December 2004 - Inkscape Devel

Inkscape 0.40 - error importing AI files
by Martin Grohman 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

When I am importing .AI files this error message appears: ** (inkscape:9542): CRITICAL **: file document.cpp: line 511 (void sp_document_set_uri(SPDocument*, const gchar*)): assertion `document != NULL' failed Pleas help, how can I solve it? I have thousand .AI files which I could open in 0.39. Is downgrade only one solution? (OS: Gentoo unstable, same expirience with self compiled inkscape 0.40cvs and 0.40 stable in Slackware current) Thanks Martin Grohman

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Suggestion: Dim-able layers.
by Jakob Ilves 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

Hello! I had a very brief test of inkscape 0.40 and of course had a shot at using the layers feature and I liked it, especially that one could easily temporarely hide layers. One feature I would really appreciate is an additional option for a layer, in addition to locking and hiding: dimming (or whatever to call it). That is, one can set a layer to have a opacity lower than 1 to make it semi-transparent by using some convenient GUI widget. I know, one can do that today by entering the XML-editor (we all love it, don't we?) and once there, select the group the layer consists of and add "opacity: 0.5" (or whatever) to the group's style property. So it's already available but you know, a GUI isn't bad either. Thanks for a great tool! It is getting better and better! Best regards /IlvJa PS. I know, "Dim-able layers" might sound a bit corny but I could not make up any other term. (not a native English speaker, living in Sweden).

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NEW: Tile clones
by bulia byak 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

Before getting deep into the boring stuff planned for 0.41, I decided to do some eye candy... http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.41-CVS-linux-tiles1.png http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.41-CVS-linux-tiles2.png * The new powerful "Tile clones" dialog implements all 17 plane symmetry groups, allowing you to easily create all sorts of symmetric patterns, Escher-like tesselations, ornaments, etc. Since the pattern is made out of clones, you can freely edit the original tile and the entire pattern is updated live. This feature puts Inkscape into competition with software such as the free Arabeske or commercial SymmetryWorks. ** Apart from selecting the symmetry (and uniquely to Inkscape), you can also set the shift, scale, rotation, and opacity of the clones in the pattern, per row and/or per column. Any of these parameters can also be randomized to any degree. This produces "object fields" that can be arbitrarily distorted, skewed, slanted, "faded out," or "magnetized" like iron particles in a magnetic field. ** To create a clone pattern, simply select something, set the number of rows and columns, and click Create. You can then change some parameters in the dialog and click Create again; this will remove any existing tiled clones of the selected object and recreate the pattern anew. Or, you can just remove the old pattern by clicking Remove. To protect a pattern from deletion by this dialog, group it or move it to another layer. ** Initially, a pattern is created based on the bounding box of the selected object. For symmetries that involve rotation to an angle other than 180 degrees, the rotation point is usually in the middle of the right-hand side of the bbox. After the pattern is created, resizing the original tile does not move the clones away, so you can make the tiles overlap. Also, when the pattern is created, the current bbox of the original tile is remembered; later, if the "Use saved tile bbox" checkbox is on, the same bbox will be used when you click Create again, which means you can vary the pattern parameters without losing the overlapping of the tiles. ** It's best to use a group as the original object for tiling, because you can then enter this group (right-click, "Enter group") and draw inside it. Any changes or new objects added to the group will show in the pattern immediately.

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pivot in scale mode
by PTT 07 Dec '04

07 Dec '04

I noticed from 0.39 on the pivotpoint (the cross that on which an object rotates, i think it's called pivot) is hidden in scale mode, so only visible in rotate mode. I find it quite usefull in scale mode too, (ie. while overlaying images you move the point to a place you want to keep, then scale so the whole image is as you wish). What is the reason it hides? And can it perhaps be turned into an option? PTT

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inkscape memory leaks
by MenTaLguY 07 Dec '04

07 Dec '04

Hi, I was directed to recent traffic on the freebsd lists... I suspect the memory leaks you're experiencing aren't freebsd-specific, nor are they necessarily the result of bugs in libgc proper -- one of the recurring issues we've been having has been large leaks due to the way we bridged the refcounted and garbage-collected portions of the codebase. In a nutshell, some garbage-collected objects also have refcounts that can be used to pin them so they can be referenced by non-gc-aware objects. Since these objects are still traced by the collector, and are generally organized in the form of trees with parent pointers, a single leaked refcount will pin the entire tree of objects. [ It was one of those designs that seemed like a good idea at the time... ] In a profound irony, pretty much all of the leaks of gc-managed memory we've discovered so far have been due to refcount leaks in conventional code. :/ I thought we had found and fixed them all, but they can be pernicious and hard to nail down; I am noticing that we are still a little leaky on other platforms as well. There may be issues with libgc on freebsd as well, but I would look at refcount leaks if you've not already done so. Anyway, it sounds like you've been spending a good deal of time with debugging this; would you like to further compare notes in case we're duplicating effort? -mental

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Difficulty with sizing imported EPS files...
by Daniel 07 Dec '04

07 Dec '04

[Please cc: me on replies] Hi, I'm using Inkscape 0.40 packaged for Debian unstable. If it's an issue, I'm also using the AFPL-licensed version of ghostscript, version 8.14. I have noticed the following issue, since I started using Inkscape, with version 0.39. Whenever I place EPS files into a new Inkscape document, they appear to be smaller (in pixel size or actual size, based upon bounding box) than they should be. For example, if I create both an EPS file and an SVG file produced by the command line version of potrace (which I was using with inkscape before it was included in the program as of version 0.40), using the exact same options and the exact same input file, they will import into Inkscape (both 0.39 and 0.40) with different sizes. The svg imported file will accurately reproduce the size of the EPS that I see when I use that EPS with other members of my tool chain (scribus, epstopdf, xpdf, acroread, etc.). Any ideas? Do you need anything else to quantify this? It appears very reproducible to me. Furthermore, when I export EPS from Inkscape (both 0.39 and 0.40), they appear (at least according to the 'file' utility, to be regular postscript, rather than encapsulated postscript). Any ideas? Thanks again for a truly magnificent product. How it has wonderfully surpassed my expectations. Take care, Daniel PS I've given it to 6-8 of my less Linux-aware friends for use on their Windows boxen in the past few weeks. They are grateful.

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Fwd: [Inkscape-devel] Graphics-by banner
by Ana Saiz García 06 Dec '04

06 Dec '04

Hi again I'm sorry to bother you again, but I've realised that I hadn't convert the text to curves, in order to avoid problems with the fonts. Now I've corrected this problem, so maybe you can put the new svg in your page (the png hasn't changed). The link is: http://david.f.v.free.fr/ana/imagenes/gfx_by_inkscape.svg Sorry for the inconveniences and thank you again Ana -- "El más baldío de todos los días es aquél en que no hemos reído" (de Chamfort) http://www.cosasdedos.net http://ana.cosasdedos.net

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Re: [Inkscape-user] RPM build errors
by Bryce Harrington 06 Dec '04

06 Dec '04

On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Jonathan Leighton [Turnip] wrote: > Okay. I took them all out, and tried to run inkscape, but nothing > happened. As in zero, zilch, nada. The cursor just sat there on the line > beneath the "inkscape" command. So I quit that, and put all the > extensions back in. I then took them out one by one, and when I took out > the one called "gimpgrad.inx", it again wouldn't do anything when I ran > the "inkscape" command. So I believe we have a culprit, although I'm not > entirely sure what I should do now. Hmm interesting, that wouldn't have been the one I'd have guessed. So to recap, you're getting a failure during Extension initialization where it complains about an improperly freed pointer, presumably a string, that appears related to the gimpgrad.inx extension. Ted can you help give some guidance on this? > Just out of interest, do you think this problem is specific to me, or > would it happen to anyone using the RPM I built? Because if it would > happen to anyone then I guess it's more serious. Aha, this is why you shanghai a couple friends into testing it. ;-) Go ahead and see if you can find someone to test it, and see if they get the same problem. That'll be good to know. Let's move this over to the inkscape-devel@ list, it's gotten a bit too nuts and bolts for the user list. Bryce

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OT: Path to NURB
by Aaron Spike 06 Dec '04

06 Dec '04

First off congratulations and thank you for the 0.40 release. I'm telling everyone how much I love Inkscape. I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice or insight. I'm writing a little PHP script to convert a subset of SVG PathData (only M, C, L and z directives) drawn with Inkscape into DXF SPLINEs (NURBs) for use in QCad. I can do it successfully following the practical instructions at the bottom of this article about NURBs <http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_25/schneider.html>. To do this I write a separate SPLINE for each segment of a Path. I would prefer to write a single SPLINE for each continuous portion of a Path, but I can't get it right. So far I have just been guessing and guessing wrong. Any direction would be appreciated. Aaron Spike

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Making rpm for Suse 9.2
by Jogchum Reitsma 05 Dec '04

05 Dec '04

Hi, On my Suse 9.2 box, I downloaded inkscape-0.40-1.src.rpm from sourceforge, solved a few dependancies and issued rpmbuild --rebuild inkscape-0.40-1.src.rpm to create a rpm-binary (not as root, but as normal user). It compiles OK, but bails out with the following message lines: Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /var/tmp/inkscape-0.40-root error: Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found: /usr/lib/inkscape/plugins/libgimpgrad.a /usr/lib/inkscape/plugins/libgimpgrad.la /usr/lib/inkscape/plugins/libgimpgrad.so.0.0.0 The mentioned files do exist in /var/tmp/inkscape-0.40-root, and the names are stated in a file /tmp/rpmN24154 Also there exists a file /tmp/rpmF24155 with the same creation date and time, but empty. Anyone an idea what might be happening? Thanks, Jogchum

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