- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Inkscape status 2004-12-01
by Bryce Harrington 02 Dec '04

02 Dec '04

Inkscape 0.40 has turned out to be a good solid release. We're already seeing a surge in downloads, and the response to our notices and article on OS News has been quite positive. There have been a few complaints about the bleeding-edge-ness of the deps; this wasn't a surprise, we knew this would be a tough release for folks to get installed. We should keep this in mind and be a bit more conservative for the next release or two. With 0.40 out the door I see both a collective sigh of relief at being done and ready for a break, plus an energy to start working on new stuff for 0.41. For the next month or so we're going to keep things low key, enjoy the holidays, and work on whatever seems most intriguing. Below I've listed out the stats for the past two months for direct comparison. (I swear, some day I'll graph this data so we can visualize it easier...) Note the big jump in Freshmeat subscribers; these all came the day we announced the new release. Our mailing list memberships are also growing nicely. I think the article in early Nov brought in a sizeable number of people. I suspect that for us to continue building our lists we need to seek out new communities and have articles published in new publications. For instance, we seem to get good coverage in foreign trade magazines; it'd be good to get published in some U.S. computer magazines too. Statistics Oct 15 Nov 1 Nov 15 Dec 1 ========== ====== ===== ====== ===== Lifetime Rank on SourceForge: 687 684 636 636 (95.2%) (95.2%) (95.6%) (95.6%) Max Week's Rank on SourceForge: 124 62 14 16 (99.3%) (99%) (100%) (99.9%) Total SF Page Views 1,339,114 1,487,659 1,758,321 1,921,981 Total SF Downloads 63,869 69,078 80,152 89,345 Total Freshmeat URL Hits 11,465 11,849 12,162 13,351 Total Freshmeat Subscriptions 124 125 126 141 Lines of Code in src/: 303,783 306,602 307,747 309,285 Code lines 216,027 217,198 217,982 218,803 Comment line 52,421 53,262 53,491 53,798 Blank 41,872 42,699 42,829 43,249 Lines of Docs in doc/: 16,841 16,841 16,974 17,901 Lines of content in website: 7,840 8,121 8,382 8,732 Size of the Inkscape wiki: 22,459 18,977 19,735 21,379 Bugs open/total: 135/653 104/683 102/733 119/774 Features open/total: 263/406 279/426 291/448 307/467 Patches open/total: 7/126 7/130 7/137 5/143 CVS Commits (as per inkscape-cvs) 7,860 8,279 8,613 8,878 Inkscape-devel membership: 109 108 117 120 Inkscape-announce membership: 98 113 124 137 Inkscape-user membership: 138 144 157 162 Num Translations: 33 33 33 33 Ave Translation Ratio: 35.0% 38.5 38.4 42.2 * - Statistics unavailable Bryce

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Re: [Clipart] Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release (fwd)
by Bryce Harrington 02 Dec '04

02 Dec '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:01:37 -0500 From: Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@...581...> To: clipart@...330... Subject: Re: [Clipart] Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> writes: > user's may encounter more trouble getting Inkscape installed on some > platforms than in previous releases. To help those who run into > this issue, we're also providing 'Static Binary' packages that > include these new libraries inside the package, and thus, the static > releases are very large. Very large? 8 Megs hasn't been a large size for an application download in *years*. There are *plugins* nearly twice that large. (For example, I've got a copy of j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586.rpm sitting around in my downloads directory weighing in at 14MB, and nobody apologised for that being large.) Honestly, I wish more applications would realease statically linked binaries like this. <rant intensity="50%"> However, I still have to chase down a dependency: gtk2. I have gtk2, of course, but apparently it's not the latest and greatest version. So I downloaded that, but now I need other stuff... error: Failed dependencies: libglib2.0 >= 2.4.0 is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk libpango1.0 >= 1.4.0 is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk libgtk+-x11-2.0_0 = 2.4.9-9mdk is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk I need to do this anyway, since there's a new Gimp coming out that I'll want, but this underscores the single largest problem IMO in open-source today: excessive use of dynamic linking makes upgrades painful beyond the bounds of all reason. I can understand the desire to link inkscape dynamically against GTK, because *lots* of stuff links against GTK, and it makes sense to install one copy (of each major version). But I do NOT understand why GTK is linked dynamically against libglib and pango. Virtually nothing else besides GTK uses those libraries, so there's no good reason for the dynamic linking: root@...582... ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libpango1.0 libgtk+2.0_0-2.2.4-2mdk root@...582... ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libglib2.0 libgtk+2.0_0-2.2.4-2mdk libgtop2.0_0-2.0.5-1mdk root@...582... ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libgtk+-x11-2.0_0 gtk+2.0-2.2.4-2mdk libgtk+2.0_0-devel-2.2.4-2mdk root@...582... ~/download :) # Not only is GTK quite pointlessly dynamically linked against libglib and pango, but it *itself* is subdivided into two packages, for absolutely no good reason. This is why I only have time to upgrade stuff at home, and at work I'm still using Gnome 1.4 -- at work, I can't justify the time to chase down a hillion jillion dependencies. I shouldn't have to do it at home either. Nobody should. Hard drive sizes being what they are, it no longer makes sense to save a couple of measley megabytes by inflicting superfluous pain on the user. Inkscape is an application I use with some frequency: as such, it's welcome to a few megabytes of drive space. </rant> One can only imagine the trouble I'd have put myself through if I'd downloaded the non-statically-linked version of Inkscape. <<shudder>> The take-home message is this: Static linking is GOOD, and the world needs more of it. -- $;=sub{$/};(a);=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}} split//,"ten.thgirb\@badanoj$/ --";$\=$ ;-> ();print$/ _______________________________________________ clipart mailing list clipart@...330... http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart

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Scene interpretation mentioned on Slashdot
by Bob Jamison 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

There is an article on Slashdot that mentions a "new photographic technique" with some concepts strikingly similar to how the Tracer works: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/01/0238222&tid=152&tid=126… this is the quoted article: http://www.photo.net/learn/technology/mflash/merl-non-photo.html Notice the mention of a "canny edge detector." ;-) One thing that someone showed me, is how tracing the same image multiple times with different algorithms and/or parameters, and recombining the results, can often produce a fairly good rendition of the original. Here is a trivial example of the raytracer doing it with merely 3 different levels of brighness threshold: http://troi.hous.es3.titan.com/~rjamison/inkscape/files/clemens-traced.png So, hey, we are ahead of the curve on this one! ^^ Bob

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Re: Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release . www.inkscape.org (fwd)
by Bryce Harrington 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 18:00:49 +0100 From: Dave Neary <bolsh@...85...> To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...1...> Subject: Re: Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release . www.inkscape.org Hi Bryce, Congratulations on the release! Yet another huge step forward. Cheers, Dave. Quoting Bryce Harrington <bryce@...1...>: > Inkscape 0.40 > ============= > > Draw Freely. > > http://www.inkscape.org/ > > The Inkscape community is proud to announce release 0.40 of Inkscape, "A > Cross-Platform Open Source Vector Graphics (SVG) Drawing Tool." This > release includes three highly requested new capabilities: Layers, > Text-on-Path, and Bitmap tracing. In addition, several minor features > have made the cut along with a number of usability enhancements, three > new tutorials, and hundreds of bug fixes; this is by far the most > feature-packed release to date! > > The implementation of layers provides another means for organization of > compositions. Layers can be locked to not allow changes and their > visibility may be toggled on and off. This is great for sketching over a > bitmap image by using it as a template. However, one might skip this > technique altogether by using the new "Bitmap Tracing" which uses > Potrace to convert pixels/bitmaps into vector graphics. Normally this > function is not found in illustration programs, but now it is front and > center right on the canvas within Inkscape. > > Since our last release four months ago, we have added several new > dependencies such as the Boehm garbage collector and the stable Gtk 2.4 > libraries. Hence, installing Inkscape on some platforms might raise more > issues than as with previous releases, and we ask you to please post to > the bugtracker (http://inkscape.org/report_bugs.php) any issues > discovered. To help those who run into undocumented problems we're also > providing 'Static Binary' packages that include these new libraries. > > We celebrate this release from our community and hope to encourage > others to join our project by the simple act of contributing graphics, > tutorials, code, and translations. Inkscape recently became a one-year > old project. We are looking forward to another dynamic year of > development as we move Inkscape further from C to C++, approach SVG Tiny > compliance, and eventually full SVG 1.2 validation. Thank you for using > Inkscape. Draw Freely. > > Download your packages (Linux, Windows, Mac OSX): > > http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438 > > For many more details, see the Release Notes for 0.40: > > http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes040 > > Community submitted screenshots: > > http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/ > > > _______________________________________________ > gnome-announce-list mailing list > gnome-announce-list@...45... > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-announce-list > -- Dave Neary Lyon, France bolsh@...85...

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Re: [Clipart] Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release (fwd)
by Bryce Harrington 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:48:44 -0500 From: Carl Worth <cworth@...573...> To: Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@...581...> Cc: clipart@...330... Subject: Re: [Clipart] Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:01:37 -0500, "Jonadab the Unsightly One" wrote: > I'll want, but this underscores the single largest problem IMO in > open-source today: excessive use of dynamic linking makes upgrades > painful beyond the bounds of all reason. The problem of a single application upgrade requiring many libraries to also be upgraded has been solved in any number distributions with good package managers. If you're not yet using one, I would recommend you try one out. > The take-home message is this: Static linking is GOOD, and the world > needs more of it. No. Static linking leads to bug propagation. This is especially bad when there are security bugs in well-used libraries, (for example the zlib bug from some time ago). Widespread use of static linking makes it much harder to get security fixes out since it requires updating many applications. With dynamic linking, only the affected library need be updated. -Carl _______________________________________________ clipart mailing list clipart@...330... http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart

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Inkscape slides in spanish
by Lucas Vieites 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

Hi, A few months ago there was a presentation of Inkscape at the University of A Coruña. Now the slides used at that presentation have been made available. The slides are made in inkscape in order to provide a useable space on the right to do some demos as you speak. Find them at: http://www.gauss-fic.udc.es/Members/moebius/tutoriales/inkscape/inkscape-sl… And «kudos to the author»: Adrián Perez de Castro If an english translation is needed I'll be glad to provide one. Cheers, -- Lucas Vieites Fariña Dept. Desarrollo <lucas@...212...> Asix Informática <http://www.asixinformatica.com/> Tel/Fax: +34 986 54 26 98

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Re: [Inkscape-user] Inkscape Release 0.40 Now Available
by bulia byak 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

> > As soon as it's up, I'll post an announcement on deviantart (as a > > majority of users on their site are Win32 based)... I just uploaded the exe installer made by Sim. Please download and test: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

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Wiki again
by Arpad Biro 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

Hi, Yet another spammer wants to be banned from the Wiki. See the recent changes for details (if you're strong enough for this kind of stuff). Arpad Biro __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com

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Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release
by Bryce Harrington 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

= Inkscape 0.40 = 'Draw Freely' http://www.inkscape.org/ The Inkscape community is proud to announce the release 0.40 of Inkscape, "A Cross-platform Open Source Vector Graphics (SVG) Drawing Tool." This release includes three majorly requested new capabilities: Layers, Text-on-Path, and Bitmap tracing. In addition, there are many minor features, a number of usability enhancements, three new tutorials, and hundreds of bug fixes. This is by far the most feature-packed release the project has had. This is all due to the strong developers that have contributed countless hours on Inkscape 0.40. Following our last release four months ago, we have focused intensively on development, adding several new dependencies such as the Boehm garbage collector and the stable Gtk 2.4 libraries. Because of this, user's may encounter more trouble getting Inkscape installed on some platforms than in previous releases. To help those who run into this issue, we're also providing 'Static Binary' packages that include these new libraries inside the package, and thus, the static releases are very large. Download your packages: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438 For many more details, see the Release Notes for 0.40: http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes040 Community submitted screenshots: http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/

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XMLifying of tutorials
by bulia byak 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

As you know, currently tutorials are written directly in SVG. This, among other things, prevents proper automated i18n - if a section changes, a translator will have to manually figure out what changed, manually find the matching text in his translation, and manually change it. Also, producing the tutorials in formats other than SVG is also pretty much manual work. In other words, it looks nice but is a nightmare to maintain. Our attempts to change that ran into difficulties: a script or stylesheet which might generate an SVG tutorial would have to combine text (from some source file, e.g. Docbook) with illustrations (from separate SVG files). To do so, it would need to know the dimensions of the pieces of texts and the illustrations, because everything in SVG is absolutely-positioned. And that was the problem. Now I got an idea: Why not use Inkscape itself for this? Here's how it might work: 1 Add a couple new command line switches to Inkscape that would force it to load the document, find the object with the specified id, and report on the command line the width or height of that object's bbox, then quit. 2 Write an XSLT stylesheet that, for each piece of text, would write a temporary SVG file with it (in flowtext, same as the finished tutorials would use), run Inkscape with these command line switches to figure out its dimensions, and then use these numbers to position it in the final SVG files it produces. Same thing is done with illustrations, except that no temporary files are needed - they are stored separately (and referenced from the master XML source) anyway. If this sounds like a mess, it's not. I've done XSLT running external processes before. It works, and it is even portable (though portability may depend on the processor you use). It will be rather slow but in our case it does not matter much, I guess. So, unless someone invents something still better, I can do 1 above (it will be useful for other things, too), and someone will need to do 2 (with my help if needed). Perhaps 2 can also be done in another language, but I vote for XSLT - it's a very nice and powerful language for XML processing, definitely worth learning.

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