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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

> On some 1,5-2 years or so old thread in this mailing list :) *looks at size of archive* :S > I don't think anybody else does it. Most other applications just > either separate type face/style from type family or just provide B/I > buttons. The bolder/lighter approach is more interesting, because then > you can easily cycle between multiple faces. I'd love to see how this > could be done in UI other than with two buttons (bolder/lighter) as > well, actually :) Well for me it will heavily depend on whether I actually Get the concept. Is the behaviour continuous or discrete (as in, can you set in just about any value or are you limited to a few specific ones?) Same for italics: you decide the slant of the text right? Can you specify just about any value? I remember a person who proposed this handy pop-up slider where you can click and drag left and right pretty easily. If the above behaviour allows you to take just about any value, then I Could see a "bold" drop-down horizontal slider where as you slide around the font becomes bolder. If there are a finite number of values possible, then you could constrain the values of the slider. Same with italics. How does Inkscape actually handle all that though? By distorting the fonts to hell? (something I don't really have a problem with, as long as it doesn't cause the memory usage to go to hell because handling of long text always seems to eat up my memory like no tomorrow right now?) Speaking of that person's handy slider thing, I don't suppose anybody is going to implement it anytime soon? (a pity, because it's real handy. One-click value adjustment. Somebody should really make that widget)

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UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

Well, work on the vector brush interface is just about done, so I've tackled another thing I'd like to have (though it's not as significant): proper flowing of text into shapes (chart items in particular). At first I thought about making dedicated chart shapes, which have an automatic text box at the centre (or defined alignment position). Then I thought about adding the functionality to existing shapes. Though it still doesn't address the question of non-predefined shapes. So, the simplest way in the end is to add the functionality to the text toolbar, so that it can be applied to any shape. http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/1162/textinterfacelk4.png Note the grid by the way. Whoever thought of it first (not me, but I don't remember who. It was proposed for some other Inkscape feature though) is genius. You can align the text to: - top-left - top-center - top-right - middle-left - (you get the idea) Why this proposal? - because the align grid eliminates the need for calling up the bulky align dialogue all the time when doing chart items. The current flow functionality always starts at the top-left corner, unless I'm missing something. - because the padding means you can use the actual shape as border, instead of having to manually make a smaller version and stuffing the text into it. I suppose this would address the following wishlist items: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171105 https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171602

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Knotholder C++ification
by Maximilian Albert 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

Bob Jamison schrieb: ==> Hi. I'm getting link errors, like this one: build\libinkscape.a(knotholder.o):knotholder.cpp:(.text+0xbd3): undefined reference to `vtable for KnotHolderEntity' Was a .cpp file maybe missed in the commit? <== Dammit, yes. That's because I had applied a patch from my local git repo and forgot to do "svn add" despite me reminding myself a thousand times before. *grmpf* Thanks for reporting this. It should work now. Very sorry for having broken the build. Max

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

> but as an aside, the whole typeface generation engine is still very > much in development, and i'd venture to say that a stable/usable > version will not be out before August. I have been working on an > Inkscape plugin for testing it, so maybe that would be a better way to > introduce this type design interface into Inkscape - then we can talk ;) I can't help with that unfortunately, I have no idea what you'd be trying to achieve UI-wise. On the bright side, I've thought up a possible interface for the toolbar. However, I'd suggest the option to revert to "simple" mode for those who aren't used to it. The fontface choices would basically be done in a drop-down: http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/7818/textstylesmk2.png (rough drawing for now, I'll do the nicer looking version later) Mouse-over the values will also reveal their names (bold, ultra-bold, heavy etc) Now it would still be cumbersome no matter what you do because there are just that many options. However, Mouse-over to Each field Must reveal the shortcuts, which would get the users to quickly get used to them and thus minimize their usage of the drop-down. Shortcuts: - Ctrl+I: toggle between italic modes (normal, oblique, italic) - Ctrl+B: make bolder. - Ctrl+Shift-B and Ctrl+L: make lighter. - Ctrl+E: expand. - Ctrl+Shift+E: contract If gravity is added in there, then sure. As for "weight," it'd go like this: if for a style (say, Italic), there is no font for that weight, they the implicit weight value stays the same, but Italic takes on the next closest value. The explanation to the user is that "Italic with Bold" and Italic with Ultrabold" look the same. And that's about it. A possible alternate interface is that Italic gets drop-down value boxes and Bold next to it gets a drop-down horizontal slider. The other options still get stuffed into a drop-down.

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Knotholder C++ification
by Maximilian Albert 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

Hi all, in rev. 18775 I committed some changes to C++ify the knotholder-related classes (this was made necessary by my LPE-integration work). Basically, I just rewrapped the existing functions as methods of the new classes KnotHolder, KnotHolderEntity etc. Although the changes were quite straightforward, there is a chance that some code got lost in the process, so please watch out for any regressions!! The main change to be aware of when writing new knotholder code is perhaps that each knotholder entity (which among other things encapsulates a visual on-canvas handle) should now derive from the "general" KnotHolderEntity class and override the virtual functions knot_(get|set|click) which are responsible for the actions taken when the associated handle's position is read/set or when the handle is clicked. Similarly, each item-specific knotholder class (like RectKnotHolder) now derives from the general KnotHolder class, and in its constructor the necessary KnotHolderEntities for all required handles are created. Note that a KnotHolderEntity must currently be explicitly created using the create() method (i.e., this does not happen in the constructor).[1] I'd welcome any comments because although it works well, it still seems slightly awkward to have a new class for each knotholder entity and each knotholder. Did I miss anything and is there a more elegant way to organize things or is this indeed the way to go? More on my other and yet-to-be-committed work in a separate email. Cheers, Max P.S.: Known issue: LPE PointParams are currently broken and they cannot be edited on-canvas. I hope to get this fixed very soon and then the cumbersome edit-on-vanas button will disappear, too. :) [1] I know that there used to be a good reason for this but it may be the case that due to some later refactoring it's not necessary any more to have it this way. In any case, I left it for now because it slightly declutters the declarations of the derived classes. Please tell me if you want it changed.

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Eraser "Polar bear in a snowstorm" fixed
by Jon A. Cruz 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

Just a quick FYI... I fixed the "polar bear in a snowstorm" problem with the eraser tool, in which it was always using the last style used and would be hard to see. The preferences are now in the UI, and the defaults should be set up nicer.

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SVG Filters optimizations
by Felipe Sanches 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

I have seen an article (in the Beautiful Code book that Google sent me as a SoC gift) about runtime code specialization/compilation using C# in order to optimize code. I was thinking about using similar things to optimize our SVG Filters code but I don't know whether this kind of thing is possible in C++. C# can run bytecode generated in runtime. How could that be achieved in C++? I also have seen an article about a library for C++ that seems to do exactly this, but the lib is non-free: TaskGraph (http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/Software/TGL/) Is there a free-software lib for this? Juca

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NEW : LPE stacking
by Steren Giannini 04 Jun '08

04 Jun '08

Hello, Our student project is now finished. Thanks to our mentor Johan, our work is now in main trunk. For us it is a real pleasure to see that. Our goals were : - LPE stacking : Check it out - LPE for groups : has already been committed - LPE envelope : we created 2 deformation effects, the first one is "Envelope", the second is "Lattice" and is based on the d2sb2d object from 2geom. They are not designed for the same use. Indeed, while the lattice offers an accurate deformation, this deformation is only determined by control points. It also allows the user to move inner control points, which can't be done with the Envelope deformation. The power of the Envelope deformation is the absolute control of the shape of the envelope. We made lots of efforts to correct bugs we found, but you may find some more. Concerning the school, our teachers told us our project is one of the best of this year. They qualified it of "excellent project" and they were very glad to see our results. I hope this will spur the students on to work on open source project. I intend to continue working on Inkscape, first by "polishing the edge" of our actual work and then by adding things I have in mind. I hope people will like and use what we did. Thanks again Johan and the inkscape community, The team : De-Cooman Aurélie Tebby Hugh Falzon Noé Bouclet Bastien Navez Victor Giannini Steren

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 03 Jun '08

03 Jun '08

> You choose font family, say, DejaVu Sans and normal face > > Since DejVu Sans also has Bold and ExtraLight faces, when you choose > "bolder", Inkscape uses Bold face, if you then choose "lighter", it > goes back to normal and then to ExtraLight face. With "italic" enabled > it will only cycle between Oblique and Bold Oblique, since there is no > ExtraLight Oblique right now. ... http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/8519/textstylesdq3.png (eww) > It's not implemented right now, because we need help from Pango > (http://www.pango.org/). And at latest Libre Graphics Meeting in May > it was discussed with Behdad from Pango team. Alright, alright, I think I get it more. It's fine for keyboard, I suggest just going with Ctrl (or Alt) and the directional keys in text mode. They don't seem to be taken in text mode. Simple right? For the top level interface though, there's the problem of what takes precedence. The drop-down can still be used, but the available values of one would depend on the available values for the other, as you've given with the example of Italics. And I Really doubt people would want to see a check box system. Ah great, I just took a look at the Pango manual. There's a whole series of bold values in there And stretch (and a few other things. What, pray tell, is "font mask gravity"? Well, fortunately, there are only 3 values of Italics: normal, oblique and italic, so that can be the starter value: once you've chosen one of those, the available bold and stretch values pop out, all of which could still be set to a slider interface. A button somewhere could show a matrix of what's available in each mode (...). Have you set a date for when you'll be discussing with the Pango people? It'd be a Lot easier to think up an interface if I actually knew what needs to be implemented. As I've said, keyboard-wise, just go with modifier key + directional arrows. Up-down for bold, right-left for stretch (hey, that's pretty intuitive!). For the rest though... > With such modular typeface engine, we could have fonts where you > can modify stuff like how bold you want your font - though > obviously only on fonts generated with the same engine. Nice concept, except people will probably be expecting a lot more than the modifiable fonts. On well. :( Anyway, I have to log off for today. One of these days I may try to look into Pango more, but that'd take some time since I really don't know much about fonts. Unless someone else knows how to deal with the issue instead? :)

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 03 Jun '08

03 Jun '08

> Just a quick note: we are to move away from Bold/Italic paradigm to > better handling of various type faces and we are likely to use > "less/more bold" paradigm. This is not set in stone yet, of course :) Oooh! :) Um, how is it supposed to look like? :P (because I have no idea what you're basing this off. XP Any bugs or examples of programs that do this, so I can include this in the interface?)

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] UI proposal for text in shapes
by Valerie 03 Jun '08

03 Jun '08

Alright, here's what I've got for now (below is the draft of what I'd put in the wiki): Text-UI-improvements Text UI with space, kerning, path and flow Summary: An improvement of the text toolbar functionalities, adding: spacing, kerning, put-on-path, flow-into-shape (with auto align and padding values) and perhaps more font styles (underline, etc.). All this is done without making the toolbar excessively long via usage of drop-downs. http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/5168/textinterface1ix1.png The interface: - (by the way, can the font size value drop-down be made slightly smaller?) - clicking on "Spacing" pops up a temporary drop-down, where you can set the line spacing and letter spacing values. Clicking anywhere else closes it. It is assumed that users would not need to modify these Too often. - the "horizontal layout" button is eliminated to save some space. - more font styles are accessible from the toolbar. However, this may take too much space, so see below for alternate toolbar. - Kerning is also accessed via a drop-down. There you can set values manually, but mouse-over will reveal the shortcuts, so users quickly learn how to manually do kerning instead of having to use the drop-down all the time. A button enables the user to remove all kerning. - the "put text on path" operation is included onto the text toolbar. To use it, you simple select both the text and the path, and click the button. Clicking again removes the operation. - the "flow text into shape" is very useful for charts and comics. However, the current operation is too limited because of the absence of padding and alignment options. More precisions below. Note that I have made heavy use of down-downs. There are two major differences between such drop-downs and popping up a whole Text dialog that makes them hopefully more pleasant to use: - they're Smaller. i.e., less cumbersome. You can access exactly the operations you need without popping up something huge in the middle of the screen. - they disappear as soon as you click elsewhere, so you quickly get them out of the way. - and yet they still allow you to quickly access some operations that are hopefully not Too frequent. Precisions on the "flow into shape" section: - I often make charts, and it is extremely cumbersome to bring up the align dialog all the time just because I want to align a text to the center of a shape. Ideally, this should be automatic. I forgot who first came up with the align grid for Inkscape, but credits goes to him! :) The align grid is as its name implies: clicking on the center aligns the text to the middle-center of the object (as is often the case for chart items and comic bubbles), the top-left option is most use for text boxes. Right- alignment would be handy for Asian layouts. See examples: http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7099/alignmentbc9.png - Also, the padding is automatic: it basically automatically creates a shape inset of that value, and flows the text into the invisible shape. This way the form can finally be used as the actual border of the frame instead of other complicated work-arounds. - Ideally, the x and y values of padding could be set independently, but it is otherwise not really a problem because in the case of comic shapes, for example, the text would be aligned to middle-center so the top and bottom borders will rarely be reached. Alternate interface: the following interface presents ideas to further reduce toolbar length: http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8550/textinterface2nb3.png - the text align options would be reduced to a single button with a horizontal drop-down. However, users would probably like to have these options at top-level. - instead of cluttering the bar with font styles, another drop- down could be used. What goes into this drop-down depends on who plans to stuff it: it can be more buttons, check boxes, even complex drop-downs like Open Office (though hopefully not That complex and not That big). This allows users to access a wide range of rare styles as they are made available. - if the x and y padding values of "border" for text flow can be modified separately, then they get grouped into a drop-down as well. Anyway, I know many of you are busy. I'll probably leave this proposal up for about a week, and in the meantime, I'm open to any additional suggestions, or I'll wait longer if anybody gives a more specific date on when they'll have time. As you can see, many of the elements have several possibilities, so there could be additional refinement there as well. :)

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RM's pencil smoothing and tolerance UI: anybody?
by Valerie 02 Jun '08

02 Jun '08

I've tried to apply this patch: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188381 As you can see, it works, even though I know nothing about patching: http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/106/tolerancecp9.png Since there is a working patch available to enable tolerance control from the toolbar, is there any reason why it hasn't been committed? (apart from the fact that tolerance control does not work from the pref window, but if you can access it from the toolbar, there is no reason to modify it from prefs anymore). This, however: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188849 Gives me errors (mostly ¡®sp_curve_unref¡¯ was not declared in this scope and similar) Unfortunately I have no experience no the matter. Is anybody else looking into the matter? Better smoothing would be so very welcome.

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Bug with preferences
by Jon A. Cruz 01 Jun '08

01 Jun '08

There's a new bug with preferences that might be the sign of a problem in XML writing. https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/236485 I won't have time to look at this until later in the afternoon. However it looks to most likely be a bug in either the PrefCombo class or our XML writer itself (given the recent changes there).

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW : LPE stacking
by Valerie 01 Jun '08

01 Jun '08

Once again, congratulations on the terrific work done with LPE stacking! I'm having a blast putting all sorts of shapes on Spiro lines (which convinces me more than ever that we should have Spiro lines as a sub-mode of Pencil and Bezier: it'd basically be an automatic Spiro line upon a bezier, minus the annoying bezier skeleton popping up all the time, yes? ;) ) Now that was a blast! http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/2219/lpesqm7.png I tried deforming a text with Envelop by the way but found a bug instead: the LPE dialogue didn't let me do effects with Text so I tried to convert it to path first. Result: Inkscape seems to crash if you select the text then the edit tool (F2). The console says: (inkscape:7044): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid cast from `SPText' to `SPLPEItem' Does the same problem occur to anybody else? I suppose I should file a bug. There is no such bug on 0.46 though, and an exported text can be deformed just fine.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW : LPE stacking
by Valerie 31 May '08

31 May '08

> Hello, > Our student project is now finished. Thanks to our mentor Johan, our > work is now in main trunk. For us it is a real pleasure to see that. > > Our goals were : > - LPE stacking : Check it out > - LPE for groups : has already been committed > - LPE envelope : we created 2 deformation effects, the first one > is "Envelope", the second is > "Lattice" and is based on the d2sb2d object from 2geom. > They are not designed for the same use. Indeed, while the lattice offers > an accurate deformation, this deformation is only determined by > control points. > It also allows the user to move inner control points, which can't be > done with the Envelope deformation. The power of the Envelope > deformation is the absolute control of the shape of the envelope. All this is excellent, excellent news! Thank you for all your contributions! I'm pretty excited, and I look forward to trying them tomorrow! How about some screenshots by the way, for a formal announcement as Inkscape news? ;) As for the praise your teacher gave you, I have no doubt it is well-deserved! Any plans in particular from now on (apart from LPE bug-fixing, that is)?

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Blueprint for "Geometric Drawing" SoC project
by Maximilian Albert 31 May '08

31 May '08

Hi all, to "officially" kick off my GSoC project I have made my initial draft available as a LP Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/tech-drawing I'd be glad if folks added their suggestions and ideas there (and/or reorganize stuff if it seems helpful) so that I can get an impression of which features are most wanted and how people imagine them to work most smoothly UI-wise. As for coding, during the last 1-2 weeks I did some experiments with LPEs in various directions. Some of these are in SVN already, but overall it was mainly to get an impression of what is already there and what still needs to be done in order to integrate LPEs more tightly into existing tools. In the next few days I'm going to write an email summarizing my thoughts and giving an overview of the first steps I'm planning to take. Max P.S.: As I'm still not subscribed to inscape-user, feel free to forward my email there.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Resource paths on win32
by Bob Jamison 31 May '08

31 May '08

Ok, This path stuff on win32 has been biting us for a long time now. :-) So I added some code to prefix.cpp to provide a macro, WIN32_DATADIR, that works similarly to BR_DATADIR, so that paths are calculated now, rather than static. So INKSCAPE_EXTENSIONDIR, for example, will always be valid, no matter what the CurrentDirectory is. In fact, we should make sure that CurrentDirectory does not affect resource loading at all. It seems to work OK. If anyone sees an Inkscape win32 build that looks like icons/menus/etc might be missing, please let me know. But I really consider this a short-term fix. If we actually jumped into the deep water, quit using strings for paths and started using URIs, then this problem might disappear forever. bob -----Original Message----- >From: Albin Sunnanbo <albin@...1900...> >Sent: May 29, 2008 12:35 PM >To: Bob Jamison <rwjj@...127...> >Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Resource paths on win32 > >Hi >I did some bugfixing with extensions a while a go. The new native win32 >file dialogs changed the current path when browsing the file tree. >I guess this might be related. > >// Albin > >Bob Jamison skrev: >> Hi, >> >> wormsxulla alerted me to a problem with the Tutorial menu items not being able to load a tutorial file. The error is something like "can't load file \share\tutorials\blah.svg". Which makes me think that Inkscape has forgotten its path some time since startup. It must have known -during- startup, else you wouldn't get your icons or translations. >> >> Has anyone done anything recently to change the path-prefixes, or CurrentDirectory of Inkscape? This was working before. >> >> >> bob >> >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft >> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. >> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ >> _______________________________________________ >> Inkscape-devel mailing list >> Inkscape-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel >> >

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Re quest: Calligraphy Tool - Union and difference button toggle
by microUgly 30 May '08

30 May '08

I actually posted this idea on the forum last year (http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=304&p=1693) and then being without a PC with Inkscape for almost 7 months meant I never got around to posting here for developers opinions. I believe that most artists, when inking a drawing, will ink a line with many strokes to accurately control the shape of the lines. The problem at the moment is that multiple strokes create multiple shapes. You can hold SHIFT so they only form one shape, but this is awkward when you're using it most of the time. So I would like to see a toggle on the Tool Control Bar that allows for union without holding SHIFT. Likewise I would also like to see a toggle that has the opposite effect and performs a difference. This toggle obviously conflicts with the new Eraser tool so I'll let you guys debate which is more intuitive or less cumbersome (I assume the erase tool will share the exact same tool controls as the calligraphy tool) This is a simple screenshot of what I'm talking about - http://www.microugly.com/images/calligraphy-union-difference.png -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Request%3A-Calligraphy-Tool---Union-and-difference-bu… Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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UI proposal for Freehand with automatic LPE (stroke effects)
by Valerie 30 May '08

30 May '08

Hey Bulia! Happy now? :) http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5248/lpeiz6.png You'll notice that I've submitted several proposals in one. I included them in one mock-up because I needed to make sure everything fits (they seem to, the current version is just about the same size as the toolbar for the selection and calligraphy tools). The 4 components (which ones to be included to be seen are): 1. The Width x base unit component. If you set your base unit to 0.2 pixels for example, you can increment the width of the stroke in increments of 0.2 pixels with just the directional keys. :D 2. I'd like to see Mode there too, because I rather like the smoothness of the freehand tool in Karbon14. Instead of Karbon14's "exactness" and "combine angle" text though, I just called it "smooth", because it's pretty intuitive, not to mention short. :\ I'm not sure if it will get added, but I'd be pretty happy if it were. For those who've missed it, the output of Karbon14: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9927/karbon14px5.png (for me, Inkscape's current output is closer to Curve with exactness of 5, not more) 3. The drop-down allows you to chose the behaviour of the line! Either a normal, simple line, LPE with presets, or LPE with clipboard items. Lots of fun, no? You can create a shape and make a true vector brush out of it! (example: you do a leaf shape, you copy it, and you start "drawing" it in various sizes everywhere on the file. Whoo-hoo! How pointless! Moving on) Anyway, the presets drop-down allows you to access dotted lines for normal lines and pre-defined shapes for LPE lines (I'm naming them calligraphy just because. If you name them Live Path Effect or Pattern Along Path, most users will probably not get it...) 4. Finally, I wouldn't have markers accessible from the top-level. Again, this depends on whether people agree or not, but I find it handy when doing charts. Very. Actually, I've just noticed that I forgot the "pattern copies" components of LPE. Aww geez. Maybe for Clipboard, there could be sub-modes that take up the place the Markers buttons would. Icons: - single instance of a small shape - single instance of a shape stretched - multiple instance of the shape along the path - multiple stretched instances of the shape along the path Not as necessary for those pre-defined calligraphy shapes though. Anyway, Bezier would get the same features as freehand, minus Mode and Smoothing.

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Toolbox management proposal (presets and tool toggle)
by bulia byak 30 May '08

30 May '08

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:11 AM, Valerie <valerie_vk@...36...> wrote: >> the user to add and remove tools from a "tool pool" onto a single >> toolbar? > > Because usually, people use specific sets of tools for specific tasks, > common groups of which can be determined: OK, then, let's ship with several predefined task-oriented toolbars and allow the user to modify any of them by adding or removing tools. I guess at this level it's basically the same as Jon Cruz and you propose, except that I don't want to add as many new tools as you do :) > So basically, you're proposing complex strokes as a sub-mode of pencil and > pen? Yes. For example, a drop-down with a list of LPEs with some preset parameters and a "last used LPE" entry, and separately from that a drop-down with profiles as in your mockup, implemented as pattern-on-path LPE (and therefore disabling the LPE chooser, until we can support more than one LPE per path). > That's workable. How do you propose to settle the UI issue of fill vs > stroke color? With LPE, the stroke Is the shape, after all (though I > suppose said shape/stroke doesn't need its own stroke). This is a relatively minor point - but Calligraphic pen works fine using the current fill color for its "strokes" and nobody complained so far :) -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Toolbox management proposal (presets and tool toggle)
by Valerie 30 May '08

30 May '08

Before I start... what can I submit as "blueprint", and what should I be submitting as "wishlist" instead? Can I use the wiki? If so, what pages am I supposed to save them as? Anyway, most of these will be submitted separately, but they're all only made feasible with a proper toolbox management. So the toolbox is getting cramped, right? At the same time, it's not really fun when many tools are grouped and you have to find each sub-component (case of the tweak tools, I can never remember the shortcuts either). So here's a possible solution, and some possibilities that'd derive from it. 1. Toolbox proposal http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/416/toolbarmanagement1ov3.png http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3712/toolbarmanagement2xb0.png Some features: - There should be a visible icon, as people won't be able to find the feature otherwise. - The icon allows you to access toolbox presets. - Managing a preset is easy, just go to "configure toolbox" and toggle on and off the visibility of any tool, just like with Gimp. - Multiple toolbars may be possible: see mock-up 1. The additional floating toolboxes would have a close button, though not the "main" one to avoid confusion (insert "Aaah! My toolbox has disappeared!" messages). - Some tools could have "grouped" and "separate" options (mock-up 2). Examples: . square, ellipse, spiral and polygon can be options of a single "shapes" button for those who don't use them often. . the individual modes of the tweak tool could be accessible separately: see mock-up. . when 3D shapes are added, they'd also have both grouped and separate options. - Since management is easy now, have some LPEs as tools too? Please? PLEASE??? 2. LPE as tools With a proper toolbox management system like the one above, LPEs can be incorporated as tools when needed. It saves one the trouble of applying one from a panel every time (it Really breaks the flow when you have a lot of lines to do, not to mention the LPE panel takes up a lot of space). This would simplify interface for many LPEs tremendously. You just select the tool, modify any necessary parameters, and draw the paths you need. As soon as you've drawn the path the effect is automatically applied. For example, Spiro lines: you draw your normal bezier, and as soon as you release the mouse it becomes a Spiro line (by the way, any chance for "native" Spiro lines as opposed to a Bezier with an LPE on it?). I actually think LPEs should eventually be separated into categories: - Spiro lines (native spiro lines? Yes please!) - Complex lines (sketch, waves, wide) - Shape generators (gears, stiches, etc.) - Guides (grids, technical, composition guides, perspective guides) - Transform (envelop deform, perspective deform) - etc. 3. LPE tool: Wide lines It's crazy, but it's nearly impossible to find a program that would let you do a nice double-edged line without either: - a tablet (+ very steady hands, which I don't have) - half a dozen operations - or forcing you to switch between panels. It's Really discouraging when you want to do several hundred hair strands. D: The wide lines LPE would be a very simple tool: a few basic shapes are saved. You draw your path. The shape automatically gets stretched onto it: http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/9302/widestrokeslpemx3.png There you go, easy-to-edit (direction wise, in any case, I'm assuming that a person doing dozens of hair strands does not care about the exact form of each) double-edged stroke drawn in a single operation with a mouse (or with bezier, whichever). Note: Developers will probably not want to set this as a tool until a proper toolbox management system is in place, which is why I proposed one myself (though I'd be more than happy if a better solution comes along). For this particular LPE tool, you'd have the following entries: - size: size of the maximum. It basically takes the saved shape and adjusts the size first, so you can modify the width of the strokes with just the directional keys. - presets: preset shapes: single edge, double edge with max at 1/2, double-edge with max at 1/4, etc. Users can add their own commonly-used shapes, but the above are among the most ridiculously common ones. - and you can adjust the size with just the directional keys! (though there could be %width options to further tweak the thin lines) If anybody knows how to automatically generate shapes likes these, that's fine too (though let's be honest, including a few files of shapes like these would take up tiny disk space anyway. They're 4 nodes each!). 4. Tool for charts: shapes with text Another feature that probably would be considered too much waste of real-estate without a proper toolbox management. I often use Inkscape to do charts. Having to call up the Align dialog each time (which really takes up a Lot of space by the way) just to place a few text into shapes, and having to realign every time the text is modified, is needlessly tedious to say the least. The auto-text shapes I'm proposing would come as Ellipse, Text, or Polygon. They're simple: place a shape, click on the center and you can start typing away. The text is always automatically aligned to center (or some other option of your choosing). They may have the following features or options: - padding of text to borders: sets a minimum distance between the text and the border. - auto-adjust size: if the text starts to fill the shape, the shape resizes automatically to fit. - the default is for the text to be centered, but there could be other alignments. - linked duplicates: a linked duplicate only conserves the shape, not the text content, so by making a duplicate, when the text in one of the boxes forces one of the items to become bigger, all the other shapes of the same type resize as well. This is for those charts that need all elements to be of approximately the same size. - adding points for connectors: this is simpler for rectangle shapes than for other shapes... you can basically specify how many connector points you want per side (example: 3). Though, ideally, there'd be an on-canvas means to mark points for each side, but I don't have UI ideas for that one... Also handy for comics. It's at least three steps fewer (changing the tool, selecting all then aligning the whole, not to mention it has to be repeated if the text is changed much) for a rather common task, which can translate into a good enough time gain and a much more pleasant work flow. Any comments before I submit? (if only to say which ones should Not be submitted as blueprints, because I'm a bit confused right now)

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Multi-thread help
by Mario Pavlovic 30 May '08

30 May '08

We are software development company which use inkscape in our graphics. I have strong experience in multi-threading environment and server side development. Prkos (you probably know her from the list and launchpad) told me that you need someone to help, I heard that you plan to refactor your code and consider to apply new multicore and parallel processing. I can offer you my expertise advice in multi-thread and parallel programming, let me know the best way to do this. Best regards, Mario

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Resource paths on win32
by Bob Jamison 29 May '08

29 May '08

Hi, wormsxulla alerted me to a problem with the Tutorial menu items not being able to load a tutorial file. The error is something like "can't load file \share\tutorials\blah.svg". Which makes me think that Inkscape has forgotten its path some time since startup. It must have known -during- startup, else you wouldn't get your icons or translations. Has anyone done anything recently to change the path-prefixes, or CurrentDirectory of Inkscape? This was working before. bob

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Proposed change of config directory
by Jon A. Cruz 28 May '08

28 May '08

In discussion today the subject of our preferences, etc came up. The initial comment was "also, i really would love to be able to store the inkscape preferences files in a given location (so, to be able to run two builds alternatively without having to save & rename the prefs files manually). profiles!" Looking into that, it seems that perhaps we should switch some of the mess that is path-prefix.h with the stock calls that now are in glib and that follow the XDG Base Directory Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/basedir-spec In fact, we should perhaps look over a few of those "Miscellaneous Utility Functions" in glib http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/stable/glib-Miscellaneous-Utility-Funct… The immediately useful function would be g_get_user_config_dir(). One main benefit of using that call is that Inkscape should then be easy to direct to different "config" directories and allow for users to pair different versions of Inkscape with different directories... or different work scenarios with different ones, etc.

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Canonical open source jobs
by Bryce Harrington 28 May '08

28 May '08

There's several positions opened at Canonical for open source developers: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/ In particular, if you've been doing Inkscape bug triaging, take a look at the Launchpad QA Engineer position. Or if you've been hacking on gtk code for Inkscape, the Ubuntu GNOME Maintainer position might be of interest. Bryce

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