September 2024 - Inkscape Devel

Layer issue
by Alexander Roalter 30 Sep '24

30 Sep '24

I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I have the following issue and I’m not sure if it is supposed to work that way: I have a document with nested layers, let’s say + Layer A | +- Layer B | +- Layer C + Layer D +- Layer E For editing purposes, only layer A and B are visible, C, D and E are hidden. If I now use the command line interface of Inkscape to export the image in various configurations, I do the following: select-all:layers; selection-hide; select-clear select-by-id:D selection-unhide select-by-id:E selection-unhide and then export as png... Through this I want to initially hide *ALL* layers and only turn on the layers I want. But apparently, select-all:layers only selects the topmost layers A and D, but does not change the settings for B, C and E. I know that nested layers were only introduced later, could it be that select-all:layers was never updated to reflect this? Or would a new option for select all (e.g. select-all:nested-layers, or select-all:layers:depth=... ) be a sensible option? My main point is: I want to be able to switch on individual layers (because I know their ID), but I want to be able to switch off *ALL* layers before doing so, without knowing all their IDs. And I don't want to store the original SVG with all layers switched off, because in editing, I usually have some of the layers switched on (latest/last configuration I’m currently working on). -- cheers, Alex

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Developer Meeting 28/09/2024
by Jonathan Neuhauser 28 Sep '24

28 Sep '24

Dear all, here are the notes from today's meeting. Dev meeting Sep 28 2024 Present: Tav, Mc, Jonathan, Martin 1.4-rc was uploaded to the website. Ravi is supposed to restart his GSoC in the upcoming week. Tav hast been working on the File dialogs. Opening: saving is working on his PC. Preview is handled by the file browser instead of ourselves. Saving is difficult, because it relies on the extension of the target file name to chose the format. There is no option to add custom fields. Tav proposes to let the export dialog decide the format to save to, and the file chooser there only decide about the filename. The settings button there can be used to set all options specific to a file format (e.g. SVG: save as plain SVG, clean up css, and so on). In general, the Import / Export system is way over-engineered. At the same time, a rework of import/export on the command line is in order. PBS's MR does the "minimum in order to get it to work", but doesn't address the proposed architectural / UX changes, so it goes into a different direction. Jonathan has worked on the Extensions system. The final target is to completely separate out python dependencies - nothing is installed by default, and extensions authors needs so specify their dependencies same as in any ordinary Python package. This makes extensions more backwards-compatible with older Inkscape versions, and allow authors to request any dependency they want. For now, the first step was splitting out inkex into a new repository (svgpie) and setting up a new pipeline and build system there. Martin is compiling Inkscape master on the new Pop!OS, seems to work. Marc has worked on the translations system, trying to simplify the workflow for translators. Some discussion related to pre-release checklists. Need to unify them - there is one written by Nathan, one written by Vectors, and one on the Wiki. After the end of the meeting, Martin and Marc worked on this Martin has received a few more responses on the Developer Survey (24 in total). Almost everyone identified as a programmer. Half of them were active in 2024, almost all of them work on Debian or Fedora/Arch. Build instructions are found, but they only work for 1/3. The vast majority of contributors are motivated by public service and personal learning. Issues raised: - developer documentation is all over the place - Python extensions need more how-to's - Windows should use the native toolchain (msvc) - Merge request take too long to approve / merge. - Code base is well-organized, but is a lot to understand. Detailed results follow on the mailing list. Martin proposes to move all developer documentation from website & wiki into the repository, to get more contributions to it and make it more organized. The website still needs to provide the required information to get started with contributing, e.g. how to check out the repository and linking to the compile instructions (then a md file in the repo). There is general agreement with this idea. We discussed (lack of) Windows developers. Consensus is we need to invest into the infrastructure - building using Windows-native tools, giving Windows dev the experience they are used to, and updating the documentation. Maybe conduct developer experience interviews? This would be target developer experience, not CI. Martin wants to talk to René first. Marc will update the install_dependencies script to not break if libspelling is not found. Best regards Jonathan

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Weird PDF export issue (page size)
by Alexander Roalter 26 Sep '24

26 Sep '24

Hi, lately, I came upon this weird beavior when exporting to PDF: I have to base documents of size A4, the only difference is that the 2nd document has a page definition. If I open the 1st document (empty.svg, without the page definition), and export it as PDF, I get a PDF of size A4. Uncmpressing the PDF with pdftk shows a mediabox of size [0 0 595.275591 841.889764] (divide 595.275591 by 72 and multiply by 25.4, we get 210mm, as expected) If I now open the 2nd document (page.svg, with the page definition), and export it with exactly the same settings, I get a PDF which is slightly larger. In the Acrobat reader, it shows up as 210.3×297.0 mm, and looking at the uncompressed PDF the mediabox now has a size of [0 0 596 842], i.e. rounded up to the next integer. (596 / 72 * 2.54 = 210.25555mm) The PDF export options about rounding do not have any effect. This is with Inkscape 1.3.2, I checked back with yesterday’s devel snapshot: now the empty.svg is also exported oversized (rounded up), the mediabox is now always rounded up to the next integer. -- cheers, Alex

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Developer meeting 20th Sep 2024
by Martin Owens 20 Sep '24

20 Sep '24

Dear inkscape developers, Our meeting this week is as follows. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Martin, Marc, René, Jonathan Next date: September 28th Martin wanted to try populating a "Roadmap" which documents in the meeting what the developer team as a whole is doing. This is an effort that KDE uses to encourage contributors and gives them a way to know what's important to the whole project, even if people can work on anything they like to. The way this would work is to have a graphic in the meeting with he roadmap and some space to draw. Jonathan thinks this kind of thing can go on our website too, with the idea that we can frame it as a direction of travel for the whole project and what we'd like to be able to do in the future. Release for 1.4 release candidate. Marc, Martin and Rene talked about the issues still outstanding and what kind of risk we would be taking. Everyone present was happy enough with the quality of the beta3 to continue with the rc schedule: Wednesday September 25th for the RC, this is the last day for any extensions patches. October 7th is the last day for translations, and October 9th is the scheduled date for release. Rene and Marc talked about a window packaging bug which adds windows CRLF end lines to all text files in the repository, this should be fixed so the release no longer shows up as a custom version. Martin wanted to embody the user's needs by saying that having a custom string in the version shouldn't block or delay the release. Marc has a patch for 1.4.x which solves the problem with gitattributes, although this doesn't cover all future cases so René we continue researching the problem. Marc has made a new process for submitting translations and it's currently in testing. And this is how it works: For each Release, we create a single merge request in gitlab targeting that branch. For example 1.4.x. This merge request is the URL we send to translators, who can then submit their translations to the merge request by creating a new comment with the po file attached. Marc has made a system which consumes the comments, adds them as a new commit to the merge request with a credit to the author and then submits a reply comment with the total statistics so users can see if they have submitted correctly. When ready, the translations will be merged into the branch. This can be done multiple times, so we can progressively add translations for betas and release candidates as we move alone the process. The 1.4.x and master branches will be tested and the translation team will be brought in to make sure everything is set up and working correctly and the new system works as a contributor experience. Marc will ask Maren to compile a message for the translations team at the weekend when this live test will be ready to deploy. Jonathan Sent an email to the SFC on the hiring team for the Adobe Illustrator file format and is waiting to hear back. Marc and Jonathan talk about Hactoberfest, it's a way to get first time contributors into open source development; if they contribute a certain number of commits then they get a t-shirt. Except this year, there's no more t-shirts. They have decent ways of dealing with spam so we can add the tag. Marc already added the tag and we part of the program now. spam and accepted tags allow us to tag things positively and negatively. All contributions are welcome, not just code. Because they've ran out of t-shirts we should fund our own. We need to order some t-shits so that we can have them for this event, but also for other things. Martin will make some generic t-shirts and ask for reimbursement if the project decides to fund them, he says that he can use them for his own supporters and projects if not so there's no risk either way. Martin talked about the color stuff and including capypdf into inkscape directly with the C++, Marc recommended including the library as a submodule and gave instructions for how to do this using mason. The gtkmm4 build is an instructive example. Martin explored the developer survey results so far; 21 people responded, the survey will be kept open another week for any stranglers to add their thoughts to it. We'll document the final results after that. Thanks to everyone who came to today's meeting.

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Inkscape Developer Survey 2024
by Martin Owens 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Dear Developers, Would you please fill out this quick survey about your experiences with Inkscape this year as a programmer? We're trying to gage how easy it is to contribute and people's thoughts on how we can improve retention and onboarding: https://forms.gle/T2P5m2vGcGdMGj9FA Thanks everyone. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Inkscape is hiring: Python developer (internal position)
by Jonathan Neuhauser 09 Sep '24

09 Sep '24

Hi all, As discussed in the recent developer meetings, the Inkscape project is hiring a contractor to finish the AI import. For details, look at the proposal: https://lists.inkscape.org/hyperkitty/list/inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.or… Please submit your applications to jobs(a)lists.inkscape.org **until Sunday, Sept. 15, 23:59 UTC** if you are interested. In the email, make it clear how you fulfil the requirements, and give your motivations for applying. The hiring team will respond to serious applications after the end of the application period. Best regards Jonathan

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Developer Meeting, Sept 4th 2024
by Martin Owens 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

Hey everyone, Time for our regular developer meeting notes. Event: https://inkscape.org/cals/event/1/ Attending: Martin, Eledil, Jonathan, Marc, Mikekov, Tav, Ishaan, René Next Meeting: September 12th, (but there is also a PLC meeting on Friday) Beta3 is not perfect because it produces a custom string in the version string which needs to be cleaned up. Marc's certificate expired and needs to renew it. We don't have an official certificate, there is a way around that if we used Azure as a CI builder. We are releasing beta3 today, we had it on draft by accident and have now got it out the door for windows testing specifically. There is an outstanding vote, for hiring a contractor to finish the ai extension. Please make sure you get your votes in for today. Jonathan and Martin talked about the color extensions refactoring branch that is ready for review. Martin will proceed to work on the pdf out extension to add all that color support that now exists. They talk a bit about extensions progress bars and how to get pdf and other things. Jonathan is worried about the speed with a large text file. And how to treat text. Mikekov, has continued work on the object dialog and working on styles. There are a bunch of issues to do with signals and propagation and Martin suggests using signal keys to identify where an update modifier signal has come from. We will discuss this issue further in the chat room. Tav has been working on an Importance Critical bug; when you right click on a spin button it would pop up a menu, that was not the case in 1.4. The menus were mostly used for when the toolbar got too small and there was a menu for each thing that fell of the bar. During the refactoring this feature got removed as not being important. He has a merge request to put them back. An empty call will generate a few useful values even if it's empty. Martin will review. Elendil, if you have an svg file with a css file. The CSS dialog is currently parsing the CSS itself manually and could do with refactoring. The patch code with a comment explaining it should be ok for now as it retains more functionality than retaining the comments would. René is continuing his work on the cross-compiling and Martin's MR to improve that capability. And will help with the version thing. Ishaan will be giving a workshop on Inkscape at a FOSS conference, Bangalore, India. Mikekov; some of our tools are very special. The sp-desktop-style setting and getting is quite broken right now. There's a lot of issues with how these styles are processed before dialogs get access to them. Tav and Martin talk about text object selection with tspans. Ishaan asked about tablet code in master, it had to be removed and now had to be reimplemented. We may need to just review it and make sure we are using the new APIs as intended and that those features are available to windows and macOS users. See you all next time. Best Regards, Martin Owens

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Crashe with pencil tool
by micric * 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

Hello, I just tried the same manipulation but on another PC, and the problem does not occur. So the problem I'm having comes from my PC... Thank you for your help. Sincerely, Michel De : W. Robert J. Funnell, Prof. <robert.funnell(a)mcgill.ca> Envoyé : dimanche 1 septembre 2024 20:48 À : inkscape-devel(a)lists.inkscape.org <inkscape-devel(a)lists.inkscape.org> Cc : micric * <micric(a)hotmail.fr> Objet : Re: Bogue version V.1.3.2 I don't know why Inkscape crashes when you open a new document and use the Pencil tool. It works for me. Does it crash as soon as you select the tool, or only when you start using it? Are you able to open and modify an existing document? I'm using Windows 11 Home 23H2, with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz and 16 GB. - Robert Bonjour, Je constate un plantage du logiciel lorsque je suis les étapes suivantes : * lancement d'Inkscape V.1.3.2 * ouverture d'un nouveau document * utilisation de l'outil crayon A cette étape le logiciel plante systématiquement. Ce problème n'apparaissait pas avant la dernière mise à jour. Merci de me préciser si une solution existe. Voici les spécifications de mon PC : [cid:9b45fd0b-ac73-42c8-bc9c-e03709e6f50c]

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Bogue version V.1.3.2
by micric * 01 Sep '24

01 Sep '24

Bonjour, Je constate un plantage du logiciel lorsque je suis les étapes suivantes : * lancement d'Inkscape V.1.3.2 * ouverture d'un nouveau document * utilisation de l'outil crayon A cette étape le logiciel plante systématiquement. Ce problème n'apparaissait pas avant la dernière mise à jour. Merci de me préciser si une solution existe. Voici les spécifications de mon PC : [cid:bf9f6c11-91d4-4066-b8f6-a64c4ff2bf0b]

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