- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

key bindings and documentation
by Nathan Hurst 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

Would someone with two artistic neurons to rub together put together an SVG of a keyboard key with a place to put the letter symbol and some control, shift etc keys? This would make bulia's keybindings page look very professional! just a thought, njh

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key graphics
by Jonathan Phillips 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

I'm creating the key graphics. I'm sending this so that work is not duplicated. thx, jon -- Jon Phillips UCSD Graduate Researcher Computational Media PO BOX 948667 La Jolla, Ca 92037 858.361.2811 www.protofunk.org jon@...15...

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drag tolerance
by bulia byak 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

To complement teh cursor tolerance that affects grabbing, I added another option, drag tolerance. Currently it only affects mouse drags in selector. Any mouse drag which is smaller than the tolerance (in screen pixels) is ignored and is interpreted as a click. To me, this makes it much easier to select objects with mouse and especially tablet, as well as switching handles from scale to rotation, by eliminating the small accidental object drags that are very annoying. The default value for this option is 4 pixels. Please test the latest CVS and report if you like the change, and if so, what value is the best for you. There's no UI for changing the value yet but you can edit it in preferences.xml: <group id="dragtolerance" value="4.0"/> and then restart Inkscape. By the way I also wrote most of the HandlingPreferences tutorial on Wiki. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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0.36 release notes
by bulia byak 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

I started a ReleaseNotes document on Wiki. Let's use it to describe all our achievments and failings in this version in a way accessible both to an average non-technical user and to a potential contributor who hasn't followed our discussions and wants to get a scoop quickly. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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0.36 release soon?
by Bryce Harrington 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

Hi all, Looking at the planned tasks for this release it seems we're quite close. Plus, a lot of work has been done, so I think the codebase is getting ripe for a release within a week or two. For those working on things to go into 0.36, could you reply and let us know your status? Thanks, Bryce

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bonobo
by Robert Crosbie 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

Are the inkscape bonobo libraties being used? They don't seem to get compiled. Rob. http://members.rogers.com/rcrosbie _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.ms…

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nudge distance, cursor tolerance
by bulia byak 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

1. Nudge distance is now stored in preferences. Default is 1 mm, let me know if you think this value needs to be changed. This affects arrows and shift-arrows in selector and node edit. No GUI to change that value yet, but you can edit your preferences.xml to test. 2. Cursor tolerance (from display options) is now stored in preferences too. I changed default from 1.0 to 2.0, but perhaps it should be made even bigger. This affects how close you need to be to an object to grab it; bigger values make the tools much more usable, especially with a tablet. Please test and report what value works best for you (I like it at 8.0), then we'll take the average and make it the default :) -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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SF out of disk space
by Bryce Harrington 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

bash-2.05b$ df -h . Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on pr-fs-groups-i:/home/groups/i 54G 51G 0 100% /home/groups/i I noticed this because I was updating the DevelopmentRoadmap and got a "Bad page version" error. Also it deleted the DevelopmentRoadmap and its change history. There's a backup version but I'm unsure how old it is. Bryce

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new keys in node editor
by bulia byak 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

Please test! New keys in node editor: * esc deselects and cancels rubberband and node dragging * ctrl-a selects all nodes * tab and shift-tab cycle through nodes of the current shape All these keys work across all subpaths of a shape. Note that I had to change the lists of nodes, subpaths, and selected nodes from single-linked to double-linked. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [Sodipodi-list] Comments and questions from a newbie (fwd)
by Bryce Harrington 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:02:39 -0500 (EST) From: Radical <radicalgfx@...78...> To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...1...> Subject: Re: [Sodipodi-list] Comments and questions from a newbie > On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Radical wrote: > > that available. It doesn't seem to save the setting though. > > I passed word along to Mental (the developer of the feature); he's going > to poke around at it. He asked what you mean by save the setting? I meant that the inkscape:groupmode attribute didn't seem to get saved in the SVG file. So in my case where I have have a lot of groups I have to go back and set that parameter on each one every time I load the drawing. R

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Call for help: Doxygen headers
by Ted Gould 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

Hey, I was working on the Actions/Verbs stuff for the modules and learning about the implementation in Inkscape. So, as I was doing this I was writing documentation in the Doxygen format for the functions where I figured out what they do. This made me think: wow, this would be a good way for someone to help out who wants to get more familiar with the code base. No seriously, you don't have to learn how absolutely everything works to write some good descriptions of functions. Probably starting in one of the subdirectories would be best (most of the time these aren't heavily dependent on things outside of them) and writing the Doxygen headers. Doxygen is pretty easy. You can do all kinds of fancy stuff with it, but I'd just like to see descriptions of the functions and the parameters - which doesn't take that much knowledge of Doxygen either. I don't know if anyone is interested, but I'd love to see patches with this info in them. --Ted

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bug transfer from sodi to Inkscape
by Jonathan Phillips 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

Hello, I've decided to go through Sodi's patch tracker and transfer what is buggy in Inkscape to Inkscape's cvs bug tracker. I'm trying to find some way to help and this seems like a good way. Could I get an update on progress of this? I see on the wiki that ted and bryce are listed as taking on this task. Otherwise, I'm going to start translating the bugs over to inkscape. thx Jon -- Jon Phillips UCSD Graduate Researcher Computational Media PO BOX 948667 La Jolla, Ca 92037 858.361.2811 www.protofunk.org jon@...15...

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The End of the Illustrator Thread
by T Ingham 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

All, As both a professional designer and my previous work in the print industry ( not publishing, but actual printing ) I can tell you without a doubt that Adobe Illustrator is the de facto standard for production of any kind of high-resolution, device independent output. There isn't a print shop or pre-flight house in the usa that doesn't have at least one license for Illustrator. There are reasons that Illustrator is so popular that have nothing to do with quality, more to the point in fact it's just really old. With this, the reasons that Illustrator is popular, we need to focus on why it is that this fork started. Our goal is to open this application up to a wider user-base yes? If that's the case then I should think it would be in our best interests to attempt to provide some sort of mechanism for allowing users the ability to customize their own shortcuts. This sort of system would take the form of what Macromedia did when they released Freehand 7. In the preferences for that application, there was a simple checkbox "Emulate Illustrator Shortcuts". Whence checked, the application behaved nearly identically to Illustrator. While some have said that providing for a customization scheme for Inkscape, for some commands would prove difficult, I plead with you to find a way to make it happen. Issues in regards to the tools available in this application will mean nothing if people have to learn an entirely new set of commands to make it perform the way their used to. They won't, they'll walk. It's the subversion game, and we're playing with all balls. -Thomas

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bugs
by bulia byak 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

1. I fixed 842565 long ago; can anyone please test and if ok, close the bug? 2. I'd like to nominate the new 848355 as critical for 0.36. Along with the other undo bugs it's very annoying. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Mental: Toolbar changes
by T Ingham 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

Mental, First off, I freaking LOVE YOU!!! The convenience of having those toolbars contextually show / hide is fantastic. However there is one minor inconsistency that needs attention. When you select a tool which has no sub-toolkit, could you have the "Select" subtoolkit display, but be disabled. This would prevent the panel from resizing, and throwing the document all over the place. Alternatively, we could adjust the current location of the artboard within the canvas window, by and inverse amount to the growth / shrinkage of the panel ( but that seems entirely more complicated and no more beneficial ) Spatiality Rules! -t

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Don't Panic, or "New UI code getting merged in"
by Bryce Harrington 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

For those of you who have not been following Mental's work, be aware that he's going to be merging it in soon - probably this evening. The new SDI-based interface feels *quite* *different* from Sodipodi. Confusingly so. Things are in very different locations than you're used to. But this is all by intent. We have discussed the CSDI / SDI technicalities, the importance of HIG compliance, the desire to work like this app or that, etc. etc. This work has been going on in a branch for the past week, with screenshots on the website for about as long, so there's been some time for early testing. We are ONLY going to know whether all this theory will work in reality if we each TRY IT OUT. Some will ask why we are making these significant changes, and that is a good question. Stated briefly there are several reasons: 1. It significantly distinguishes Inkscape from Sodipodi 2. It is in keeping with GNOME HIG standards (the Sodipodi approach isn't). 3. It has been requested by a number of Inkscape users. 4. It forces us to really rethink the UI layout, including little things that we have tended to take for granted but that need to be re-examined. 5. It's better to make the change now while the project is still young and won't disrupt a large existing user base (other than ourselves!) Regarding testing, some tips. Well thought out, fairly worded observations are what we're looking for, moreso than gut reactions. Things are still fluid at this point so well thought out comments can have an important long-term impact. Take some time with your evaluation and think about how we can make it more powerful for skilled users, and intuitive enough to help novices find their way to what they need. You will be able to check it out from developer CVS soonish, or anonymous CVS within a day or so. We also hope to cut a pre-release and RPM's to make testing easier for folks. Bryce

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Testing feedback
by Robert Crosbie 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

----8<---Snip--->8---- > "The undo also seems to have some problems. I was messing around with > the layer selection stuff and moved an item which I then tried to undo > but it didn't work. It was kinda strange because some things could be > undone but not others. I kept pressing undo a whole bunch of times > and it crashed." > >Robert - Sounds like this one feeds into your work; would you mind >taking this one? > >Bryce Yeah, This is the problem I was looking into Saturdy Evening. I'll be looking at it again on Tuesday or Wednesday. If anyone else wants to have a go at it, It seems to be around sp_document_undo or sp_document_maybe_done. It seems that if you undo when there is nothing to undo, the undo list doesn't get updated when you create new object. Problem is kdbg was crashing on me when I tried to set a breakpoint inside sp_document_maybe_done to see what was happening there. Cheers, Rob. _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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Testing feedback
by Bryce Harrington 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

Some feedback on Inkscape from CVS from a user: "I tried out Inkscape a bit. I was able to set the inkscape:groupmode parameter that allows me to select grouped items. I really like having that available. It doesn't seem to save the setting though." Mental - want to take a look at this one? I've asked for clarification on what he means by "save the setting". "I went to set the stroke width on a path and I couldn't type in the number. It seems to do the hotkeys instead of letting me type into the dialog (focus problem?)." Bulia - I verified this. Looks like the new number-key keyboard shortcuts are stealing focus. Could you take a look? "The undo also seems to have some problems. I was messing around with the layer selection stuff and moved an item which I then tried to undo but it didn't work. It was kinda strange because some things could be undone but not others. I kept pressing undo a whole bunch of times and it crashed." Robert - Sounds like this one feeds into your work; would you mind taking this one? Bryce

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(no subject)
by bulia byak 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

> I'm torn between wanting to shamelessly pander to Illustrator users or > decide if doing it differently would be better enought to mitigate the > inconsistancey! Illustrator is far from being the standard. Xara, CorelDraw, Freehand, Canvas all have sizeable user communities, and as a rule they don't imitate Illustrator keybindings but do most things their own way. Besides, there's GIMP and other linux graphic soft that we must take into account. So I think in each case, we should review the existing approaches and either select one of them (not necessarily Illustrator) as the best, or devise our own. And by the way, at least global keybindings should ultimately be user configurable (it's difficult to do that for all keybindings, but at least those in shortcuts.c must be taken from the config file). -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] misc
by bulia byak 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

> > - ctrl-` and ctrl-shift-` opens the toolbox > > If only one instance of the toolbox is allowed, and will always be on > top, then might it worth having ctrl-` work as an on/off toggle? The same applies to all other dialogs. Do we want to make all ctrl-shift shorcuts toggles? Advantages of toggles: - you can switch off a dialog without first moving focus to it - Illustrator behaves the same way (toggles) Disadvantages: - may be counterintuitive: I see a dialog and I want to move focus to it to use some of its widgets. Now I press e.g. ctrl-shift-f and focus is moved to the dialog. With toggles, I will have to press ctrl-shift-f twice to do the same (once to switch it off and then on again). The same situation is when one dialog obscures another: now I press the shorcut of the bottom one and it jumps to top at once, with toggles I will have to press it twice. Any comments? -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] 0.36
by bulia byak 23 Nov '03

23 Nov '03

> > 2a. Recent reports and testing them under windows show that the > > transiency code is not perfect. Maybe we'll have to switch "unsinkable > > dialogs" off on Windows because it behaves erratic there when you try > > to minimize a document window (maybe this is GTK+ issue). I lean > > towards accepting the current unsinkable dialogs as temporary solution > > for the 0.36 release (but not for windows build), but after that I > > want to explore other options such as GIMP's dockable > > palettes. Dockability is a good thing in any case, and writing it from > > scratch is too much work; maybe they will take care of staying on top > > as well. > > That sounds like a good approach. Can you configure it to not use the > unsinkable dialogs feature for Windows compiles? Also good idea to > investigate dockability; maybe you could add that to the roadmap for > 0.37 or 0.38? Perhaps you and Mental can talk about that. OK > I compiled Inkscape from CVS and played with opening and closing > Inkscape and its dialogs after moving dialogs around. A few dialogs > seemed to remember their screen location when closed and reopened, but > not all. Sure, only toolbox and ctrl-shift-f, as I explained before > None seemed to remember their location between Inkscape > invocations. That's strange - these two should remember position and size, they do on my system. Is ~/inkscape/preferences.xml created/updated after you exit? > Also I noticed many dialogs first popped up in a corner, > whereas it probably would be better for them to pop up either > auto-positioned (if possible) or centered in the screen. OK I'll think about centering those dialogs that don't yet have saved position, but this is minor importance because this position will only be used once - after you drag the dialog to any other place it will remember it and never again pop in the center. > > 2c. I still want someone to test one small change in the transient > > behavior though. It's simple: Please compile the latest CVS/tarball, > > open two document windows, maximize both, and switch between > > them. Does toolbox stay on top? Please report also your window > > manager. Thanks! > > I've tested this on KDE (Mandrake 9.1), the toolbox does not stay on top > of the canvas windows when switching via Alt-tab. If I am switching > between a single canvas and the toolbar, though, it does. That's the problem. Here's the dillemma: - either we have it as it is now, with the problem of dialogs not staying on top when switching maximized windows (at least on KDE), - or I can fix this problem, but then we'll have another: as reported by Tom von Schwerdtner, "the document window is auto-raising itself when it gets the focus. To me this is is counter-intuitive, as every other gnome application I use follows the window manager settings of not auto-raising windows when they get the focus." I don't use raise-on-click so I did not notice this myself; with raise-on-focus everything seems to be OK. So we have to choose which of these two problems is more serious. I can think of no way to fix them both. Maybe some magic dockable windows will solve both, but the current transient windows have to choose. I don't want to make this user-configurable because that would be a rather obscure and confusing option. What do you think? > I don't have an opinion on this one and am not familiar with how it's > done in other applications, but if I were going to try to guess what the > mappings were, I'd probably try ctrl-pgup/dn, then ctrl-up/dn, then > (maybe) home/end, and finally if it wasn't any of those I'd look at the > keyboard shortcuts list. So my vote is for Home/End for top/bottom (as it is now) and Ctrl-Home/Ctrl-end for one layer up/down (instead of current pgup/pgdn). > I'll add 'make this decision' to the roadmap. Who do you think would be > a good person to make the call? (I also don't have a mouse wheel and > also don't have an opinion.) Alan, can you summarize what is the current consensus (if any)? --bb -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: Menu layout feedback [Re: [Inkscape-devel] Snap to grid]
by Robert Crosbie 23 Nov '03

23 Nov '03

> >I'd add a Help menu, even if you only have the About dialog to put there. > In the Help menu we could put a link to the sourceforge site as well as the About dialog. Rob. _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.ms…

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[Fwd: [Sodipodi-list] Comments and questions from a newbie]
by Nathan Hurst 23 Nov '03

23 Nov '03

some thoughts for checking against 0.36.

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dialogs memory
by bulia byak 23 Nov '03

23 Nov '03

With the preferences restored, I've implemented remembering size and position for dialogs. Only two dialogs are affected for now, the toolbox (only position) and fill/stroke (size and position). Please test and report any problems. Finally, after this change is tested, I will copy the entire code over to all other dialogs. Preferences are now saved in ~/.inkscape/preferences.xml, instead of simply ~/.inkscape/preferences. I think it's more logical this way. A new signal was added, "shut_down". It is sent by the inkscape object before shutting down inkscape and before saving preferences, so that dialogs have the chance to write their status into the preferences. If anyone else needs to do some housekeeping before program shuts down, they may use this signal. New shortcut: * for the star tool. By the way, the number of star rays was written in prefs, and this now works. Lots of other parameters need to be similarly written and restored. I will soon update the wiki page with instructions on how to handle this. -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Search Smarter - get the new eXact Search Bar for free! http://www.exactsearchbar.com/

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misc
by bulia byak 23 Nov '03

23 Nov '03

Have anyone tested the unsinkable dialogs? Any comments? Just to remind you, the two dialogs I've been working on - toolbox and fill/stroke - are now not only transient but unsinkable (stay on top of the topmost document window when there are many). Also they remember shape and position within session so you can turn them off and then on again without losing your layout. (What remains to be done is an all-dialogs-toggle; I will do this shortly.) Inserting the same into all other dialogs is a boring work, and I want to be sure that these new features work perfectly with these two dialogs before I spread them everywhere. So please test heavily and report any problems or concerns. By the way, be prepared for a possible flame from Gnome developers. Here's what Havoc Pennington writes in his book: " A transient dialog is one that appears and is dismissed relatively quickly. (GnomeDialog is really meant for transient dialogs.) Some "dialogs" are just small windows, such as the tool palette in the Gimp. These persistent ("floating") dialogs should be minimizable without minimizing the parent, and they should not be forced to stay above the parent window." Which IMHO is very wrong: it does not matter how long a dialog stays open, it only matters what you do with it. A tool palette makes no sense without a document to apply these tools to, and therefore must be "transient" to stay on top. Unfortunately someone chose this wrong term ("transient" meaning "temporary") and this seems to affect many programmers who underutilize transient windows making their interfaces almost unusable (GIMP is not the only example). Also checked in today: - space switches to selector temporarily; another space switches back. This required writing a new set of functions to switch tools (tools-switch.c) but now it's much easier to do - ctrl-` and ctrl-shift-` opens the toolbox - misc fixes I may be absent for some days - need to reboot to windows to do a project in Xara/Illustrator :) Feel free to leave comments on wiki. --bb -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Search Smarter - get the new eXact Search Bar for free! http://www.exactsearchbar.com/

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