April 2008 - Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

win32 build working again
by Bob Jamison 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

The win32 build, which was broken for the weekend, is working again. I just made a "manual autobuild" again, so that we can see how it looks on Windows: http://troi.titan-aeu.com/~rjamison/inkscape/builds/ Bob

2 1

Smooth transitions in Bézier paths
by Diederik van Lierop 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

Hi, I hope you don't mind if I increase the traffic on inkscape-devel even more ;-) At some point an idea popped up to only snap to nodes at discontinuities in paths, and not to nodes at smooth transitions from one Bézier segment to another. This is more intuitive (less "Hey, what it is Inkscape snapping to now?") and might increase performance. Problem is that in the object-snapper I only have access to SPCurve, which is a wrapper for "old-style" NArtBpath. It's easy to find out whether a point is inbetween two Bézier segments, but how do I find out if a transition is smooth? I guess that should be done by comparing the control points, or is there an easier way? With the transition to lib2geom, will the NArtBpath be deprecated in favor of the Path class? (that would make this rather exercise useless in the long run). Any pointers would be appreciated here, Diederik

11 36

question regarding wishblade robocraft support...
by stuart 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

Sorry for posting here if the user list if better. And sorry about the subject if it has been talked about before. I couldn't get sourceforge to add me to the inkscape user mail list and sourceforge was timing out on all my archive searches with no results. --- I remember reading that there was a patch or something to inkscape to support wishblade and robocraft users. Has that been integrated into the inkscape application? Is that what the DXF is all about? Wishblade users can not use DXF directly (needing the robocraft software to import DXF and change it to some sort of native (and maybe proprietary) GSD). Is there a way to get inkscape to save images in GSD in order to simplify the process? Ideally, I would prefer to skip bringing up the wishblade application. In my set up, I do all my work in linux (GIMP/INKSCAPE) and only the plotting in Windows. If I could do everything in linux it would simplify the flow of work greatly. Has anyone figured out how the craftrobo is communicated to in order to use it with common open source linux plotting software? Better yet, has anyone figured out how the wishblade has been crippled in order to use it with common open source linux plotting software? ...thanks

2 2

sorting out PS/EPS/PDF export mess
by bulia byak 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

It's always bad when the UI offers two ways to do the same thing without really explaining what's the difference. It's equally bad when UI uses some meaningless techno jargon such as "cairo" :) Unfortunately 0.46 was released still in the middle of a transition period which made both these evils inevitable. Now that we're in 0.47, however, I would like to address this issue by switching all of PS, EPS, and PDF output to cairo, removing the builtin Inkscape exporter, and purging the mentions of "cairo" from the UI. As a matter of fact, this has already partially happened (not sure who did this). Right now both PS export options work via cairo and produce identical output. The Inkscape-native PDF export is nowhere to be seen. The only exporter which still uses native code is EPS. However, since 1.5.2 cairo can produce EPS files too, so this can all be done in one place now (closng several EPS export bugs along the way). The only downside is that it will require cairo >= 1.5.2, is everyone OK with that? By the way, the latest cairo 1.5.12 finally fixes the bug where zooming in too closely in Outline mode produced messy broken lines. Now everything is neat and clean. Upgrade is recommended. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

7 11

Welcome to GSoC 2008!
by Aaron Spike 20 Aug '08

20 Aug '08

Felipe, Jasper, Johan, Marco and Maximilian, On behalf of the Inkscape community, let me congratulate you. You have been selected to participate in Google's Summer of Code 2008. I'm happy to see that all of you have already begun working with the community. We're all looking forward to working with you through the summer and beyond. Bryce Harrington and I are the GSoC administrators for Inkscape this summer. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have concerns. If you have not already done so, please subscribe to the Inkscape-devel mailing list. We recommend that you conduct the bulk of your Inkscape related communications through this list so that the community can keep up-to-date with your progress. https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel We want to see you complete your project successfully. With this in mind, please strive to communicate actively. Active and open communication is a must for any successful Open Source Software project. We recommend that you be mindful of your schedule. Attempt to complete 90% of your project by the midterm evaluation period (July 7-14th). This will allow you to concentrate on bug fixing and documentation for the remaining time. Aaron Spike

2 2

inkscape git mirror?
by MenTaLguY 18 Jun '08

18 Jun '08

I'm interested in setting up a git mirror of Inkscape SVN; who's the person in charge of our server currently? We'll need to have a fairly current version of git, libsvn, and the libsvn perl bindings installed to do this. -mental

6 11

PS/EPS import proposal
by bulia byak 14 Jun '08

14 Jun '08

Would anyone object if I switch PS and EPS import from using pstoedit/skconvert to this: - convert ps to pdf with ps2pdf from Ghostscript - import pdf to Inkscape? Reasons: - Ghostscript is doubtlessly the most competent open source software for dealing with Postscript; it is cross-platform, actively updated and is much more commonly installed than anything else we've been using - our PDF importer is the best importer we have, and it works better than any third party things that claim to produce svg - for multipage postscript, we get for free a dialog for selecting the page (and later, the option to import multiple pages into one multipage SVG will only have to be coded once for PDF and work for PS at once). Testing by people in https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/190424 as well as my own experience tells me this route works quite well. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

6 14

Fwd: Programming for Inkscape.
by bulia byak 05 Jun '08

05 Jun '08

...forwarding this to the devel list... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pam B. <pamely@...329...> Date: Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 2:26 PM Subject: Programming for Inkscape. To: buliabyak@...400... Hi, I have been told to contact you by Bibi Morris. I understand that in the past some wonderful people have made changes in Inkscape that made it an incredibly useful program for owners of Wishblade and CraftRobo personal media cutters. I have now been provided a tip that would allow users of Linux to drive their machines directly from Inkscape. The "tip" suggested that Windows users might be able to do the same if someone was able to do something with the windows binary for Inkscape. As is probably already obvious, I know nothing about Operating Systems, nor do I know anything about coding and software programming. Actually, I no longer even own a Wishblade, (I have moved on to a bigger machine.) but I do run a support group for over 1,000 personal cutter owners. This has the potential of being a very powerful tool to owners of these types of cutters and could save them hundreds of dollars in software upgrades. Would you please check into this and see if it is something that can be done for us? Thank you, Pam Beard and the 1,000+ in the yahoo group: EasyWishbladers The "tip" is pasted below: If the words Linux, RedHat, Debian, Inkscape and / or Python mean anything to you read on (warning, getting technical here...). How would you like to cut from inkscape? all in Linux? I have been lurking in Linux Printer Driver land and was very happy to find an early copy of a Python script designed to provide the necessary "linkage" between Inkscape and a craftrobo cutter. With a little change to the code, we verified it works with a wishblade as well. But you might have to wait until there is support in the down loadable python script. Basically, you print from Inkscape "using PostScript operators" (not as a bitmap). And, instead of sending the output to a printer, you "pipe" it to the python application. This operation is actually described in the Inkscape print popup menu. When you click on print, the python GUI pops up giving you more options. This GUI interface is *much* simpler than the actual graphtec software. Most anything to do with the image needs to be done in Inkscape. The only real control on the GUI are the paper size, the cutting speed and the cutting pressure. I suppose this can also be done in windows. My *assumptions* are that there is a windows binary for inkscape as well as python and python related software. If that's the case, then you may be able to skip setting up a Linux box. I know I am hitting only about 1% of you, but if you want to try the script you can get it here: http://vidar.gimp.org/graphtecprint/ ....I am sure feed back at this stage of development would influence what features are fixed, enhanced and / or added. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

6 6

NEW: Spiro splines LPE
by bulia byak 19 May '08

19 May '08

Spiro splines are a novel way of defining curvilinear paths developed by Raph Levien. Recently, Spiro support was added to the FontForge font editor, and now it is available in Inkscape too. It takes some getting used to, but for certain tasks Spiros have a clear advantage over Bezier curves. http://www.levien.com/spiro/ A Spiro path is defined by a sequence of points, but unlike a regular path with Bezier curves, all Spiro points lie on the path and there are no off-path handles. The curvature of the path is defined entirely by the positions of the points and their types. The path behaves very similar to a springy rod which is forced to pass through the given points and which uses the minimum possible curvature to satisfy the requirement. As such, it feels quite natural and the resulting path is very smooth - with the kind of smoothness you can achieve with Beziers only after much tweaking. To create a Spiro path, select any path and assign the "Spiro spline" path effect to it. There are no parameters. Each node of your path becomes a point of a Spiro path, depending on the type of node: * Smooth nodes (those with two collinear Bezier handles) become curve points of the Spiro path; such points bend the curve but must remain smooth. Note that the length or direction of the Bezier handles of the source path is ignored; the only thing that matters is that the node is smooth. * Cusp nodes of the source path become corner points of the Spiro path. Between two corner points, the path is always a straight line. * Half-smooth nodes - those with one Bezier handle collinear with a straight line segment on the other hand - become "left" or "right" points on the Spiro path which behave exactly the same: they sit between a straight line and a curve and enforce that these two segments join smoothly without a cusp. Note that what matters is the actual collinearity of a node's handles, regardless of the node type that the node has in the Node tool; for example, if a cusp (diamond-shaped) node has collinear handles, it will become a curve point of the Spiro path. For creating half-smooth nodes, use Ctrl+dragging of the node handle to make it snap to the direction of the straight line segment on the other side, or press Shift+S to lock it to that direction. Some configurations of points do not converge and produce wild loop and spirals instead of a smooth curve. According to Raph, "The spline solver in this release is _not_ numerically robust. When you start drawing random points, you'll quickly run into divergence. However, "sensible" plates based on real fonts usually converge." Avoid too sharp changes in direction between points to prevent divergence. Hopefully, the robustness of the algorithm will be improved in future releases. For now, to edit Spiro paths viewing the result in real time, you have to use the Node tool. The Pen tool does not yet allow you to preview a Spiro as you draw, although you can paste the Spiro effect on the path and see the result as soon as the path is finalized. You can always use the Node tool to continue a Spiro path by duplicating and dragging away its end nodes. Also, when you have a Spiro path selected, you can add a new subpath to it with Pen or Pencil if you start drawing with Shift. Raph: Thanks for your code, and let me know when you have a new version :) I have copied only spiro.c/h and bezctx.c/h to Inkscape tree, renaming .c to .cpp and removing debug output, but otherwise unchanged. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

10 17

feature request, XY lower-left vs center toggle
by qazxswedcvfrtgbnhyujmkiolp2000 qazxswedcvfrtgbnhyujmkiolp2000 12 May '08

12 May '08

Hi inkscape-devel, A very useful feature for me (and probably others) is to toggle the meaning of the X and Y boxes between object lower left coordinate and object center coordinate. For example, just as there is a padlock button to control whether W and H are locked, there could be an origin button to control whether X and Y are lower left or center coordinate. I want this e.g. for positioning centered text by center coordinate, not lower left. What do you think? qazxswedcvfrtgbnhyujmkiolp2000

2 1