Another GSoC'er - New From Template
by Jan Darowski
Hi!
I'm Jan Darowski, form Poland, studying IT at the Warsaw University.
Launchpad, IRC nick Slagvi. As for now I've developed few apps (mainly with
Qt), but couldn't find a nice way to get into open source development
(although I use it all the time). And here appears GSoC. I chose Inkscape
because I often see many cool, free projects, which have even better
functionality than commercial ones but for some reason they aren't
as popular. I think that it's caused by less friendly, simple interface.
I'm attending an Inkscape Internet course on my university and find it
really nice and interesting project, which in many places can be improved.
Later on I saw, that there's a very strong, active community what I find
very important.
I chose to implement an old New From Template idea, as it looks like
something improving reception of inkscape (especially for the new and very
advanced users). It is also a well documented and described idea, so I
believe that not only I find it important. Of course I already did required
two patches, trying to choose these related with the subject. I already
have some ideas/plans how to implement this idea but first I want to know
if there aren't any more suggestions from the other developers.
And here are the the questions for you guys:
1. Is it still as important idea as I think? Maybe there is something more
urgent what you can suggest to me?
2. As the ideas blueprint suggests (
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/new-from-3.
template-dialog) there has been some work done about this idea but I cannot
find anything about what has been done and where it is.
3. Is there any support for the procedural templates written? That's
another mentioned functionality I cannot find. Is it so important? Without
very deep research in this direction I think It can require a lot of work
to do it from the beginning. Maybe even to much as for the GSoC, as there
are also other things to be done during this period.
As for now, I'm thinking about focusing on making a simple dialog, which
covers current functionality + searching by tags + categorizing templates
(things from wiki
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/NewFromTemplateSpec). As there will
be a nice "New From Template" dialog, maybe I should also add one for
creating templates? It shouldn't be very difficult, just another type of
save dialog, with some additional template-specific fields and adding them
into svg file.
10 years
GSoC 2013: Depixelizing Pixel Art
by Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira
Hi Inkscape Developers,
I'm Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira and I'm majoring in computer science at
Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Brazil. I'm not very skilled, but I use
(and like) the Inkscape software for some time (
http://vinipsmaker.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/ ). I have experience
with GUI programming and C/C++/Python/..., so I think I can develop to
Inkscape. I'll try to fix some "easy-fix" tagged bugs next week.
I thought about an idea for a GSoC proposal and I wanna know your opinion
about this idea. Inkscape currently use potrace for all raster-to-vector
conversions, but potrace isn't good to work with pixel-art. Some
reasearchers developed an algorithm that perform better with pixel-art:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/
My proposal would be to develop an C++ library implementing this algorithm
and:
1. Create an cli program using this library
2. Integrate the feature in Inkscape using this library
The main tasks to implement this algorithm are:
- Construct a graph
- Reshape the graph with the help of some heuristics defined in the paper
- Extract the spline curves
- Optimize the curve
- Convert the B-Splines curves to Bézier curves
The library should export the curve as B-Splines and Bézier curves. This
way, if Inkscape gain support for B-Splines curves in the future, it should
be easy to convert the filter to generate the B-Splines instead of Bézier
curves.
After finish the proposal, Inkscape should have another option to convert
raster images.
I'm already used to a lot of programming languages and programming
paradigms and programming skills won't be a problem for me. Graphs wouldn't
be a problem for me either (I have some background on data structures and
related). I would take more time to master B-Splines and Bézier curves, but
I don't think this should take more than two weeks.
If I finished this proposal fast enough, I could even add extra features
like add an option to pre-proccess the input with hqx filter before send it
to the cited algorithm.
You can see some demos of the algorithm at
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/supplementary...
and
the results are amazing.
--
Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira
https://about.me/vinipsmaker
10 years
GSoC 2013 Project Idea | Mayank Dehgal
by Mayank Dehgal
Hello! I am Mayank Dehgal, a student from IIT Bombay, India, currently a
second year undergraduate in the Computer Science department. I am
interested in working with Inkscape for GSoC. I have used Inkscape to
present the designs of 2D games and animations I have created. I have been
thinking for long about using the generated svg file for creating a 2D game
engine, or for animating certain rigid bodies. Since the svg file is an
xml file, we just store the information of different structures in the
file. I have been using Box2D ( 2D physics engine) lately, and we just
declare different bodies with their positions, gravity, density, shape, so
that the physics engine uses the information and runs the simulation. I
plan on adding various properties to the svg file through additions in the
User Interface, and then using it with Box2D to create simulations and 2D
games.
Please give me feedback and suggestions regarding this idea.
Thank you.
10 years
DBus api signals
by cabieces julien
Hi,
I have to produce a "plugin" for Inkscape. Python extension
functionnalities are not enough for what I want to do so I came to try the
DBus Api.
With this one, I can communicate from my plugin to Inkscape but not in the
other way. The only implemented signal is "ObjectMoved" but I need to know
when Inkscape modifies a node, adds an attribute or things like that.
I look after the dbus extension code and it seems that the signals that I
want are described in proposed-interface.xml and are not yet implemented.
Is there any way to achieve what I want to do? Is there further development
forecast for dbus extension? Is this possible to propose eventually patch?
Thanks for the reply
10 years
GSoC 2013: Unit Handling
by Matthew Petroff
Hello,
My name is Matthew Petroff, and I am an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins
University majoring in Physics and Computer Science. I've used Inkscape for
about six years, and have also created SVG files by hand. I've been involved
with FOSS for a few years now, namely Hugin [1] and, more recently,
FontForge [2], mainly as a builder.
For Google Summer of Code, I would like to improve unit handling in Inkscape.
It is my understanding that Inkscape's current unit handling is scattered across
the code base in various locations, and from personal experience, I know
Inkscape's unit handling could use improvement. To start, I would refactor all
of Inkscape's unit handling into one centralized location. I would then extend
this unit handling to allow for easier use of "real" units, e.g. millimeters,
both on the document wide level and for individual objects, as has already been
outlined in a blueprint [3].
Thoughts?
-Matthew Petroff
[1] http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://fontforge.org/
[3] http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/BlueprintRealUnit
10 years, 1 month
Re: [Inkscape-devel] C++ification of the SPObject tree
by Markus Engel
Hi there,
I removed those c++11 parts now and went on with c++ifying the
SPEventContexts. These were even easier to convert, I should have started
with them.
As far as I can tell, Inkscape did not get any slower and memory consumption
even decreased a bit. At least that's what
/usr/bin/time -v inkscape -z share/examples/car.svgz -e car.png
says.
Btw, I found a little mistake in the source code:
src/widgets/sp-attribute-widget.cpp:262:15: warning: use of logical '&&'
with constant operand [-Wconstant-logical-operand]
if (flags && SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG)
^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
src/widgets/sp-attribute-widget.cpp:262:15: note: use '&' for a bitwise
operation
if (flags && SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG)
^~
&
src/widgets/sp-attribute-widget.cpp:262:15: note: remove constant to silence
this warning
if (flags && SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG)
~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe one of you can correct that as I don't have write access.
Markus
10 years, 1 month
