October 2004 - Inkscape Devel

math operation in dialogs
by David Christian Berg 13 Oct '04

13 Oct '04

just wondering if I should file a bug, or if it's so simple that I don't need to. Especially in the guides and the positioning dialog it would be helpful to be able to put mathimatical stuff in there. Imagine you have a guide at 45.6 and want one 7 mm further to the right, you'd just type 45.6+7 and there you go... even more important is something like dividing by 2 or 3, I need that quite often. Btw: Since my laptop was for repair, I used CorelDraw, and I think for basic vector editing and layouting inkscape is by now better than Corel. That is something! Which also brings me to one other thing I'm missing: Baseline Grid. Even for simple flyers and brochures it's nice (or rather necessary) to have. CorelDraw just pissed me of for not having it! I got my laptop back, with working ethernet card, Yeah!! Take care! David

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Initial abort() ability during tracing
by Bob Jamison 12 Oct '04

12 Oct '04

Hi all... I added some hooks to the tracer to be able to update the GUI while in the midst of heavy processing, and to catch an abort() if the user hits the Stop button. I checked in an initial ability to do this. (Yes, I know that there are no status messages, the buttons don't make a 'clicky' sound when you hit them, there is no hour glass 'busy' icon, no multi-colored progress bar, etc, blah, blah, blah, all that other silly stuff. I just want to make sure that abort() works ;-) Bob

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NEW: default gradients, master opacity, node editing
by bulia byak 12 Oct '04

12 Oct '04

* When you switch an object to gradient fill or stroke, the new gradient is created with that object's previous fill or stroke color going from 1 to 0 opacity (instead of the hardcoded black-to-white fully opaque gradient as before). New objects do not share gradients now, unless you explicitly set two or more objects to use the same gradient via the Fill and Stroke dialog. * The master opacity slider is moved from Object Properties to Fill and Stroke and can now work on multiple selected objects. It is now more convenient to adjust the transparency of objects with gradients or patterns. * If a node has straight line path fragments on one or both sides, Ctrl+Alt+dragging that node in the node tool moves it along the direction(s) of these straight line(s) and their perpendiculars. This is an easy way to change the length of a straight line without changing its angle.

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typos and a translation question
by Arpad Biro 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

Hi, A few textual problems in Inkscape CVS: "of objects" is duplicated: #: src/dialogs/align.cpp:506 "Distribute centers of objects of objects at even distances horizontally" should probably be ";" instead of ",": #: src/nodepath.cpp:2701 src/nodepath.cpp:2725 "Node handle: drag to shape the curve; with Ctrl to snap angle; with Alt to lock length, with Shift to rotate the opposite handle in sync" ":" should probably be outside the tag (like in other strings): #: src/nodepath.cpp:2677 Node: #: src/select-context.cpp:647 Ctrl: #: src/select-context.cpp:649 Shift: #: src/select-context.cpp:651 Alt: "x" may not be the most appropriate character here (probably "," could be used instead): #: src/select-context.cpp:894 Move by %s x %s #: src/seltrans.cpp:1000 Move center to %s x %s should be "to": #: src/tools-switch.cpp:185 "top copy the color" probably meant "Image": #: src/trace/trace.cpp:158 "Trace: mage has no bitmap data" --------------------------------- Also a question: what does the "Export just the object with export-id" string mean? Export only the object that has export-id? A comment: the status bar messages can easily be too long in translations, so probably we should do something to make it possible to display/scroll longer strings somehow. Arpad Biro __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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building on win32
by john cliff 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

Hello all,

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NEW: on-canvas rounding and randomization
by bulia byak 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

* More on-canvas star interactivity: The Roundedness and Randomization fields in the star controls panel are precise, but not very convenient. Now you can round a star interactively by Shift+dragging a star handle on the canvas, or adjust a star's randomization level by Alt+dragging a handle. Correspondingly, Shift+click on a handle zeroes roundedness, Alt+click removes randomization.

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Publishing the User Manual
by cedric 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

I've been on holidays for few weeks so that the User Manual has been written very slowly during this period. But I've seen on the website that there was a particular wish to publish such a book. I always think precise documentation is a good thing for softwares. This a kind of respect for users (who cannot know everything!!) For this we need two things : A) a very good/precise manual, eventually with creative exemple and some step by step tutorials (I think there are good basis for this). All this means that there's a need of criticism in a reader team. This may need a special discussing line. This is very long to explain each option, but I think this necessary. What should be exluded is something like this found in the Gimp user docs (approximative translation) : "Sobel: less interesting than specific Sobel; Prewitt: result not very different from Sobel. [...]Roberts: no difference with Sobel. Differentiel: border less clear. Laplace: Less intersting than specific Laplace." Of course there are many good pages in this manual, nut why not this ? because i suppose the aim of a manual is to explain how it works in general and how it behaves in specific case and not only give opinion (the user can do this alone). And that's why it is hard, and that's why it is long to do. I have myself some difficulties in understanding some inkscpae or gimp functionnalities. That's also why, it would be easier if we where more at writing, but that's the way it is. The other difficulty is that the manual should be complete but understandable, even for non initiated people. B) as most of user can read a bit of english/us, a good english translation should be interesting (I'm trying to make my best but it's very hard for me). And issues : A) Ask for a well known publisher, that will give large diffusion of the book. But regarding at this : 1. Vector drawing is not as popular as bitmap 2. Inkscape is still young and this will be kept as a default and economically very risky 3. Gimp is much more famous than Inkscape, but you can just count books about it with the finger of a unique hand I know some people at Oreilly, I can ask what they think about this, but I've already put it in some discussion and it has never been kept. B) Do our best to do a self-published one. As a Gimp book author and editor, I have already done this (french only). I still have a free ISBN number that could be used for it. Blender Manual has been made with a subscription. Why not, because it worked ! But the difficulties are : 1. to do advertising for it 2. to a sufficient number of commands to get an interesting price (For the gimp book, there was not enough, so that I've made it in numeric printing which is not the best, especially for pictures) If there is a particular wish for this, I'm very interesting in working for it. May be may little experience in the subject could be useful. Let me know. Cedric

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Inkscape Project Status 2004-10-01
by Bryce Harrington 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

As can be seen from the numbers, Inkscape has a great deal of momentum. Judging from the number of CVS commits, bugs fixed, and rfe's closed for the past two weeks, development seems to be continuing steadily. We hit 35th rank on the 19th of September; while that doesn't beat our record of 22nd, it's certainly close. It's been a while since our last release, and a lot of new features have gone in. Unfortunately, we're not near to having the Gtkmm work done, so I'm wondering if we should be thinking of putting out an interim release (like a 0.39.5, or maybe a 0.40 where we bump the current 0.40 tasks forward a milestone). Opinions? Bryce Statistics Nov 15 May 15 Aug 15 Sep 15 Oct 1 ========== ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== Lifetime Rank on SourceForge: 4391 1028 774 733 729 (68.5%) (92.7%) (94.6%) (94.9%) (94.9%) Max Week's Rank on SourceForge: 62 36 53 189 35 (99.6%) (99.8%) (99.7%) (98.9%) (99.8%) Total SF Page Views * 475,000 900,566 1,072,842 1,218,185 Total SF Downloads * 27,400 47,278 56,571 60,728 Total Freshmeat URL Hits 746 * 9,382 10,322 11,043 Total Freshmeat Subscriptions 16 74 114 118 122 Lines of Code in src/: 115,901 189,116 276,437 298,454 302,624 Code lines 147,471 200,684 213,351 215,549 Comment line 16,757 43,558 51,098 52,042 Blank 25,886 37,425 40,484 41,549 Lines of Docs in doc/: 1,135 4,544 16,358 16,795 16,802 Lines of content in website: 1,173 6,008 7,106 7,527 7,676 Size of the Inkscape wiki: 3,700 18,638 19,665 20,207 20,274 Minutes since last ChangeLog mod: 360 * * * * Bugs open/total: 9/15 57/365 110/568 126/616 138/638 Features open/total: 18/18 183/238 266/361 250/376 251/388 Patches open/total: 1/ 6 4/ 83 5/120 6/123 6/124 CVS Commits (as per inkscape-cvs): 481 3391 6,822 7,296 7,606 Inkscape-devel membership: 49 78 104 113 113 Inkscape-announce membership: 9 43 74 85 91 Inkscape-user membership: 71 109 120 129 Num Translations : 33 33 33 Ave Translation Ratio: 44.9% 45.0% 41.6% * - Statistics unavailable

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cc-svg documentation volunteer
by Jon A. Cruz 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

On the Creative Commons metadata list, http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-metadata , there was a call for getting something together on metadata in SVG. The discussion included a screenshot of Inkscape's current metadata entry slot, and a call for a quick conference tomorrow: > Mike Linksvayer wrote: > >> <http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-metadata/2004-April/000378.html>. > > > By the way, a short task for a volunteer: "port" > http://web.resource.org/cc/modules/smil/ to SVG. Usage should be > nearly identical. Then we can link to a CC-SVG recommendation on > <http://creativecommons.org/technology/usingmarkup>. Lucas Gonze wrote: > So, Mike and Jon, how is tomorrow, friday Oct 8, at 11 PST, on #ccmb > in IRC/freenode?

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Inkscape helping OpenClipArt.org
by Bryce Harrington 08 Oct '04

08 Oct '04

I think Alan's idea's a good one - would anyone mind if we added a pattern to the Inkscape repository to direct them to openclipart.org for finding additional patterns? Bryce ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:06:34 +0100 (IST) From: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> To: Inkscape is a vector graphics editor <inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape helping OpenClipArt.org I noticed that we don't have anything to tell Inkscape users that they can get more patterns from the openclipart.org site. Long term there is great potential for collaboration in all sorts of different ways, but I have a simple idea to start with: Presumably Inkscape will ship with at least a few templates, perhaps five small sample gradients, and five small sample patterns. Here is where helping OpenClipArt.org bit comes in - why not just put in a pattern that points people there? It'd be easy to set up, and non-intrusive since only users already looking at the patterns would see it. http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/dev/jasc/webdraw/openclipart.org-adver… The whole pattern is a link to http://www.openclipart.org/ Please let me know what you think, I really hope you will accept this suggestion. And thanks Bryce for your help (he knows why, say no more). Sincerely Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel

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