May 2008 - Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Re: [Inkscape-devel] Toolbox management proposal (presets and tool toggle)
by bulia byak 30 May '08

30 May '08

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:11 AM, Valerie <valerie_vk@...36...> wrote: >> the user to add and remove tools from a "tool pool" onto a single >> toolbar? > > Because usually, people use specific sets of tools for specific tasks, > common groups of which can be determined: OK, then, let's ship with several predefined task-oriented toolbars and allow the user to modify any of them by adding or removing tools. I guess at this level it's basically the same as Jon Cruz and you propose, except that I don't want to add as many new tools as you do :) > So basically, you're proposing complex strokes as a sub-mode of pencil and > pen? Yes. For example, a drop-down with a list of LPEs with some preset parameters and a "last used LPE" entry, and separately from that a drop-down with profiles as in your mockup, implemented as pattern-on-path LPE (and therefore disabling the LPE chooser, until we can support more than one LPE per path). > That's workable. How do you propose to settle the UI issue of fill vs > stroke color? With LPE, the stroke Is the shape, after all (though I > suppose said shape/stroke doesn't need its own stroke). This is a relatively minor point - but Calligraphic pen works fine using the current fill color for its "strokes" and nobody complained so far :) -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Toolbox management proposal (presets and tool toggle)
by Valerie 30 May '08

30 May '08

Before I start... what can I submit as "blueprint", and what should I be submitting as "wishlist" instead? Can I use the wiki? If so, what pages am I supposed to save them as? Anyway, most of these will be submitted separately, but they're all only made feasible with a proper toolbox management. So the toolbox is getting cramped, right? At the same time, it's not really fun when many tools are grouped and you have to find each sub-component (case of the tweak tools, I can never remember the shortcuts either). So here's a possible solution, and some possibilities that'd derive from it. 1. Toolbox proposal http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/416/toolbarmanagement1ov3.png http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3712/toolbarmanagement2xb0.png Some features: - There should be a visible icon, as people won't be able to find the feature otherwise. - The icon allows you to access toolbox presets. - Managing a preset is easy, just go to "configure toolbox" and toggle on and off the visibility of any tool, just like with Gimp. - Multiple toolbars may be possible: see mock-up 1. The additional floating toolboxes would have a close button, though not the "main" one to avoid confusion (insert "Aaah! My toolbox has disappeared!" messages). - Some tools could have "grouped" and "separate" options (mock-up 2). Examples: . square, ellipse, spiral and polygon can be options of a single "shapes" button for those who don't use them often. . the individual modes of the tweak tool could be accessible separately: see mock-up. . when 3D shapes are added, they'd also have both grouped and separate options. - Since management is easy now, have some LPEs as tools too? Please? PLEASE??? 2. LPE as tools With a proper toolbox management system like the one above, LPEs can be incorporated as tools when needed. It saves one the trouble of applying one from a panel every time (it Really breaks the flow when you have a lot of lines to do, not to mention the LPE panel takes up a lot of space). This would simplify interface for many LPEs tremendously. You just select the tool, modify any necessary parameters, and draw the paths you need. As soon as you've drawn the path the effect is automatically applied. For example, Spiro lines: you draw your normal bezier, and as soon as you release the mouse it becomes a Spiro line (by the way, any chance for "native" Spiro lines as opposed to a Bezier with an LPE on it?). I actually think LPEs should eventually be separated into categories: - Spiro lines (native spiro lines? Yes please!) - Complex lines (sketch, waves, wide) - Shape generators (gears, stiches, etc.) - Guides (grids, technical, composition guides, perspective guides) - Transform (envelop deform, perspective deform) - etc. 3. LPE tool: Wide lines It's crazy, but it's nearly impossible to find a program that would let you do a nice double-edged line without either: - a tablet (+ very steady hands, which I don't have) - half a dozen operations - or forcing you to switch between panels. It's Really discouraging when you want to do several hundred hair strands. D: The wide lines LPE would be a very simple tool: a few basic shapes are saved. You draw your path. The shape automatically gets stretched onto it: http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/9302/widestrokeslpemx3.png There you go, easy-to-edit (direction wise, in any case, I'm assuming that a person doing dozens of hair strands does not care about the exact form of each) double-edged stroke drawn in a single operation with a mouse (or with bezier, whichever). Note: Developers will probably not want to set this as a tool until a proper toolbox management system is in place, which is why I proposed one myself (though I'd be more than happy if a better solution comes along). For this particular LPE tool, you'd have the following entries: - size: size of the maximum. It basically takes the saved shape and adjusts the size first, so you can modify the width of the strokes with just the directional keys. - presets: preset shapes: single edge, double edge with max at 1/2, double-edge with max at 1/4, etc. Users can add their own commonly-used shapes, but the above are among the most ridiculously common ones. - and you can adjust the size with just the directional keys! (though there could be %width options to further tweak the thin lines) If anybody knows how to automatically generate shapes likes these, that's fine too (though let's be honest, including a few files of shapes like these would take up tiny disk space anyway. They're 4 nodes each!). 4. Tool for charts: shapes with text Another feature that probably would be considered too much waste of real-estate without a proper toolbox management. I often use Inkscape to do charts. Having to call up the Align dialog each time (which really takes up a Lot of space by the way) just to place a few text into shapes, and having to realign every time the text is modified, is needlessly tedious to say the least. The auto-text shapes I'm proposing would come as Ellipse, Text, or Polygon. They're simple: place a shape, click on the center and you can start typing away. The text is always automatically aligned to center (or some other option of your choosing). They may have the following features or options: - padding of text to borders: sets a minimum distance between the text and the border. - auto-adjust size: if the text starts to fill the shape, the shape resizes automatically to fit. - the default is for the text to be centered, but there could be other alignments. - linked duplicates: a linked duplicate only conserves the shape, not the text content, so by making a duplicate, when the text in one of the boxes forces one of the items to become bigger, all the other shapes of the same type resize as well. This is for those charts that need all elements to be of approximately the same size. - adding points for connectors: this is simpler for rectangle shapes than for other shapes... you can basically specify how many connector points you want per side (example: 3). Though, ideally, there'd be an on-canvas means to mark points for each side, but I don't have UI ideas for that one... Also handy for comics. It's at least three steps fewer (changing the tool, selecting all then aligning the whole, not to mention it has to be repeated if the text is changed much) for a rather common task, which can translate into a good enough time gain and a much more pleasant work flow. Any comments before I submit? (if only to say which ones should Not be submitted as blueprints, because I'm a bit confused right now)

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Multi-thread help
by Mario Pavlovic 30 May '08

30 May '08

We are software development company which use inkscape in our graphics. I have strong experience in multi-threading environment and server side development. Prkos (you probably know her from the list and launchpad) told me that you need someone to help, I heard that you plan to refactor your code and consider to apply new multicore and parallel processing. I can offer you my expertise advice in multi-thread and parallel programming, let me know the best way to do this. Best regards, Mario

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Resource paths on win32
by Bob Jamison 29 May '08

29 May '08

Hi, wormsxulla alerted me to a problem with the Tutorial menu items not being able to load a tutorial file. The error is something like "can't load file \share\tutorials\blah.svg". Which makes me think that Inkscape has forgotten its path some time since startup. It must have known -during- startup, else you wouldn't get your icons or translations. Has anyone done anything recently to change the path-prefixes, or CurrentDirectory of Inkscape? This was working before. bob

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Proposed change of config directory
by Jon A. Cruz 28 May '08

28 May '08

In discussion today the subject of our preferences, etc came up. The initial comment was "also, i really would love to be able to store the inkscape preferences files in a given location (so, to be able to run two builds alternatively without having to save & rename the prefs files manually). profiles!" Looking into that, it seems that perhaps we should switch some of the mess that is path-prefix.h with the stock calls that now are in glib and that follow the XDG Base Directory Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/basedir-spec In fact, we should perhaps look over a few of those "Miscellaneous Utility Functions" in glib http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/stable/glib-Miscellaneous-Utility-Funct… The immediately useful function would be g_get_user_config_dir(). One main benefit of using that call is that Inkscape should then be easy to direct to different "config" directories and allow for users to pair different versions of Inkscape with different directories... or different work scenarios with different ones, etc.

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Canonical open source jobs
by Bryce Harrington 28 May '08

28 May '08

There's several positions opened at Canonical for open source developers: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/ In particular, if you've been doing Inkscape bug triaging, take a look at the Launchpad QA Engineer position. Or if you've been hacking on gtk code for Inkscape, the Ubuntu GNOME Maintainer position might be of interest. Bryce

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[Lib2geom-devel] New HLineSegment/VLineSegment classes and path.h splitting
by Marco 28 May '08

28 May '08

I splitted path.h in the following files: curve.h (abstract class Curve) sbasis-curve.h bezier-curve.h elliptical-arc.h path.h (class Path and iterators ) and path.cpp in curve-helpers.cpp (CurveHelpers::root_winding) path.cpp (all the previous methods) finally I added a curves.h file so defined: #include curve.h #include sbasis-curve.h #include bezier-curve.h #include elliptical-arc.h #include hvlinesegment.h path.h includes curves.h so existent code should have no problem. The HLineSegment and VLineSegment classes will be useful to represent directly "H" and "V" curves found in the svg path element. I committed all changes both to 2geom and Inkscape. Btw I needed to do a make clean before succeeding in building inkscape correctly, because at beginning CurveHelpers::root_winding was seen as defined more than once. Regards, Marco -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

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inkscape community site
by Frank Karlitschek 27 May '08

27 May '08

Hi guys, I'm running openDesktop.org, KDE-Look.org, GNOME-Look.org and other websites for Free software. I´m also a longtime inkscape user. I created lots of icons for KDE with inkscape. :-) I noticed that there is no real community site where Inkscape users and developers can share drawing, templates, scripts, fonts, screenshots, new ideas and other stuff. I know there is open clipart, but it lacks the social networking functionality and other stuff. So I created www.inkscapestuff.org . It is part of the openDesktop.org network. So if you have an account on GNOME-Look.org on any other website you can login. There is also a public api if you want to fetch and integrate the stuff into other websites or Inkscape. http://api.inkscapestuff.org I hope this is helpfull for you and the Inkscape users. What do you think? I you have ideas or suggestions how to improve the site please send me a mail. Cheers Frank -- Frank Karlitschek frank@...1981...

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UI proposal: workspaces (art, chart, technical, kids)
by Valerie 27 May '08

27 May '08

Inkscape doesn't need this as much as some other graphics programs probably do (I'm mostly trying to push it for Krita), but since Inkscape is going to add technical drawing capabilities, it's as good a time to start considering this as ever: Workspaces would basically be a divide and conquer approach against excessive UI bloat. Basically, 1 workspace = one saved set of settings (including toolbox items and tool option settings). UI: in the top menu, you add a Workspace drop-down with the following possible entries: - General - Icons/logos - Art - Charts - Technical - Kids - anything else you can think of (comics, maps, whatever) Click on any entry to switch from one to another. Art for example will emphasize the Calligraphy tool (with eventually several settings possible and separate entries toolbox entries for the tweak tools, so you don't have to dig them up all the time). I'd also like to see a separate workspace for Composition when composition tools are created (the workspace would basically give you composition tools and a few basic drawing tools). In workspaces such as Charts, tool option settings will automatically switch to properties such as "disable scale stroke width." You could also implement hybrids of the shape and text tools so that when you click on the centre of a shape (say... rectangle), you can start typing and editing text directly, and the text will automatically align itself with the centre of the shape, and/or the shape automatically expands when necessary (options available). Normally, such a feature would add bloat to the UI, but within a specific workspace it'd Really save time since the user would no longer be forced to align all the time. Really, this could cut down chart drawing time by half. Technical drawing will emphasize technical tools while pushing back all the non-technical items. It may also have default grids and snap settings. Within each workspace, you can still add another of the existing tools. This could be done either via a "configure toolbox" button or within a "Configure workspace" entry in the workspace drop-down. There, you just tick the tools you want in your toolbox. Workspaces could also make one's life simpler when the following start to get implemented: - animation (I Really doubt most people want the animation features taking up screen real-estate most of the time) - collaborative online work environments and such? The difficulty, of course, lies in whether Inkscape has the architectural options necessary to save and switch settings in such a way. If possible though, it will decrease UI bloat while allowing easier access to certain tools depending on the task (like the sub-modes of the Tweak tool), and could eventually allow some workspaces to have features that would otherwise be bloat in others (timeline bar for animation, maybe mini-icon galleries for if those are needed, and the shape/text hybrids I've mentioned for a chart workspace).

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Serious regression!
by Diederik van Lierop 27 May '08

27 May '08

Well, I just narrowed it down to the builds between May 20th and May 21th if that's of any help.... Diederik Op Ma, 26 mei, 2008 13:32, schreef J.B.C.Engelen@...1578...: > As a temporary solution to keep on working: > Go to global preferences, SVG Output, and turn on 'allow relative > coordinates'. That seems to work for me now. > > CC'ed to Jasper who has recently reworked the SVG path writing. > > Cheers, > Johan > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: inkscape-devel-bounces(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> [mailto:inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On >> Behalf Of Diederik van Lierop >> Sent: maandag 26 mei 2008 13:00 >> To: Alvin Penner >> Cc: inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Serious regression! >> >> Op Ma, 26 mei, 2008 12:55, schreef Alvin Penner: >> > Is this https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/234742 ? >> >> That could indeed be related! Although in my setup the paths >> completely disappear. >> >> Diederik >> >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------- >> ----------- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all >> challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. >> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ >> _______________________________________________ >> Inkscape-devel mailing list >> Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel >> > >

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