April 2015 - Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

RFC: Switch to Google Test framework
by Bryce Harrington 24 May '15

24 May '15

Hi all, At the hackfest today we discussed the Boost test suite vs. the Google test suite. Both options are very good and better than cxxtest that we use currently, and should be straightforward to move to. We tentatively decided on Google test. 2geom uses it, so many of us already have familiarity with it, and it will keep the two projects consistent. Boost's commands have prefixes which makes for a bit more typing, whereas Google test's are more brief. KK liked Google test's handling of templates better too. Does anyone have a strong differing option? We're hoping to have the decision finalized by the end of the week. Bryce

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New LPE Transform by two nodes-knots-
by Jabiertxo Arraiza Cenoz 24 May '15

24 May '15

Hi to all. Here are a video with my last LPE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLmYdWoXXIw Its based in a feature pointed by Ivan Louette. Here the branch to review: https://code.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/transform_by_two_points Best regards, Jabier.

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Do geometric contructions tool / general Inkscape UX discussions
by Ryan Lerch 18 May '15

18 May '15

HI all, I just noticed the new "Do Geometric constructions" tool in the inkscape trunk, and this got me thinking a few things about this new tool (and inkscape usability and UX in general). First up, this tool provides (among other things) two new ways to create a circle: "a circle by three points", and a "circle by center and radius". These are pretty neat additions, but my first question when I saw this was why is this in a completely separate tool, not as a sub-tool of the circle tool. I understand these are implemented as LPEs, but from a user point of view, if you want to create a circle, wouldn't you expect these options in the circle tool? If they were in the circle tool, there might even be the option to create a circle with the traditional mode of the circle tool, then fine-tune it with one of the other two "editing" modes, rather than it appear to the user to be three completely separate object types that can't be converted back and forth. Something similar is also in play with the (present in 0.91 "shape" option of the pen tool) the "shape" option only works when creating a new line with the pen tool, while other tools (such as the star/polygon tool) allow changes in the tools control bar to impact the currently selected object. I know this is kind of out of the blue, but i have been thinking a lot lately about some of the inconsistencies like this in the inkscape interface, and would love to try to help contribute to fixes / be involved with helping with the usability of new tools we create. Has there ever been anyone involved with doing usablity reviews / testing of this sort? (doctormon, i know you did some last year :) ) I know of plenty of UX people that use Inkscape that would probably be keen in contributing in this area. cheers, ryanlerch

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non-Unicode symbol fonts do not work on Windows. Bug 165665. Do we need the flag USE_PANGO_WIN32 ?
by Alvin Penner 09 May '15

09 May '15

ref : https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/165665 I believe this bug can be fixed by disabling the flag USE_PANGO_WIN32 in line 19 of src/libnrtype/FontFactory.h. When I do this on Windows XP, I gain about 35 new fonts. Not all of these new fonts are useable, but the most interesting ones, such as CommercialPi, Symbol, Technic, Webdings, Wingdings, MonoType Sorts, TechnicLite are working well, both in Inkscape and in IE9. This is a Windows-specific bug which hides symbol fonts, and does not occur in Gimp 2.6 on Win XP. As far as I can tell, the Gimp source code does not contain any analogue or equivalent of the flag USE_PANGO_WIN32. Would there be any objection if I disable this flag, or does it serve a specific purpose that is essential? tia - Alvin Penner -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/non-Unicode-symbol-fonts-do-not-work-on-Windows.-Bug-… Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Inkscape_trunk_scan-build - Build # 72 - Unstable!
by Jenkins (build tester) 07 May '15

07 May '15

Hi developers, Clang scanbuild found a potential bug in recently committed code. Inkscape_trunk_scan-build - Build # 72 - Unstable. See here which bugs were found (new in red): http://jenkins.inkscape.org/job/Inkscape_trunk_scan-build/72/clangScanBuild… It is paramount to keep our codebase clean with as little compiler warnings as possible, so we can swiftly eradicate newly introduced bugs, to keep Inkscape stable and prevent lengthy dragging bug hunts before releases. Your friend, Jenkins http://jenkins.inkscape.org

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Hackfest build-systems discussion
by Alex Valavanis 03 May '15

03 May '15

Summary: We propose making CMake our recommended build system for Inkscape 0.92 onwards and removing our Autotools support in 0.93. We will also consider moving to Waf in future if it seems beneficial. Any comments are warmly welcomed, particularly from Windows and OS X users. ---- Hi All, At the Hackfest, we have discussed some options for improving our build systems and would like to invite your comments. == Present situation == At the moment, we provide both Autotools (autoconf, automake etc) and CMake, but our main focus has been on Autotools. This is causing a significant maintenance challenge for the following reasons: 1. The syntax of the Autotools configuration files is rather complex and uses a mixture of the M4 Macro processing language, and bash scripting which is hard to understand/edit/debug 2. Numerous configuration files are needed to support both build systems. This adds a significant maintenance burden whenever e.g., files are added/removed or package version numbers change 3. The Autotools configuration is pretty slow, and parallelisation overheads are quite high 4. The CMake builds tend to be fairly neglected, and are not very actively maintained. == Proposal == We would like to focus on a single build system. CMake is more widely understood than Autotools and it should be easier for more people to manage our conditional build configuration. As a first step, we could focus on improving the CMake build and recommending this as our default option for the next Inkscape release (0.92). We could then remove our Autotools build system entirely from Inkscape 0.93 onwards. Another potential option for future releases is the Waf system, which offers very good wildcard handling and potentially even simpler build configuration. However, I think it would make sense to stabilise our existing CMake build before we start moving to anything new == Portability == We need to determine whether the CMake builds work well on OS X and Windows systems. Any comments from users of those systems would be greatly appreciated. Best wishes, Alex

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Next hackfest
by Krzysztof Kosiński 01 May '15

01 May '15

There were already some noises made at the hackfest about the next one, so I made a wiki page to record the very early planning / proposals: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Hackfest2016 The possible locations mentioned at this year's hackfest were London, Leeds and Warsaw. I added some information about London and Warsaw. I never visited Leeds, but Alex should be able to provide further information. Regards, Krzysztof

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [RFC] Plan for 0.92
by TimeWaster 30 Apr '15

30 Apr '15

sorry bryce, this was meant for the mailing list. i really dont get why the standard reply address isn't the mailing list... ok, i need a wiki account, thank you in advance... regards, TimeWaster On 28.4.2015 15:35, Bryce Harrington wrote: > Heya, ok just post a request on the mailing list and one of the admins > will take care of adding you asap. > > Bryce > > On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 11:15:30AM +0200, TimeWaster wrote: >> hi, >> >> i need a wiki account to add my stuff in the release notes. >> >> >> regards, >> TimeWaster >> >> >> On 28.4.2015 06:40, Bryce Harrington wrote: >> >Hi all, >> > >> >Last release we discussed switching to a more rapid release cycle >> >starting with 0.92. So here's a proposal for a plan to do this. >> > >> >Even though it's been a short time since our last release, already >> >we've >> >accumulated a number of features, thanks in large part to Jabier's many >> >LPE's: >> > >> > http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92 >> > >> >Please make sure any other added features are included in the release >> >notes soon. >> > >> >I'd like to propose the following release plan, which is based on the >> >0.91 plan, but simplified and with more focus on changes to packaging, >> >no bug hunt, and no experimental branch. We simplify to a single >> >Freeze >> >phase. We cut a pre0 release before starting the build system hacking, >> >so testers will have something to test. We move the about screen >> >contest up so it can get done sooner, and so that we can string freeze >> >earlier to give translators time. This should drop a number of >> >the more >> >time consuming bits yet keep the important steps in the checklist. >> > >> >Please let me know what you think, and esp. if you see some areas that >> >need tweaking. >> > >> >Bryce >> > >> > >> ># Period Tasks >> >-------------------------- >> >1. Open development. >> > Post inkscape-0.92-pre0.tar.gz (w/ old build sys) >> > Start an About Screen contest >> > Decide new unit testing system >> > Decide new build system >> > Implement new build system >> > Integrate new swatch dialog >> > Begin switching packaging to use new build system >> > Begin tracking % translated >> > Migrate mailing lists off sourceforge >> > (Other bits off roadmap...) >> > >> >2. Chill. Development focuses on wrapping up >> > Disable features that aren't finished >> > Identify 'make distcheck' issues >> > Identify remaining writing needed for Release >> >Notes. >> > Identify any release blocker bugs >> > Recruit Release Wardens for Hard Freeze >> > >> >3. Frost. Only production-ready code committed to Mainline >> > Finalize any major changes to platform packaging >> > Inkscape must pass 'make distcheck' >> > Ensure packaging for all platforms installs >> > Ensure packaging for all platforms uninstalls >> > Finalize tutorials to be shipped with release >> > Finalize other docs included in the release >> > Finalize about screen >> > Finalize Release Notes except Known Issues >> > Post additional inkscape-0.92-pre*.tar.gz releases >> > Packagers test creating pkgs of the -pre* releases >> > Post % translated per language for each release >> > >> >4. Freeze. Stable Branch is forked from Mainline >> > Regular development resumes on Mainline. >> > Only Release Wardens can commit to Stable Branch >> > Cherrypick bug fixes from Mainline to Stable >> > Complete any late work under advisement of Wardens >> > Focus on release-critical bug fixing. >> > String Freeze No further string changes allowed on Stable >> >Branch. >> > Translators work on translations. >> > Finalize all extensions >> > Finalize codebase translations >> > Finalize Known Issues section of Release Notes >> > Finalize packaging scripts >> > Post additional inkscape-0.92-pre*.tar.gz releases >> > Post % translated per language for each release >> > >> >5. Release. Post inkscape-0.92.tar.gz >> > Post packages >> > Post official announcements >> > Plan 0.92.1+ release(s), if needed >> > >> >6. Open development. >> > >> > >> > >> >As far as timing goes, I'm thinking we give a few weeks to open >> >development (step 1), and then a week each for all the subsequent >> >steps. This would see 0.92 released in a June/July timeframe. >> > >> > >> >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >One dashboard for servers and applications across >> >Physical-Virtual-Cloud >> >Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications >> >Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable >> >Insights >> >Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. >> >http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y >> >_______________________________________________ >> >Inkscape-devel mailing list >> >Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel

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Accessibility Brainstorm for Hackfest // wiki access
by Amelia Bellamy-Royds 29 Apr '15

29 Apr '15

Hello all, I've arranged to hold a discussion with the Inkscape Hackfest team in Toronto this week about accessibility issues and SVG in general or Inkscape in particular. There are really two sides of accessibility when it comes to software like Inkscape: - making the software itself more accessible (e.g., can it be easier to navigate, or to change the UI styling to create high contrast or larger fonts/icons) - making it easier for Inkscape users to make accessible SVG (e.g., encouraging the inclusion of alt text, language attributes, ARIA attributes for interactive components, logical groupings/ordering of all objects and text) I was going to add some more notes to the agenda page for the Hackfest, but discovered the wiki is locked down against spammers. So, a quick request to those who hold the keys to the wiki to send me a log-in invite. For anyone else, if you have any thoughts on what is or isn't good or bad about accessibility issues and Inkscape, consider this a brainstorm email thread. I'll then try to compile the ideas from here and from the in-person discussion into a focused wiki page. Hopefully we can come up with a list of To-Dos, at least some of which might be classified as low-hanging fruit that can easily be picked. Best, Amelia Bellamy-Royds

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[RFC] Inkscape Roadmap
by Bryce Harrington 29 Apr '15

29 Apr '15

Thanks Krzysztof, Martin, and Alex for providing feedback on the roadmap sketch I posted earlier. I've fleshed out the following roadmap draft using this feedback, and extended it for another 5 releases. This assumes roughly 3 months per release. http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap If anything, I think I've squeezed too much; I'd been hoping to have no more than maybe 3 major items per release. If you see items that could be put off or that would be too difficult to achieve in the near term, let me know so we can bump them down the list. Particularly for 0.92 and 0.93. Even after squeezing all that stuff in, I've found quite a laundry list of feature requests left. If there are features that you think *must* go in pre-1.0, and you're planning on working on them yourself, please let me know and I'll shuffle things around to ensure it fits. Beyond that... any and all feedback is welcomed! Come throw some darts! Bryce

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