October 2006 - Inkscape Devel

Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: blur quality/speed settings
by Jon Phillips 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 15:57 +0200, momo wrote: > > Heya, when you really max out the blur, is it a bug that the blur is > > restricted to the selection bounding box around the blurred object? That > > seems like a bug to me, but it might be that way because of computation > > time. I think that adobe does the same thing... > > > > Xara does the job smoothly and without putting the blur in a box. Can we > expect the same behaviour in Inkscape? > > Molumen Well, it seems this 10% around the object is in the SVG spec, so no (because we want to be an SVG compliant editor). Jon -- Jon Phillips San Francisco, CA USA PH 510.499.0894 jon@...235... http://www.rejon.org MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto Jabber Chat: rejon@...896... IRC: rejon@...897...

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Expanded alternative to normalized matrix file encoding
by Jonathan Shook 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

I like to use inkscape to build UI elements which I can access in raster form via a caching renderer. Typically, there are one or two aspects within the xml which I need to vary in order to get the dynamic effect I am looking for. I'll substitute values into the xml and render according to the request. Unfortunately, with the normalized matrix form being the final encoding, access to all of the basic transformations is cryptic. I would really like to be able to assign an id to an element, and access its discrete transforms individually, by type. For example, I would like to be able to render a watch into raster form by specifying a normalized rotation for hour, minute, and second. It would be pretty easy for me to do this now, only if I had the option of not collapsing the xml for transforms, and instead could access individual named or numbered transformations which constitute them, in addition to being able to access their high-level parameters, like "rotate by" instead of in affine form. Think of it as leaving procedural hooks for specialized renderings. Perhaps a property on a transform which indicates it should remain separate would suffice. Reactions?

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Blur tips
by bulia byak 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

Some tips for using blur in Inkscape SVN: 0. Use the Blur slider in the Fill and Stroke dialog. You can blur anything - paths, shapes, strokes, calligraphy, bitmaps, text, clones, groups. 1. Currently, the maximum blur radius is 10% of the object size. Any larger blur will reveal the clear-cut margins - the blurred object cannot (currently) spread wider than the 10%. However it's easy to work around this limitation: group the object that you want to blur with some large fully-transparent object, thus making the group larger than the object, and blur the group. 2. Objects that store their transformation matrices (texts, groups, shapes, but not paths - unless you set "Store transforms" to "Preserved"), when scaled, scale also the blur applied to them. This means you can squeeze an object and its blur will be bigger in one dimension than the other. (It's also possible to do that by setting different blur radii for X and Y, but we don't yet have UI for that, though it works if you set it manually.) 3. You can combine blurring with gradients. For example, an ellipse with elliptic opacity gradient will look much softer and more natural when blurred. An object with a horizontal linear opacity gradient, when blurred, will look like it is more blurred on its transparent side than on its opaque side. 4. Masks and clipping are applied AFTER blur. That is, if you clip an object and then blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes no difference), the clipped edges will remain crisp. Often, this is what you want. If, however, you want to blur the clipped/masked edges too (possibly with a different radius), you can use grouping: group the clipped object with some other object (which you can then delete from the group) and blur the group. 5. A recipe for an autoupdating black drop shadow for object of any color: create object; unset its fill (it becomes black); create two clones of it; put one clone on top and paint any color; put the other color at bottom, blur it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill original (use Alt+click to select it) and everything will update. Obviously, if you want a drop shadow of the same color as the object itself, just one clone for the shadow will suffice. 6. If an object has a fill that you don't want to blur (e.g. pattern, or if it's a bitmap), but you want to feather its edges, use blurred transparency mask: copy the object; paint it white; blur it as needed; scale the blurred copy down so its blur margins are entirely within the original object; select both the original and the blurred mask; do Object > Mask > Set. 7. You can use the Tile Clones dialog to create patterns of variously blurred clones - either with smooth variation of the blur per row/column, or/and with randomized blurring. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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[Portland] LinuxUser & Developer
by Bryce Harrington 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

----- Forwarded message from John Cherry <cherry@...1...> ----- Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:00:21 -0700 From: John Cherry <cherry@...1...> To: dtl_marketing@...790... Cc: portland@...626... Subject: [Portland] LinuxUser & Developer Just received permission to send out the pdf of the Portland Project article that was released in LInuxUser & Developer. http://www.osdl.org/Documents/LuD68_Cherry_Portland.pdf The timing of this article actually turned out pretty nicely. We will be making a press release of Portland 1.0 on Wednesday, with a couple of press prep interviews tomorrow. Congratulations to Waldo and the Portland team. The article is a little "dramatic," but that is how these articles tend to be. Other than the theatrical opening, it actually does a nice job of explaining the multi-phase approach, the installation and runtime tools, a call for testing, and a call for application vendors to use the tools. This project really IS a representation of the power of the open source community to define a need, and to collaborate to address it in a way that moves both the market and technology forward. Cheers, John Cherry OSDL Destkop Linux _______________________________________________ Portland mailing list Portland@...626... http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/portland ----- End forwarded message -----

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texturizing objects
by bulia byak 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

Hi Popolon, on another subject, I read your blog post: http://popolon.org/gblog2/script-masque-opaque-opaque-mask-script and I think this kind of extension well deserves being in the Inkscape's distribution. However, I think that to be really usable and convenient, your script must be changed to do the following: 1. It must embed the bitmap used for the mask into the SVG, using the data URI (see share/examples/data_uri.svg for an example). This way the user won't have to fiddle with the separate bitmap files - much simpler to use. 2. The mask must cover objects of any size, so that the user does not have to think if the object is big enough or not. This can be achieved in two ways: either by scaling the mask bitmap to cover the entire object (but it may grow after that!), or (better) by using seamless bitmap texture and converting it to pattern first (i.e. create a large enough rect; fill it with pattern made from the bitmap; then apply that rect as mask to the object). This bit is difficult because to do any of this, the script must know the dimensions of the objects currently selected. So I have a question for Ted: how difficult it would be to add new command line parameters in script calls, that would supply these dimensions for each selected object (now, only object IDs are supplied)? Would this break the existing extensions? 3. And finally, to make this really useful, we need to provide at least several different texturizing extensions - they would only differ by what bitmaps they use (plasma, wood, bubbles, clouds, etc etc) What do you all think? -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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XOP support
by Jon A. Cruz 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

I wanted to toss out that we might want to look into XOP for binary parts. http://www.w3.org/TR/xop10/ We've had a feature request for it for a bit [ 1119540 ] XML-binary Optimized Packaging (XOP) support http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php? func=detail&aid=1119540&group_id=93438&atid=604309 One thing interesting about it is that the packaging is intended to be transparent from the DOM view of things.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: more stuff in Help menu (fwd)
by Alan Horkan 11 Oct '06

11 Oct '06

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Jon Phillips wrote: > Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:22:42 -0700 > From: Jon Phillips <jon@...235...> > To: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> > Cc: Inkscape Development Mailing List > <inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net>, > Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> > Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: more stuff in Help menu > > On Wed, 2006-10-11 at 14:56 -0300, bulia byak wrote: > > On 10/11/06, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote: > > > Yes definately. In ten years time that link might break, especially since > > > it links to index.php instead of the relevant directory. Odds are it will > > > break far sooner than that - and who knows what it could get changed to - > > > but once there are Inkscape binaries out there in the wild there will be > > > nothing we can do about it. > > > > Sure, linking to inkscape.org should be preferred, but ten years? I > > can't imagine anyone will use Inkscape 0.45 in 2016. > > And, we will have flying cars ;) By 2016 we will be using 0.54, right? > hahahaha As I said in my other message I was exaggerating but when you say we will still will not have reached 1.0 I am not at all sure you are joking, given how some people seem to resist bumping major version numbers. If, no when Inkscape covers all of SVG Mobile (it aint tiny) that will be something to celebrate and merit a big 1.0 in my not so humble opinion. > > They are needed by some, that's enough. We get questions on how to use > > Inkscape in scripts regularly. > > I agree. We could even have an advanced submenu if that is > better...really, is it not more helpful to have more help rathr than > less! It is about organization IMO and Bulia's awesome addition really > cracks this one open IMO. Inkscape already has way more in the Help menu than most programs but there is very little downside to having a Help menu jam packed full of information. The time wasted by firing up a browser can be mitigated if there is some way for users to spot the difference between fast local help files and slow remote files but all too often the help menus look exactly the same. I've stated for the record there might be a small downside to having loads of things in the Help menu and good links on the website help avoid most of the usual problems. > > Therefore it is justified to mention them in the GUI because otherwise > > many people (that might benefit from them) will never even think to > > look for them. > > Yeah, I totally agree. This is one area where Inkscape (GIMP) and others > really really shine. At siggraph many production companies were into > Inkscape and other open source apps because they could do mass amounts > of work via batch scripts. Its really in our best interest to pimp these > features. funny example, gimp sucks compared to imagemagick in this regard. imagemagick has much more usable command line arguments to such an extent gimp users and developers regularly recommnd using imagemagick for batch processing. you can still do some very interesting things with gimp scripting at the command line but the base case of converting files from one format to another maybe isn't as streamlined as it should be. The command line arguments have their place but providing equivalent functionality in the user interface is an easier way to address discoverability and learnability. > > > > - SVG 1.1 specification at w3.org > > > > > > Artists are the target users of Inkscape. > > > > Who says that? > > > > > Is this really useful to artists? > > Yep, I agree. I like how Bryce makes it a point that we really focus on > developers. This is really key to getting more features in Inkscape...we > have to make it easy for new developers to get involved. and this is > really key to our philosophy. More features and developers means way > more artists... I dont think that is the whole answer, a big part of it sure but when developers actually get down to being users of inkscape the same questions of "who are the users" arises and knowing those answers makes it easier to make the right tradeoffs and know how much or how little technical information to put in certain places. > > completely open and standardized format, and we encourage editing SVG > > both by hand or by other tools in addition to Inkscape - so this menu > > item is quite relevant. > > I totally think so as well. This is very very key! Plus, it will help us > and others find compliance problems quicker (esp. if there are > questions). Linking to the w3c validator would be a better way to help avoid compliance problems if that is the underlying problem you really want to solve. > Awesome! I love how the simplest feature additions sometimes are the > most r/evolutionary...bulia, awesome job on this feature, really! Very true. I wouldn't care about the details if it wasn't already a great idea. Very inkscape. -- Alan

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This got to the hottest list beatrice
by designate 11 Oct '06

11 Oct '06

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Recommended PC anti-virus strategy!
by unknown＠example.com 11 Oct '06

11 Oct '06

Recommended PC anti-virus strategy A PC virus is a program that can make a copy of itself and spread from PC to PC, usually without you knowing this. Some viruses deliberately destroy document or data files, others can put silly messages on your screen or otherwise interrupt your work. All who use PCs should take precautions to detect viruses and prevent their spread. The anti-virus strategy for the University relies on the use of recommended anti-virus software on all PCs and the prompt elimination of viruses that are detected. Certain simple good, virus-aware habits of PC use are also advised. This document gives an overview of Information Services' recommendations.

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WEBFORM suggestion
by Thomas 11 Oct '06

11 Oct '06

Message from Inkscape submission form Please note, that the submitter may not read this list. CC your answer to the submitter name: Thomas email: thomas@...1516... submitted the following: Free web hosting guide and directory (http://ballz.ababa.net/yoursite/) - Directory of the best free web space providers with full reviews and details of each host.

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