January 2008 - Inkscape Devel

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

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Some tool icon comments
by Bill Baxter 09 Jan '08

09 Jan '08

3 little design critiques for some aspiring icon designer to maybe consider: * I find the current 3D Box icon oddly jarring because uses a "looking-up-from-below" perspective. All the other tools can be interpreted as either being completely flat or as looking down on something (e.g. pencil, pen -- you're never looking up at your pen). It makes it feel to me like I'm jerking my neck up and down as I scan over the tools. I'm sure there's a comment in a Scott McCloud book somewhere about not jerking around the viewpoint like this. :-) * The gradient icon just read well for me. Being right next to the hierarchy thingy makes it look very much to me like it's some kind of connector gizmo. And having the gradient just be a simple white to green makes it look like it's just a button with cool shading, not a button *about* making cool shading. (The rectangle button has almost identical shading) I think a nonsquare background shape would help (rectangle maybe even) and a three band, or 2-band color->complement (eg orange->blue) gradient in the background would help make it clear that the gradient was the point. Oh and pixel align those handles (like in the pen icon) so they're not all blurry! * There seems to be a little inconsistency in the design of the shape icons. Rect and 3D Box have a little white inner border inside the black outline. Circle and stars do not. Also I think something more interesting could be done to tie their colors together. Different colors is good, but somehow the current cyan, purple, pink, yellow just don't look like a coherent colorscheme to me. They don't seem to form any sort of progression. Also the rectangle shape feels significantly bigger than the others. Perhaps making it a few pixels smaller and slightly more rectangular would be nice. I love the pencil / pen / calligraphy / bucket icons. Those have a very unified look and communicate their functions very well. --bb

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Truetype Collection fonts
by Donn 08 Jan '08

08 Jan '08

> Uses fc-cache to refresh your font cache after installation and verify > that ~/.font is managed. Thanks for the reply. I actually solved this last week and can't recall what I was doing wrong. It was something really dumb on my part. > Don't know if .ttc is managed by fontconfig Solved this one too; they seem to work just fine. I managed to get Fonty Python to find and display all the sub faces. \d -- I have a low-traffic blog for basic news: http://otherwiseingle.blogspot.com/

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Press news about Inkscape
by Helge Hielscher 08 Jan '08

08 Jan '08

Hello, Scribus has a page where it lists news reported about it: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Press_news_about_Scribus Is there something similar for inkscape? If not, would you think that it makes sense to create a wiki page "News about Inkscape"? Regards, Helge Hielscher

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help needed: convert a SPItem into its gdk_pixbuf
by Adib taraben 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hello all, in order to show blur as blur in PDF we need to convert the shape into its rendered pixbuf. We need to place a piece of code in src/extension/internal/cairo-renderer.cpp that does this conversion. And then to include as pure image data. I have checked the /helper/png-write.cpp and in src/selection-chemistry.cpp (sp_selection_create_bitmap_copy ()). So far I do not really understand which functions needed in order to get the pixbuf. I need someone that can do the job. Any help? Adib. ---

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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

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About Inkscape authors list
by Bill Baxter 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hey there folks, I contributed a patch that was accepted and has an entry in the release notes. Does that make me an author? If not, then no worries -- it was not a huge patch -- but it would fun to see my name in lights. :-) --bb

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New translation stats
by Bryce Harrington 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hi all, We're still not yet to string freeze, but took a big step forward towards that today. I've updated the translation statistics on the home page. Twelve languages have been translated to >80% (up from 10 last time), although the average translation ratio dropped 1% from 49% to 48%. I notice the Italian translation went from 96% a week ago, to 0% today - luca, do you have an idea what might have happened? Also, for en_CA, it looks like it hasn't been filled in very much, and what is there seems to just be Britishisms (centre, metre, etc.) Could we simply copy the en_GB file to en_CA? It seems if we are going to provide Canandian language bindings, that would give better results than what we have so far. It looks like it hasn't been updated in over a year; maybe it could just be dropped? Bryce

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Call for Freeze Exceptions
by Bryce Harrington 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hi Adib, thanks for updating the status on this. On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 02:53:06AM +0100, Adib taraben wrote: > Hello Bryce and all, > > I finished the win32 (un)installer work (svn Revision 16898). I prepared > all additional message dialogs for translation. > Now the win32 (un)installer will not delete user defined files. It checks > by md5 checksum for each file if it has been changed and will ask for > deletion. > If the file (uninstall.log) containing the md5 checksums does not exists it > will abort the uninstallation process. > > I will update all Bugs and Release Notes accordingly. > > HTH, > > Adib. > --- > Bryce Harrington schrieb: >> On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 10:45:27PM +0100, the Adib wrote: >> >>> Hi Bruce, >>> >>> I want to focus on two things: >>> 1. win32 installer >>> - improve the current uninstaller. Currently it bugs you for every single >>> file that has been changed. >>> 2. improve PDF, PS export >>> - implement blur as bitmap >>> - need to display an dialog and asking for several options (text to path, >>> blur as bitmap, alpha as bitmap) >>> >>> Nr. 1) I can do myself. >>> Nr. 2) I need help. >>> I think that two weeks from now (3rd Jan) this will be finished. >>> >>> I would like to see fixed in the next release the issue with the >>> calculation >>> of object sizes containing blur #168349 >>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168349 . >>> >> >> Hi Adib, >> >> I've got you down with exceptions for both of the above tasks. >> >> The win32 uninstaller is technically packaging work, so is permitted to >> be done without an exception, but you've got one anyway. But it won't >> be a blocker for moving into Freeze if it takes longer than expected. >> >> Like others that have replied, it sort of sounds like the PDF/PS work >> may be a bit more ambitious than there is time for. However I've >> included an exception for you on this anyway. That said, I would >> encourage you to prioritize and organize the work such that there are >> good stopping points in case some of the work needs to be postponed. >> Improving PDF/PS support is very important, however this item has a >> longer time estimate than the other tasks that must be completed before >> Freeze, so is the riskiest item, especially since you think you'll need >> help. If you can prioritize/organize the work to reduce it something >> that can be completed by yourself in a shorter timeframe, that would >> help a lot. >> >> Thanks, >> Bryce

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Bugs milestoned for 0.46
by Bryce Harrington 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hi all, In the course of triaging, testing, and debugging, we've accumulated a list of bugs that were flagged for the 0.46 milestone. Below is a complete (unfiltered) list. We need to drastically reduce this list soon! (Either by fixing or postponing and living with them.) Please grab a couple and take a look... 167898 Grouping section with connectors attached crashes 168586 Crash related with ungrouping 169103 tooltip for menubar not localized 169791 application icon following the tango style guidelines 173116 Gtk::PixbufError exception not caught in Windows 177783 cairo-ps export creates empty ps files on win32 179452 export to openclipart.org in dev version 179640 Fill with color leads to a crash 168024 pattern + viewBox = no pattern (sometimes) 168614 SVN[070505] Regression:opening svg with svgz extension=crash 168623 export to svgz, missing suffix in exported file 168978 Compile problems with inkscape-svn with libsigc++2.0 168980 Inkscape doesn't build due to issues with the PDF importer 169985 Slicing pluging (for web and whatnot) 174721 Importing svg files brake references to bitmap files 176608 Effects update on parameter change even without "live effects" enabled 178022 python extensions fail on win32 178985 Crash/Assert when SaveAs... "PDF via Cairo" without converting text to paths 179478 3d box tool toolbar doesn't work 167132 effect changes inkscape:output_extension 168934 eps export does not cut out background properly 168957 export to PDF leaves white gaps between rects 169018 Information lost when saving as Plain SVG 169122 PDF import doesn't work when file name has accents (win32) 169623 Canvas color option 169886 Export SVG-metadata when exporting to PDF 169967 Scheme Scripting Console 171092 Autosave 171247 Tutorials Forum 174854 [PATCH] SVN doesn't compile without LCMS 174992 UnboundLocalError with perspective.py 176750 Perspective / Envelope errors on Vista machine 178215 menu icons size in Win32 dev builds is 13X13 179040 Update Ukrainian translation 179830 on-canvas gradient editor breaks adding a node 169127 Incorrect Finnish translation 171382 metadata information doesn't include jurisdiction (CC) 178471 Tooltips missing in the LPEs 170018 Dimensions 177387 XSLT "effects" extensions don't work (not implemented?) 178336 spin boxes increment values on filters UI need tweaking before 0.46 release Bryce

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