December 2007 - Inkscape Devel

Undo looses selection (in Tweak tool)
by jiho 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

Hello again, One other glitch which the tweak tool revealed: undoing looses selection. Example: draw a circle, switch to tweak, tweak, CTRL-Z, tweak again = you can't because the circle is not selected anymore. and furthermore: draw a circle, draw another, select all, switch to tweak, tweak circle nb 1, CTRL-Z, switch to select = only circle nb 2 is selected In fact this happens in all tools: draw a circle [-> it is selected], draw another [-> the second one gets selected], CTRL-Z = nothing is selected anymore This is not particularly annoying in all other tools but it is in the tweak tool, because undoing the first tweak deselects and an additional tool switch is necessary before one can tweak again. I already noticed that when the too was in its embryonic stage in the calligraphy tool... but failed to report it :( It would be nice if: - the selection could be kept in Undo history. this would solve the issue for all tools and in addition I found myself bitten by the lack of selection history several times. Ex: you try to select several small objects, it takes a while, you add another object by mistake, the only way to subtract it from the selection is to click on it again... which cool get messy if there are already several other objects selected, or if you added it via a select under or in group or... - there was a way to select objects directly from the tweak tool. this would, in addition, allow to avoid constant switches between the select tool and the tweak tool (not that s and and w are far apart on the keyboard but still). ALT is not already used as a modifier in the Tweak tool ;) Of course the selection behavior won't be as powerful as the select tool (since the select tool modifiers is already very complex and its modifiers are all full) but just ALT+click/drag = selects and SHIFT+ALT+click/drag = adds to selection would be nice. Cheers, JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

3 4

Small enhancement of ellipse tool
by Maximilian Albert 20 Jan '08

20 Jan '08

Hi, I just discovered that the stuff I committed for the 3D box tool also contained a patch for the ellipse tool that had accidentally slipped in. I always found it a bit awkward that it's not possible to create circles/ellipses whose *boundary* (not a corner of the bounding box) passes through the the mouse cursor. Since the Alt-modifier seemed as yet unused in the tool, I added the following functionality. - Alt+drag creates the same ellipse as it normally would, but scaled by a suitable factor so that it passes through the click point and the mouse pointer; - Alt+Shift+drag behaves analogously with regard to Shift+drag (i.e., this creates an ellipse with center at the click point and passing through the mouse pointer); - Alt+Ctrl+drag creates a perfect circle with diameter the segment between click point and mouse pointer; - Alt+Shift+Ctrl+drag behaves the same as Alt+Shift+drag but with radii ratios constrained to integers. So basically pressing Alt just means "make the ellipse pass through the mouse pointer", apart from the exceptional case Alt+Ctrl, which I found very handy. Could you tell me if these shortcuts are intuitive to you or if you would like anything to work differently? Or maybe I missed something and it's already possible to draw these kinds of ellipses easily? If there is no objection, I'll add this to the Release Notes and also add the shortcuts to keys.xml. Thanks, Max

7 16

WinXP - 0.46dev+devel: Crash on opening files (segmentation fault in msvcrt!_HUGE ())
by Rock Star 10 Jan '08

10 Jan '08

Hi, in nightly builds (for example 24th of December 2007 and previous) Inkscape almost always crashes when I want to open or import some file. I have filled a simillar bug report, but with segmentation fault in wxvault.dll (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/177618), but it turned out to be connected to EMBASSY software that ships with some DELL computers... Anyway, after uninstalling the software, the program is still crashing, but this time with the segmentation fault in msvcrt!_HUGE(). On my laptop this happens when I want to open or import some file. I click on button, and the program crashes. I can almost always reproduce this crash on my laptop, but some people said that they can not reproduce it (see the bug report). Any ideas what could be wrong here? Thanks, and just wanted to say that 0.46 will be just amazing :) This is a brilliant software. Rok

2 6

Does PDF Import actually work?
by Bryce Harrington 09 Jan '08

09 Jan '08

Hi all, I am trying to test out the new PDF capabilities for Inkscape, as they're perhaps one of our most significant new features. Unfortunately, I'm not having luck getting PDF import working: I downloaded form W-4 from irs.gov and attempted File > Import, but got the following error on the console: /tmp/fw4.pdf:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found %PDF-1.6 ^ It looks like Inkscape's not detecting the file as a PDF, and trying to open it as an SVG. Anyone know what's going on? Bryce

4 6

Inkscape 0.46 About Screen Contest
by Joshua A. Andler 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hey all, The Inkscape team and community is proud to announce the About Screen contest for the upcoming release of Inkscape (0.46). The contest begins on December 22, 2007 and the deadline is January 6th, 2008. As with the past few contests we've had, it is being done on DeviantART ( http://www.deviantart.com/ ). You can find out more about it at: http://inkscapers.deviantart.com/journal/16001755/ Additionally, if you have a DeviantART account, please show the news some "love" so we can hopefully get the story promoted to the front page. http://news.deviantart.com/article/39226/ Good Luck! Have fun! Draw Freely. -Josh

11 14

ReleaseNotes updates needed
by Bryce Harrington 06 Jan '08

06 Jan '08

The release notes look in pretty good shape. Please, everyone who has contributed a feature to Inkscape, doublecheck that it has an appropriate write up about it: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046 Also, there are a few TODO's in the notes that need filled in: [faster gradients - mental] [sculpt profiles - bbyak] [Open Clip Art Library import and export - rejon] [toolbars - JonCruz] [calligraphy: menus, tooltips; star; ... - joncruz] [Switched to stock GTK+ toolbars. - joncruz] [Extra magic secret sauce added. - joncruz] [filedialogs - JonCruz] Please take some time this week to get these fleshed out. We need to get the ReleaseNotes finalized SOON so the translators can translate them! Bryce

1 1

Submitted updated font specification patch
by Gail Carmichael 05 Jan '08

05 Jan '08

For those interested: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/169973 Please let me know if anything needs further discussion. Otherwise, you can give the word and I can submit it (or someone can go ahead and submit it if they feel like it). Gail

2 1

Is OpenClipart export robust enough for 0.46?
by Bryce Harrington 01 Jan '08

01 Jan '08

Hi all, The import from openclipart function is pretty slick, and works fairly intuitively. I like it. However, the export function seems clunky, and isn't working for me. The dialog UI for export is quite primitive and doesn't work in an intuitive fashion. It also currently has the following (quite critical) bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/179452 I feel the amount of UI work alone to get export up to snuff is beyond what can be achieved at this point in the release cycle (unless some hero can really pound on it in the next 1-2 weeks). I imagine there may also be a non-trivial amount of work under the hood, too. What are other people's opinions on the idea of disabling OCAL export for 0.46? Bryce

2 1

Re: [Inkscape-devel] Does PDF Import actually work?
by Guillermo Espertino 31 Dec '07

31 Dec '07

It works fine for me. I'm opening most of the AI and PDF files successfuly. I don't know if it's simply a coincidence, but it seems to be more stable to drag and drop files instead of importing them via menu (i've experimented some core dumps doing that). But I can't reproduce that problem easily to be sure. The problem that is indeed reproducible is the one that happens when you import a PDF/AI in an empty document and try to save. Inkscape hangs and you can't save the file or close the application. But if you create a new document, create an object (a rectangle, for example) and save it BEFORE importing the PDF, it works fine. The error you get in the cli when you open the file in an empty document is this: (inkscape:9124): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: /build/buildd/glib2.0-2.14.1/gobject/gsignal.c:1654: signal `response' is invalid for instance `0x9d1d458' Anyone can confirm this? I'm filing a bug report about this right now. Regards, Gez.

1 0

Printing
by Thomas Worthington 31 Dec '07

31 Dec '07

Is printing supposed to be working in rev.16673, or is it a known work-in-progress? It simply sends the CPU to 100% until inkscape is killed from the command line on my Linux machine; closing Inkscape using the normal Quit menu item is not enough. Thomas

10 18