December 2004 - Inkscape Devel

Mozilla/Firefox SVG now has <image> tags
by Bob Jamison 21 Dec '04

21 Dec '04

This is so cool. The code for implementing the <image> tag in Mozilla SVG, which was previously a set of patches, apparently has made it into the mainline. Previously, the Mozilla guys were forced to use the <foreignObject> tag. Here is the SVG file w/images that I always use to test this stuff. Ignore the text alignment; obviously I need to convert it to curves. http://troi.hous.es3.titan.com/~rjamison/inkscape/files/ff_ccp_dump.png Bob

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problem compiling from CVS, python-related
by Ben Crowell 21 Dec '04

21 Dec '04

Can anyone suggest how to fix/work around this problem compiling the latest CVS version? It seems to be related to python extensions. TIA! ======================================================================================= [snip] Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in ? ImportError: No module named distutils.sysconfig if g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/fre etype2 -I/usr/X11R6/include -DPOTRACE=\"potrace\" -DXTHREADS -I/usr/include/gt k-2.0 -I/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/ usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/li b/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include/sigc++-2.0 -I/usr/lib/s igc++-2.0/include -I/usr/include/gtkmm-2.4 -I/usr/lib/gtkmm-2.4/include -I/usr/i nclude/glibmm-2.4 -I/usr/lib/glibmm-2.4/include -I/usr/include/gdkmm-2.4 -I/usr/ lib/gdkmm-2.4/include -I/usr/include/pangomm-1.4 -I/usr/include/atkmm-1.6 `p erl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ccopts` -I`python -c "import distutils.sysconfig ; prin t distutils.sysconfig.get_config_var('INCLUDEPY')"` -Wall -W -Wpointer-arith -Wc ast-align -Wsign-compare -Woverloaded-virtual -Wswitch -Wno-unused-parameter -g -O2 -MT extension/script/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_perl_wrap.o -MD -MP -MF "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_perl_wrap. Tpo" -c -o extension/script/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_perl_wrap.o `t est -f 'extension/script/inkscape_perl_wrap.cpp' || echo './'`extension/script/i nkscape_perl_wrap.cpp; \ then mv -f "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_perl_wr ap.Tpo" "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_perl_wrap. Po"; else rm -f "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-inkscape_pe rl_wrap.Tpo"; exit 1; fi Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in ? ImportError: No module named distutils.sysconfig if g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/fre etype2 -I/usr/X11R6/include -DPOTRACE=\"potrace\" -DXTHREADS -I/usr/include/gt k-2.0 -I/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/ usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/li b/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include/sigc++-2.0 -I/usr/lib/s igc++-2.0/include -I/usr/include/gtkmm-2.4 -I/usr/lib/gtkmm-2.4/include -I/usr/i nclude/glibmm-2.4 -I/usr/lib/glibmm-2.4/include -I/usr/include/gdkmm-2.4 -I/usr/ lib/gdkmm-2.4/include -I/usr/include/pangomm-1.4 -I/usr/include/atkmm-1.6 `p erl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ccopts` -I`python -c "import distutils.sysconfig ; prin t distutils.sysconfig.get_config_var('INCLUDEPY')"` -Wall -W -Wpointer-arith -Wc ast-align -Wsign-compare -Woverloaded-virtual -Wswitch -Wno-unused-parameter -g -O2 -MT extension/script/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.o -MD -MP -MF "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.Tpo" -c -o extension/script/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.o `test -f 'exte nsion/script/InkscapePython.cpp' || echo './'`extension/script/InkscapePython.cp p; \ then mv -f "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.T po" "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.Po"; els e rm -f "extension/script/.deps/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.Tpo" ; exit 1; fi Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in ? ImportError: No module named distutils.sysconfig extension/script/InkscapePython.cpp:13:20: Python.h: No such file or directory extension/script/InkscapePython.cpp: In member function `virtual bool Inkscape::Extension::Script::InkscapePython::interpretScript(Glib::ustring&, Glib::ustring&, Glib::ustring&)': extension/script/InkscapePython.cpp:62: error: `Py_Initialize' undeclared (first use this function) extension/script/InkscapePython.cpp:62: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in.) extension/script/InkscapePython.cpp:67: error: `PyRun_SimpleString' undeclared (first use this function) make[2]: *** [extension/script/extension_script_libscript_a-InkscapePython.o] Er ror 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/bcrowell/Documents/sw/inkscape/src' make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/bcrowell/Documents/sw/inkscape' make: *** [all] Error 2 -

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Re: File Chooser
by Bryce Harrington 21 Dec '04

21 Dec '04

On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, John Taber wrote: > For some reason I can subscribe to get the Inkscape mail list but my posts get > rejected so am sending this direct.... Can you forward us one of the rejection emails? Maybe we can figure out what's going wrong. > Yes, Gtk filechooser is a total DISASTER as seen by anyone in our office. In > fact it will probably surface more with Firefox as 10 million converts start > trying to download files. It even took me several weeks before I realized > the listbox on left is a bookmark list and it seems like now I just have to > go thru more keystrokes. So you have our vote to modify it to allow > filenames to be typed in. This type of Gtk weirdness really hurts Gtk > adoption. > > btw We now depend on Inkscape for our graphics work and thank all of you for > the great job you are doing on it - it is simply one of the most energetic > and best managed open source projects. How can we convince Fedora folks to > include it ? When Firefox hopefully soon supports SVG, Inkscape will be a > must and hot ticket. > John Cool, good to hear. I don't know how Fedora decides what to include, but perhaps you can send an email to them requesting it? An email to encourage Firefox's SVG efforts would probably be worthwhile too. Bryce

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Multiple page documents in SVG
by Bryce Harrington 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

This question came up a couple times this past week. SVG 1.2 (which we don't yet support) provides a method for doing multiple paged documents: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG12/multipage.html Example: <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.2"> <pageSet>  <page> <circle cx="100" cy="100" r="20" fill="blue"/> </page>  <page> <rect x="100" y="100" width="20" height="20" fill="red"/> </page> </pageSet> </svg> Bryce

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-users -developers test please ignore
by vellum 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

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test ignore
by vellum 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

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RESEND: Bug with EPS-sizing upon import...
by Daniel 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

[Please cc: me on replies] Hi, I'm resending this after not hearing any responses to my first email over a period of two weeks... :) I'm using Inkscape 0.40 packaged for Debian unstable. If its an issue, I'm also using the AFPL-licensed version of ghostscript, version 8.14. I have noticed the following issue/bug, 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). I've tentatively tracked this down to be the lack of the full first-line of "%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0" and instead only having "%!PS-Adobe-3.0". Ghostscript utilities, such as eps2eps, produce the full line, while inkscape produces the shorter version. Changing the latter to the former seemed to convince the Linux "file" utility that the file was now EPS. Any ideas on what's the right thing to do? 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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Re: [Inkscape-devel] RESEND: Bug with EPS-sizing upon import...
by Daniel 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

Hi Bulia, Thanks for the reply... I'm guessing that you shouldn't need skencil to reproduce this bug and do a test EPS import, since I don't have it on my system and EPS imports work (I always assumed that you'd use ghostscript for EPS imports). Anyway, that bug looked familiar but the consensus was that something might be wrong due to an Adobe Illustrator issue. Mine however are EPS outputs produced only using Free Software tools (potrace from gimp-based input scan). If it really helps you, I could probably send you the inputs off-list, but I'd prefer to keep them private unless necessary. For the record, I can make it do this with any sample EPS file I gave it (comparing it to size in ghostview or through import into scribus). Thanks for the help. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. Any ideas about Postscript versus EPS recognition issue I mentioned also? Take care, Daniel > 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. It seems to be this bug: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1027699&group_id=9… If you attach there your comments and the sample EPS and SVG files from potrace it would be very helpful. The bug seems to be easy to fix (apparently the px and pt units are confused somewhere, we had several bugs of this kind) but I can't fix it now because I don't have Skencil installed (afaik we can only import EPS via Skencil).

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Inkscape on LWN
by Bryce Harrington 20 Dec '04

20 Dec '04

Peter pointed out that LWN is featuring Inkscape on its Front page this week. http://lwn.net/ Bryce Vector graphics with Inkscape December 8, 2004 This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier. With the release of Inkscape 0.40, we decided to take a look at the latest release and get up to speed with the status of the project. Inkscape started as a fork of the Sodipodi project, but has evolved into a robust project in its own right. Inkscape is a drawing tool that uses the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification for its native format, and also exports to PNG, as well as saving in Adobe Illustrator format, PostScript, Encapsulated PostScript and PovRay formats. Inkscape will open or import graphics from Adobe Illustrator and Dia, other programs' SVG documents and a wide array of bitmap graphics formats. Inkscape runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. We installed the Inkscape static RPM on a SUSE 9.2 system to see what the program is capable of, and whether Inkscape was stable and feature-complete enough for productive use. The Inkscape download page on SourceForge includes source packages, RPMs and Windows binaries. To test Inkscape we started off by creating basic basic shapes using Inkscape's rectangle and ellipse tools and fiddling with color fills, stroke styles, rotation and so forth just to get a feel for Inkscape's tools. It took about fifteen minutes for this writer to get comfortable with the Inkscape interface. With an application like Inkscape, using a mouse (or tablet) is almost unavoidable. However, Inkscape's shortcut keys allow the user to perform a lot of actions, such as selecting different tools or raising and lowering an object from one layer to another, from the keyboard -- rather than having to grab the mouse to switch between tools or adjust layers. For example, to toggle the current tool from Inkscape's path tool to the select tool, all that's necessary is to hit the space bar or F1. To move an object up one layer, simply hit "Page Up" or "Page Down" to move it lower. Speaking of layers, layer management is one of the major new features in Inkscape with the 0.40 release, according to the release notes. Another new feature in 0.40 is a "text-on-path" feature. This allows the user to conform text to a path -- which is useful for creating interesting logos and other artwork that requires text to wrap text to a shape other than a rectangle. The feature is certainly easy to use. All that's required is to select a path and the text object that is to conform to the path. Rectangles, ellipses and other objects must be converted to a path before the user can wrap text to fit that object. By manipulating that object, the user can change the flow of the text even if the text has been removed from the object or if the object is "invisible" because there is no fill color or stroke color associated with the object. The only thing we couldn't figure out was how to specify a starting point on a path for the text. We also enjoyed Inkscape's "Trace Bitmap" feature, which allows the user to trace an imported bitmap. By importing a photo or other bitmap, it's possible to create an scalable object that can then be turned into paths or otherwise edited in Inkscape. Inkscape has incorporated the potrace utility for this. The trace bitmap feature works best with line art, but can be used to produce some fun effects with photos or other artwork. Inkscape's performance and stability are excellent. We created a number of documents using Inkscape, exported our documents and some of the Inkscape tutorials to PNG, EPS and PS, and didn't see any glitches. The program never crashed while we were testing, and all of the features that are currently in Inkscape seem to work as advertised. We did noticed that some detail was lost when exporting to EPS from the tutorials, but this may not be an Inkscape limitation. Though Inkscape doesn't have a full user manual at this stage, it does include several useful tutorials for basic and advanced concepts when working with Inkscape, as well as an excellent man page. It also features an "Elements of Design" document, which may be useful for users who lack a background in art and design. The Inkscape interface also features context help for most tools as well as context-sensitive tips in the bottom status bar. For the most part, this writer found the interface to be straightforward and intuitive. The "Vacuum Defs" item under the File menu was a bit of a puzzler at first, though it was finally determined that it was for removing unused information from the defs tags in a document. We presume this is a good thing. Some of Inkscape's functions can be used without even needing to start the Inkscape GUI. For example, inkscape file.svg -e file.png will convert an SVG file to a PNG. This can be particularly useful for users who wish to convert a number of SVG files into PNG format. SVG experts can edit an SVG document directly, if they so choose, by using Inkscape's built-in XML editor. Very few users will be likely to need this tool, but it's there for those who need or want to edit a document's elements directly. Inkscape may not be at the same level of functionality as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, but it's certainly capable of creating some excellent graphics -- even if this writer isn't quite up to the task of fully exploiting its potential. With other open source applications like The Gimp and Scribus, Linux is a serious contender for users who are looking for a desktop publishing platform.

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Extensions stuff
by Ted Gould 19 Dec '04

19 Dec '04

Hey all, First, I'll apologize for my disappearing -- I've been crazy busy, but I hope that it will start to be getting better. I've not read through most of the Inkscape lists, and there seems to be some discussion on extensions, I'm going to try to hit everything I remember in one mega e-mail. -- It seems that there are problems loading the GIMP gradient plugin. Who is getting those? Is there a consistent set? Is this related to people who are/aren't compiling in the bin relocate code? I'm sure the extensions stuff isn't thread safe. This worries me, as I'd like to move alot more functionality into being plugins in the near future. -- There seemed to be a few "where are extensions going?" type of e-mails. I guess my 'grand goal' is to have them pretty much everywhere, but in the short term I'd like to get functionality similar to GIMP's filters working. This would involve having a menu item which would cause modifications to the document based on some plugable functionality. I hope this can be done with scripts and plugins, and made to 'just work' for every user of Inkscape. This goal may seem overly ambitious, but there is tons of the infrastructure already in place. Some solid documentation has been started on this by Bryce. Find it here: (it also explains the terminology that we've been using) http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/inkscape/doc/extension_syste… -- Extensions dialog -- I think that this is a really good idea. I'd like to be able to load and unload the extensions from a dialog -- for testing also. If someone could mock up the dialog and take care of all "the GUI stuff" I'd be happy to help with the tying it into the rest of the system part of it. Otherwise, this has lower priority for me to getting effects working happily. One thing that I'd like to see in this dialog is a place to put a textual "Why this extension didn't load" so we can explain missing dependencies to users somewhere. -- API for extensions, this is still in flux. But, it is something that needs to be figured out. I know at one point we'd discussed using the SVG DOM from the W3C. I don't know how that would work out, or how difficult it would be. Bryce and I outlined some general functions that would be needed for "Command and Control" in the document above, but those ideas are definitely not fleshed out. -- Now that we're XSLTized -- should we be adding that as an extension type? I could see it working for input/output extensions, perhaps as effects also? Okay, that is all I can remember right now... tell me more, I should be more responsive now! --Ted PS -- If anyone is looking for "bite-sized" extensions task to do over winter break or something similar, ask, I think that I have a few.

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