January 2005 - Inkscape Devel

OSDL Desktop Linux Capabilities
by Bryce Harrington 25 Jan '05

25 Jan '05

For those interested in desktop linux in general, OSDL put out a first public draft (v0.9)of its DTL Capabilities document, for community review and comment. http://osdl.org/lab_activities/desktop_linux/DTL09/ Please feel free to send comment through myself or the mailing list on that page. (List subscription info is at lists.osdl.org.) Bryce

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Papers for Technical Conferences?
by Bryce Harrington 25 Jan '05

25 Jan '05

Interested in writing a technical paper about Inkscape? We're now in "Tech Paper Season", when the proposals for papers are coming due for many technical conferences between now and March, such as OSCON, LWE, etc. What's due right now is not the paper itself but just the proposal. That's a couple paragraphs and the promise to write a full paper if your proposal is accepted. Why write a journal paper on Inkscape? First, it's an extremely good way to earn some PR for Inkscape. Second, published technical papers are something you can include on your resume or CV for your whole career. If you have a career in either art or programming, that will be a solid foundation stone for you. Third, it helps move Inkscape into a more "professional" space and will help encourage all of us to make the tool even better. If you're unsure about writing a technical paper alone, or want a co-author, let me know. I may write something myself but would much prefer co-authoring with other folks. Tell me your ideas and let's see what we can do. For topics, there are clearly three topics we can provide information about: Computer Graphics, Programming/Technology, and Open Source Processes. Probably more beyond that. Obviously, no guarantees getting a paper accepted, except if we don't try, we'll definitely not be accepted. But the more we try, the more opportunities we have to succeed. ;-) Bryce

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check-markup problems
by Arpad Biro 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

Hi, Two problems with po/check-markup that produce false warnings when make'ing: am.po: unclosed : #: src/selection-describer.cpp:46 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid " in layer %s" msgstr "..." am.po: Not in msg format: #: src/selection-describer.cpp:62 #, c-format msgid "%i object selected" msgid_plural "%i objects selected" msgstr[0] "" msgstr[1] "" In other words: it doesn't handle embedding and plurals correctly. Arpad Biro __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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check-markup problems
by Arpad Biro 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

Hi, Two problems with po/check-markup that produce false warnings when make'ing: am.po: unclosed : #: src/selection-describer.cpp:46 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid " in layer %s" msgstr "..." am.po: Not in msg format: #: src/selection-describer.cpp:62 #, c-format msgid "%i object selected" msgid_plural "%i objects selected" msgstr[0] "" msgstr[1] "" In other words: it doesn't handle embedding and plurals correctly. Arpad Biro __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com

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Jimmac evaluates Inkscape, +1 Insightful.
by Alan Horkan 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

Jakub "Jimmac" Steiner has reviewed Inkscape 0.40 on Ubuntu Linux. http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Inkscape I've CC'ed this message to Jimmac and I'll try to quickly answer some of his questions and address the ones which are known issues. I encourage you all to read his comments which I found very interesting. I didn't want to crosspost to the user list, I'll try and remember to post the link there later when this thread is done. You may already be familiar with Jimmac or at be familiar with his work because he's created significant amounts of artwork from Gnome and he works for Ximian. http://jimmac.musichall.cz/ The review is pretty thorough (long for a journal entry) and I wouldn't be surprised if various news sources pick up on it (but I'm not going to be the one feeding it to them). It is great that he has finally given Inkscape a try. Read his post first to see the praise and suggestions which I've skipped for brevity. I'll try and respond to some of his questions and criticisms: Jimmac mentions things not being consistant with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Hopefully as things get more configurable and more standard widgets are used (part of the plan) users will be able to resolve much of that for themselves. Some of the inconsistancies will need careful work to figure out what is really the best solution (and I'm trying not to be contraversial so I'll move on). > Layer support is ... unfinished Work in progress > Vector icons ... good idea [but] it doesn't work in my opinion there is workin in progress (already in CVS I believe) that allows Inkscape to use different icon themes (but it is not complete, I can elaborate more later as needed). > two rows of tabs in the tool options mockups for a new preferences dialog were done, no tabs a bit more like the gimp. implementation seems inevitable, others may know but I wont guess when. > some sort of library [for] brushes, gradients thats a known issue but not specifically on the roadmap http://inkscape.org/roadmap.php i think there are a few requests already filed > Deleting objects with Backspace. While Del works, my powerbook doesn't have the del key ;). dont think anyone has mentioned that before. > Object blending. Select two objects and pick how many inbetween states you want or optionally a path along which to do the morph. Essential time saviour when duplicating objects Sounds like Tweening to me. Complicated but again I'm reasonably sure there are requests for it already. Knowing the Inkscape developers someone will come along and surprise us with this feature out of nowhere. > Converting stroke into objects. Sometimes you want to have more control about the dotted outline. I get the feeling this might be already be possible. Anyone? If you didn't read Jimmacs review of Inkscape http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Inkscape my comments may seem out of context but I hope they were interesting/useful and I think I've managed to be (relatively) brief. Sincerely Alan Horkan Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com

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Error dialog help
by Ted Gould 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

So, I've decided that I just can't write error dialogs. Can someone write reasonable text for the error dialog in: src/extension/error-file.cpp. It should just tell the user that some extensions failed, and check the error log. I couldn't come up with anything that sounded good, so I just put some placeholder text in. --Ted

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NEW: layer selector usability
by bulia byak 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

* The quick layer selector in the statusbar now displays hidden layers grayed out and locked layers enclosed in []. This makes it much easier to see at a glance what is visible and unlocked in the document. The current layer is now marked by a bullet. Suggestions are welcome as to what other (better :) typographic conventions can be used for representing hidden and locked layer status.

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Rose Inkboard - Make question
by Montgomery, Steven S 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

Hey all, I'm one of the Rose-Hulman students working on adding a whiteboard feature to Inkscape. So, we're trying to intergrate some code into Inkscape builds. The prototype code was being compiled with g++ using these cflags: "-I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/local/include/loudmouth-1.0 -lglib-2.0 -lloudmouth-1" Where in the makefiles do we need to place these flags so they'll be used when building stuff that needs the loudmouth libraries? Thanks for any help, Steven

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Fix for vim modelines
by Bryce Harrington 24 Jan '05

24 Jan '05

vim fans might want to apply this: <IRCBridge> [IRC:ashwin] (btw, just as an observation: the vim formatting modeline in many files has 'filetype:c++' when it really should be 'filetype:cpp') <bryce> ah, well feel free to patch that <IRCBridge> [IRC:ashwin] a simple 'perl -pi -e 's/filetype:c\+\+/filetype:cpp' *.cpp *.h should do it

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Going to India
by Felix Rabe 23 Jan '05

23 Jan '05

Hi all, A big thank you to all the developers! Thanks to Inkscape (and Python and XML :) ), <www.felixrabe.net> is fun to maintain :) . So ... I'm in India for the next two weeks. See you again afterwards, - Felix

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