August 2012 - Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Future releases
by Josh Andler 05 Sep '12

05 Sep '12

Hey All, I'd like to proposed that after we get 0.49 out the door, we have regular planned releases. No more "always open" trunk development. But leverage merge windows instead... which also means needing to land "more complete" features in trunk than we've historically allowed. I'd love to see us have 6 month cycles to get features and fixes out to users sooner. It's awesome to have flashy new stuff for every release, but it's just not necessary. What are people's thoughts on this tried and true strategy many other projects use? Can we at least give it a shot? Cheers, Josh

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Please Update Release Notes!
by Tavmjong Bah 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

Hi, I will be giving an Inkscape status talk at the "Graphical Web" conference (formerly "SVG Open") in two weeks. It would be very useful if the release notes for 0.49 were up-to-date. I know there are some important things missing like the recent updates to the Text toolbar and the removal of the Gradient dialog. Can all developers who have made significant changes please up date the release notes if they haven't done so already? Thanks, Tsv

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SVG 2 and Inkscape
by Tavmjong Bah 03 Sep '12

03 Sep '12

Hi all, As has been noted by Alexandre, the first public draft of SVG 2.0 has been released: http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-SVG2-20120828/ While this is a very early draft and will be unstable for some time, I don't think it is too early to make plans on how Inkscape will handle incorporating new SVG feature. SVG 2.0 will bring many things that will benefit Inkscape. Here are just a few: Mesh Gradients New blend modes New ways to specify color (CSS3 Color) Named colors Markers inheriting stroke color Hash lines Variable stroke placement (inside/outside path) Fill over stroke 3D transforms Before I make a proposal, I will review the status of the SVG in general. As many of you know, SVG as a standard almost died when Adobe bought Flash. (Adobe was the main driver behind SVG at the beginning.) The SVG Working Group (WG), which once had more members than the CSS WG, shrunk to just a handful of active participants. With SVG now being a core component of HTML5 and with SVG being added to IE 9 and the decision by Adobe to stop development work on Flash, interest in SVG has grown. New members have joined the WG over the past year. (The group is still smaller than the CSS WG which limits the speed that the SVG 2 specification is developed as well as what can be added.) In addition to renewed interest in SVG proper, there is interest in adapting many SVG features for more general use on the Web. Many parts of the SVG specification are being ripped out and made into stand-alone specifications shared with the CSS WG. These include Transforms, Blend modes, Filters, and Colors. These sections are maturing fast and experiencing rapid adoption by browser vendors. You can already use HSL colors (from CSS3 Colors) inside SVG in current versions of all major browsers. Transformations should be usable soon. In summary, SVG is moving forward and doing so rather quickly. How should Inkscape handle new features? First of all, as Josh has stated, we don't want a repeat of the flowtext fiasco where Inkscape implemented a feature that ended up not being added to the SVG specification. We should only enable stable features in our official releases. One indication of stability is the implementation of a new feature by one or more browser vendors without using a vendor specific prefix. HSL color is one example of this. We should encourage new features in unstable releases. It is important to the SVG specification development that there are working examples, even if only partially implemented, as it demonstrates a user desire for the feature and it gives the WG a chance to test and experiment with it. Second we should be backwards compatible with SVG 1.1 when feasible. By backwards compatible, I mean being able to read and write SVG 1.1 files. Some things are relatively simple to handle. HSL colors can be easily converted to RGB colors. Others like mesh gradients may require using a PNG. What I propose, is that as new features become stable, we modify the internal Inkscape code to use them while at the same time adding an option to export to SVG 1.1. In many cases, this will have the side benefit of simplifying our code. For example, matching marker color to stroke color now requires some rather complex code to create new copies of a marker for each different colored path as well as monitor changes to stroke and fill color. What do others think? Tav

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Request to join Inkscape Web Development
by Boyd Zhang 01 Sep '12

01 Sep '12

Hi folks, I've translated the most part of the website into Chinese. And I sent a request to one of the admins two days ago to join the dev group, no response yet. I wish to access the svn sumbit level. Thanks all, Medmuf

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Foundations of GTK+ Development
by Arshdeep Singh 29 Aug '12

29 Aug '12

Hi fellow-devs I am new to GTK, and now that GTK+ 3 is here, I found a book published in 2007 by A. Krause called "Foundations of GTK+ Development", I just want to know whether this book is still good to get the hang of GTK+ 3 library ? --- demicoder

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Google Summer of Code 2012 Results
by Josh Andler 29 Aug '12

29 Aug '12

Hello Inkscapers! The Google Summer of Code 2012 program is now officially over. We’ve managed to have 3 out of 5 projects successfully completed by our awesome students. * Jan Pulmann created Python bindings for lib2Geom, the computational geometry library we use in Inkscape. * Samuel Chase made a lot of internal improvements to handling guides and to the coordinates system, making it easier to switch away from Cartesian system. * Veronika Irvine created a new tool for on-canvas tessellation. The code for 2geom library was written in the main development branch and hence is immediately available to all 3rd party developers. The changes to Inkscape have to be finalized before they can enter the main source code repository. Currently we don’t expect both of the new Inkscape features to be used in upcoming v0.49. We are sorry that 2 students didn’t make it, and we are going to take steps to avoid this kind of failure in the future, should we be accepted for the next runs of the program. Cheers, Josh (on behalf of the Inkscape team)

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svg 2.0 first public draft and blending
by Alexandre Prokoudine 29 Aug '12

29 Aug '12

Hi, SVG Working Group release the first public draft of SVG 2.0. http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-SVG2-20120828/ Among other important things it has: 1) Reference to the new "Blending and compositing" spec released earlier this month: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/FXTF/rawfile/tip/compositing/index.html Among the outcomes: more useful blending modes. 2) LAB color, uncalibrated device color, with raw CMYK and n-channel data. There are people around who would kill for these features in Inkscape. Do we have any policy regarding adoptions of new SVG stuff? Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

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GTK+-3.0 acting strangely
by Arshdeep Singh 28 Aug '12

28 Aug '12

Hi everyone, I recently coded my first GTK+ app. I had first precisely followed the instructions shown on the "Compiling GTK+" page. The app successfully compiled and ran too. Then I had to turn off my computer as i had an errand to run. The problem now is that, when I restarted the laptop, I had to re-install the GTK+ library although it was present in the /opt/gtk folder. Again I was successfully able to compile and run the app. However when i closed the interval pkg-config no lobger recognised gtk+-3.0 as an installed library ! It seems somehow the changes I make when I install the library do not make it after I close the terminal. What to do, I cannot install gtk everytime I need to run my code ! -- demicoder

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Windows build issues
by Kris De Gussem 24 Aug '12

24 Aug '12

Header adaptations in r10986 break windows building. One of the modifications in src/extension/implementation/implementation.h is the culprit. ------------------------------- Make error line 289: problem compiling: In file included from c:\devlibs/include /sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:8:0, from src/extension/implementation/implementation.h:16, from src/extension/implementation/implementation.cpp:16: c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal_base.h:48:11: error: 'size_t' does n ot name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal_base.h:97:3: error: 'size_type' does not name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal_base.h:241:11: error: 'size_t' does not name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal_base.h:263:3: error: 'size_type' doe s not name a type In file included from src/extension/implementation/implementation.h:16:0, from src/extension/implementation/implementation.cpp:16: c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:33:11: error: 'size_t' does not na me a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:34:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does not name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:99:11: error: 'size_t' does not na me a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:100:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does no t name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:276:11: error: 'size_t' does not n ame a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:277:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does no t name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:359:11: error: 'size_t' does not n ame a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:360:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does no t name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:430:11: error: 'size_t' does not n ame a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:431:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does no t name a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:515:11: error: 'size_t' does not n ame a type c:\devlibs/include/sigc++-2.0/sigc++/signal.h:516:11: error: 'ptrdiff_t' does no t name a type -------------------

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Packaging for OSX
by Stuart Edwards 22 Aug '12

22 Aug '12

Unfortunately I have the same experience as suv on OS X 10.6.8 Stu

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