July 2012 - Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

New extension: svgtextext_to_pdflatex
by Håkon Marthinsen 13 Jul '12

13 Jul '12

Hi everyone, I have just made a new Inkscape extension. See https://launchpad.net/svgtextext-to-pdflatex The purpose of this Inkscape extension is to export Tex Text objects as real LaTeX code, not just paths. This way, the typeface can be changed from the LaTeX document without having to regenerate all the Tex Text objects inside the figure in Inkscape. It also ensures consistency with the fonts used in the rest of the LaTeX document, and furthermore, it is possible to cross-reference other parts of the document from within the figure. The extension has been tested in Ubuntu with pdf2svg installed. To install it, download the two source files, put them in ~/.config/inkscape/extensions and restart Inkscape. This will add a menu entry to Extensions > Export. Håkon Marthinsen

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Provide simple way to export images optimized for the web
by Maurizio Casimirri 13 Jul '12

13 Jul '12

I often use inkscape to create website interfaces. But exporting things in inkscape works fine only at 90dpi, when i try to reduce it to 72dpi exported images are stretched accordingly. Rather than change the default export tool, my proposal is to introduce some specific features to export optimized images for the web. I'd like this workflow: - Mark groups/elements for export (very simple: just add an attribute to xml) - Create sprite images - Mark groups/elements to be exported together in a sprite image - See/copy css for sprite image - Select export for the web ... from 'File' menu - In the export dialog select which elements/sprites to export and where - The images exported are optimized for the web using some tool like pngcrush (not only 72dpi) - maybe necessary css code could be exported along with sprites also Implementing something like that and correcting some other little problems should bridge the gap between Inkscape and Ilustrator or other commercial tools in terms of website interfaces design

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vector printing win32
by Solor Vox 12 Jul '12

12 Jul '12

Hello, I've been trying to solve a 2+ year issue with inkscape and my printing device (laser cutter) not accepting paths as vectors. All I can seem to get out of inkscape is rastered images. Yes, exporting to PDF works, but it's not a fix and not a great solution either. As such, I've been digging in the code to inkscape versions 0.46 to 0.48.2 on a win32 platform. Why was a call to cairo PS level 3 commented out on line 101? And can you tell me if the call to renderItem() is sending bitmap or vector data to the surface? Where in the code chain might the vector paths be rastered? Cheers, sV

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Old configure options
by Josh Andler 11 Jul '12

11 Jul '12

Hey All, Is there a reason we still have the --with-perl and --with-python configure options? Apparently they still don't work on OSX with current trunk and didn't work in some linux distros as of a report from forever ago (circa 0.44pre0). suv's understanding was that they were only used for our internal script dialog which was disabled prior to 0.47. Cheers, Josh

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Rationale for typography canvas defaults?
by Matt Gushee 05 Jul '12

05 Jul '12

Hi, all-- First of all, if this is not the right list for this question, please direct me to a better one. Anyway, I am interested in using Inkscape (together with FontForge) for font design, and thus I am trying out the more-or-less latest development version from Bazaar, with the typography extensions. And I'd like to thank the folks developing these extensions; I know good typography tools are not easy. I am curious, though, about why the default and maximum em sizes are what they are: 1000 and 2000, respectively. I've been Googling hard for info on the "right way" to design glyphs for Freetype or Opentype fonts. I'm sure noone will be surprised to hear that it's hard to find definitive info, but so far I have found: * There doesn't seem to be any universal agreement on the best design size, BUT * An 1000-unit em square is seen as an old-school measurement, associated with Type 1 ("Postscript") fonts, and * Apple uses a 2048-unit em square, and of course Apple is right about everything (just kidding!), and * A size that is a power of 2 is thought to make scaling more efficient and/or accurate, leading many designers to favor 2048 or 1024 units. At any rate, to the extent there is consensus, people seem to prefer 1024 or 2048 these days. So I'd like to know why 1000 is the default, and if there is a technical reason for setting a maximum size of 2000. Meanwhile, I'm going to go with 2048, and will tweak the code in my installation to allow that size, and see how it works. I'll report back if I notice anything interesting. -- Matt Gushee

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GTK+ 2.20 support status
by Alex Valavanis 03 Jul '12

03 Jul '12

Hi All, I wondered what people's thoughts are on our support for GTK+ 2.20... A quick check reveals that we now have 100 conditional code blocks to support the obsolete symbols provided by GTK+ 2.20, so it adds a bit of a burden on developers and it makes the code horrible to read in places. Most stable/LTS releases of major linux distros provide newer versions of GTK+/gtkmm than 2.20. The exception is Debian Stable, but that's a pretty special case (i.e., ancient versions of everything!) If we were to drop our support for gtk+ 2.20, the main casualty would be Ubuntu Lucid. However, (a) there are two newer stable versions of Ubuntu and a newer LTS release available, (b) we have already bumped our Cairo dependency to a version that is not in Lucid, and (c) I guess that trunk will inevitably reach the point where we leave some older distro versions behind. So... the question is whether we continue supporting a big chunk of conditional code or whether we drop support for gtk+ 2.20. Any thoughts? AV

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symbolic icons
by Alexandre Prokoudine 02 Jul '12

02 Jul '12

Hi, FYI, Tango Art Libre set is getting symbolic version: http://gnome-stereotype.tumblr.com/post/26134120044/next-stop-art-libre Last thing I heard is that GIMP is likely to be using symbolic icons, and this looks like a beginning. Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

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Text in SVGs exported from Sibelius
by Daniel Spreadbury 01 Jul '12

01 Jul '12

Dear Inkscape developers, Sibelius is a Qt-based application that uses Qt's built-in SVG support to export SVG graphics. These SVGs open fine in various web browsers (e.g. Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer), but the text does not appear correctly in Inkscape. Please see the attached example. Does this problem lie on Inkscape's side, or on Qt's side? Thanks, Daniel -- Daniel Spreadbury Senior Product Manager | Sibelius R & D Avid Unit 20-23 City North Fonthill Road London N4 3HF United Kingdom daniel.spreadbury@...2877... t +44 (0)20 7561 7915 | m +44 (0)7990 558997 | f +44 (0)20 7561 7888 Sibelius is Avid. Learn more at www.avid.com <http://www.avid.com/> Avid Technology Europe Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered No.: 2670844. Registered Office: Pinewood Studios, Pinewood Road, Iver Heath, Bucks SL0 0NH, England

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