! So... Today I finally tested the latest development Gimp (1.3.23). Below are my impressions focusing on my area of interest in Inkscape, with my view on what is good and what is bad in Gimp (and what we should or should not borrow). Just a few first impressions, I did not do in-depth testing. Probably I'll have more to say after I've used it for some time. Feel free to forward this to a Gimp list (drop me a note if you do so, so I could track responses). Summary: Sure the new Gimp is impressive. And MUCH more usable than 1.2. But in the usability department, there are still things I strongly dislike. I do not want to say they are necessarily errors, since this is subjective, but I think there are other people out there who would agree with me on at least some of the points below. The majority of palettes (dialogs) are sill not transient and "sink" readily when you switch to the document window that overlaps them. Working with a maximized document window is therefore next to impossible. Some of the dialogs/palettes are transient, though - I think it's those that can only apply to the current document and are more or less "modal", i.e. you cannot do anything on the canvas while such a window is active (examples are Levels, Color balance, etc.) Making such modal windows transient is indeed a step in the right direction, as in Gimp 1.2 even they could be buried easily (and confusingly for most users). However, having to dig out my primary toolbox from under a pile of windows still drives me crazy. Dockable tabs/palettes are cool, no arguing about that. However, they only dock to each other and not to a document window. The main toolbox is also exempt from docking. This means that although you now have a way to reduce the number of windows on your desktop, you still have at least three windows (document, toolbox, a group of docked palettes) that you'll have to alt-tab your way through. On the plus side, all floating palettes remember not only position but on/off status and all docks across sessions: when you restart Gimp, it reopens all the palettes it had opened last time. I wonder if we have to do the same in Inkscape (currently only size and position of dialogs is remembered). Weirdly, the single-letter keys for switching tools only work in the document window. When you have focus on the toolbox, you cannot press "t" to switch to text tool, even though the tooltip at the text tool button suggests that you can! This is despite the fact that tools seem to be global, i.e. you cannot have different tools active in different document windows. Similarly, I cannot press crtl-z to undo an action that I just did in a palette (e.g. trashing a layer); I must switch to the canvas (and remember, it's my reponsibility to select the correct document window, if I have several open!) and press ctrl-z there! I think this is another example where the idea that palettes are standalone non-transient windows in their own right plays bad for usability. The palettes are so "independent" that they don't even care to track the current document. Switch from one document to another and watch your Layers palette, for example. Does it show you the layers of the new document? Nope! You have to use another palette called Images to select what document is being displayed. Moreover, the Images palette only affects those palettes that are docked together with it - if you have e.g. a Layers palette and a Path palette in two different floating windows, you'll have to add an Images palette (or an Image menu) to _both_ these windows and switch images manually in each of them. I think this is very inconvenient. A much better solution is what is being implemented in Inkscape: all floating windows always reflect the active document (i.e. the one whose window has focus). Also, they are re-transientized to the active document when you switch document windows - this means they always stay on top, but are minimized when the _last_ document window is minimized, are restored when _any_ document window is restored, and do not clutter the taskbar. Another problem with Gimp's palettes being too independent is that you can't leave them using keyboard, because a palette does not know who to give focus to. That is, you can pop up a Layers palette from within a document window using keyboard (ctrl-l), but you can't go back using keyboard except with the help of your window manager (e.g. alt-tab). So if, for example, I have edited some value in a text field in a palette and press Enter, it does affect one of the documents, but the focus remains within the palette and the affected document does not pop up if it's buried. Esc also does nothing within a palette. Moreover, there's even no keyboard way to close a floating palette - Ctrl-w only works in a document window but not in a palette (why?). (By contrast, in Inkscape, Ctrl-w closes a floating dialog, Esc moves focus from it to the document that it's currently reflecting/affecting, and so does Enter in text fields.) Misc small things: Zoom shortcuts are inconvenient. "-" on the keyboard zooms out without shift, but to zoom in I have to press "+" with shift. Keypad - and + do not work at all. Distance measurement tool snaps to horizontal if used with ctrl and to verticals if used with alt. More convenient would be using ctrl only to snap to closest n*step angle where step can be set in preferences (e.g. 45 degrees). (This is what we're going to do in Inkscape.) In fullscreen mode, no floating palettes can be seen. If I switch to them by alt-tab, I don't see my document window anymore! I switch back to document and the palettes are hidden again. P.S. Regarding our recent discussion of Gtkmm/Glade, Gimp seems to use what we use now, i.e. plain C. Does this mean that if we switch to Gtkmm we won't be able to borrow code, such as dockability, from Gimp? -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Bugs
by Bryce Harrington 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

The Sodipodi bugs numbered between 775385 and 830500 that I could verify have been copied into the Inkscape tracker. I was able to verify about half of them. Only one was super critical and in need of being fixed immediately (IMHO). To do this I used a spreadsheet. I listed the numbers of all the bugs, then as I had time I went through each, one-by-one, to check them against Inkscape. Once that was done I created new RT tix for the validated ones. I've put the spreadsheet in inkscape/doc/ in case someone else might like to use it. Bryce

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