- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Server downtime
by Bob Jamison 10 Aug '04

10 Aug '04

My net admin just told me that they will be taking down troi.titan-aeu.com, in order to move it to a new building. It will be down for some time; maybe a few hours, maybe a few days. So if you want Win32 nightlies, you will need to go to Daniel's site in the meantime. Bob (ishmal)

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File open Dialog
by bulia byak 10 Aug '04

10 Aug '04

> I have an 6MB SVG image in my SVG folder and it took over half an hour > to show the preview on my P800! It is even slow, if I browse some bigger > PNGs. If you worry about not being up to date you can compare the > timestamp in the thumbnail with the file date. And no, I don't think > that thumbnails are garbage, as long as all programs use the same. Well, 6Mb is not what I would call typical. Half an hour sounds like a lot. How long does it take to actually open that file? On a 450MHz Windows machine that I tested, it works quite acceptably for SVG files of average size and complexity (up to several hundred Kbytes). I'm not saying using stored previews is not an option; I'm just saying that the current code works quite acceptably for the average user, so implementing an alternative is not a priority (though of course I would not object if someone develops and commits it). > I'm just speaking about the preview area. It has the "Preview" title, Which is rather redundant IMHO, especially being so button-looking - is it actually clickable? what does it do? why does it have a keyboard accelerator? What we actually need is a checkbox or an expander triangle to turn the preview on or off. > some space around the image Which is confusing - I want the preview to match the actual look, without having to guess if this margin an actual part of the file or not > shows the file size Which is good, but properly belongs in the file list as a separate sort-able column, not in the preview (by the way, Bob, can we add the filesize column to the list?) > and displays a folder > icon, if you are an a folder an not on an image. It might make sense to borrow that one.

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Windows build
by John Cliff 10 Aug '04

10 Aug '04

Hi guys, Just letting you know that the windows build is currently broke, in that it compiles ok, but crashes on startup. bt gives the following, dont know why theres so many ?? as I didnt strip the binary: #0 0x77f9eeaa in ?? () #1 0x77fb54bc in ?? () #2 0x77fb4732 in ?? () #3 0x77fa6567 in ?? () #4 0x77fcabc7 in ?? () #5 0x7800113d in _libmsvcrt_a_iname () #6 0x00ca2ee5 in ?? () #7 0x0043a93b in sp_item_init(SPItem*) () #8 0x0083dae9 in ?? () #9 0x0082b707 in ?? () #10 0x00827325 in ?? () #11 0x00827b13 in ?? () #12 0x00826f7f in ?? () #13 0x0041abb6 in sp_object_repr_build_tree(SPDocument*, SPRepr*) () #14 0x0040e041 in sp_document_create(SPReprDoc*, char const*, char const*, char const*, unsigned, unsigned) () #15 0x0040b703 in sp_document_new(char const*, unsigned, unsigned) () #16 0x004083b1 in sp_file_new() () #17 0x00401dad in sp_main_gui(int, char const**) () #18 0x004019d7 in main () just a note, but I've been completely unsucessful getting the dll to link with the windows version of mingw, so resorted to reverting the build process to the old larger exe. The above error occurs in both this and the nightlies from bobs site using the dll, and generates the same bt. Having checked back in the older builds the last on bobs site to work is the one dated 4/8/04. Lokos like the it didnt build on the 5th, from the 6th it crashes. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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Re: Why Inkscape is not in GNOME-Office??
by Bryce Harrington 09 Aug '04

09 Aug '04

SZERVAC Attila <sas@...506...> writes: >> On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, J.M. Maurer wrote: >> > Q: Why Sodipodi & Sketch (Skencil) are "office" application >> > >> > ( >> > http://gnome.org/gnome-office/ >> > ) >> > >> > but Inkscape is not ? >> > >> > drawing programs are essential "office" components, today. >> > >> > If GNOME Office keeps `Vector Grachics' section (Sodipodi & Sketch >> > (Skencil), Inkscape is also an important, good choice for GNOME >> >Office >> > Users >> >> That page is really old, and does not reflect the current situation. >> >> Currently, "GNOME Office" consists of AbiWord, Gnumeric and GDA >> >*only*. >> We hope to update that website as soon as possible. > > ohh, oops, okay-okay, i'm waiting for GNOME Art Suite! :))) > > THANK You 4 Your advice, Bryce, J.M., Charlie & dear GNOME-Office list. > > `apt-get install gnome-art' ! :-) On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Jody Goldberg wrote: > On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 10:19:08AM +0200, SZERV?C Attila wrote: > > > > Inkscape 0.39 entered to sarge. > > > > It is Killer. Maybe sketch [skencil] killer too. > > > > Why Inkscape is not in GNOME-Office?? > > It has not asked to be part of gnome office. > > We can evaluate it on it's > 1) merits > 2) use of gnome office technologies > 3) whether a drawing app is office-related or art-related > Since Inkscape started, I've had the opportunity to chat with a number of people, both developers and users, on the topic of integration with other applications. We've also received numerous feature requests from users for interoperability. These range from cut-and-paste, to file format compatibility, to even more elaborate interrelationships such as plug-in functionality. On multiple occasions I've heard the idea of an 'Art Suite' posed. The idea generally identifies Inkscape, Gimp, Scribus, and perhaps one or two other tools such as Blender or Dia. The rationale for making them into a suite revolves around improving interoperability including cut and paste, common file formats, etc. Note though that several of these apps are not GNOME apps (Scribus is Qt, for example). Also, we haven't really talked about this much with the other apps. But this is an idea we've heard much about. As can be expected, we have had many users ask about interoperability with OpenOffice (mainly for cut-and-paste). This is particularly ironic since OOo doesn't really support SVG, plus already has a drawing component, but there you go. Interoperability with Flash, Illustrator, and other proprietary tools have come up in user requests. In a few cases there has been the question of Inkscape being part of GNOME Office. It sounds like the desire here is for Gnumeric and Abiword to gain a drawing plugin via Bonobo, which would help users of those apps. We're not really certain why this would help Inkscape but in general I don't think anyone from Inkscape is opposed to the idea (interoperability is a Good Thing). In weighing the requests from users and the interests of the developers, it has been viewed as a longer term priority; other things like layers, text-on-path, extensions, etc. have been more pressing needs. That does not mean that we could not do it today if a couple developers popped up that wished to focus on implementing it. The one concern that a few of us have is that we're uncertain about the extra dependencies that would be added if we were required to adopt a bunch of GNOME Office libraries. We have a process for reviewing, testing, and adopting (or rejecting) new dependencies. An important consideration is whether they're available on Windows and Mac OSX, and if they have clean, stable APIs. As Alan mentioned, we've been slowly evaluating and adding libraries (including several low level GNOME libs), but we think it is important for Inkscape users that we do this with care. For 0.40 we're adding a number of new libs and are already spotting problems (i.e. one core dev on OSX can no longer compile the code). Now, it's likely the GNOME Office libs have no problems, but we just haven't really analyzed them in detail yet so we don't know. But the concern is less about the particular libs and more about the process - being given a list of required libs that must be added to Inkscape in order for it to be acceptable as a GNOME Office application leaves some distaste in the mouth. Those may be great technologies to have, but maybe not, or they may be okay but require a lot of work to integrate them for low value, so we like having the option of picking and choosing, and are concerned that this freedom would be diminished or lost by becoming a GNOME Office application. At one point someone identified Inkscape as a possible presentation component for GNOME Office. It is certainly true that people have used Inkscape's 'Inkview' component for doing presentations - I myself used it for my OLS presentation. But I don't think there's any desire to turn Inkscape into PowerPoint! ;-) I think there had also been talk at some point about SVG-output from GNOME-Office applications, with the assumption that something like Inkscape would be needed for that. In truth, I don't think this is the case. SVG is a standardized format, so in theory the application could use rsvg, cairo, or other SVG renderers, and expect to be able to interoperate with tools like Inkscape. Where they don't, well, that's going to be someone's SVG compliance bug. ;-) A while back we briefly looked at the bonobo bits in the codebase. They're not hooked up now, but could presumably be resurrected if someone was interested in working on it, especially if they were more experienced with Bonobo than us. One of the conclusions we arrived at when looking at Bonobo was that Inkscape needed to present a better organized internal API (called AST), that other applications could connect to. This happens to be something we need in general for Extensions, and is an area we've been putting time into and plan to put additional work into over the next few releases. After that is done, adding a Bonobo interface should conceivably be quite straightforward. Anyway, so if all GNOME Office really cares about is getting a drawing component for Gnumeric and Abiword, Inkscape will probably be there eventually (sooner if someone pops up to help). If the desire is to fill in a list of apps for GNOME marketing purposes, no issue there. If there is a desire to make Inkscape use certain libs or to be able to have say over the development priorities, that would probably not be well received. If the desire is to assist Inkscape in some other fashion, that'd be wonderful, just let us know; the project's been humming along well so far but there's still much needed. Bryce

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File open Dialog
by Tobias Jakobs 09 Aug '04

09 Aug '04

Hallo, I have some more comments to the new file open dialog. 1. If no image is selected the preview area should display the "No preview" image with "No selection" as text. 2. Use thumbnails if they are available. That will make the preview faster, if the images are big. 3. Do not allow images to resize the preview area. 4. Look at the Gimp open dialog and make it look similar. ;-) http://hagemaenner.de/stuff/gimp/Gimp-2.1-Open-Image.png MfG Tobias

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Linux Format Article
by Ted Gould 09 Aug '04

09 Aug '04

I finally got a copy of Linux Format issue 56, which is the one that has an article on Inkscape. I think this may be our first 'print' article. "The only bad press is where they misspell our name." --Unknown Well, they were consistent -- everyplace (including the table of contents) they used the name 'Inkspace'. Fortunately, they got the URL right (which I think makes the whole thing funnier). The article is actually a short tutorial on Inkscape (I'll use the right name) but discusses the whole thing as an addition to The GIMP. The author acknowledges that it is all part of an artist's tool chest, and compares it directly with the Adobe products. Scribus gets a mention also. Overall, I think that this is probably a good way to approach Inkscape for users who are more familiar with The GIMP -- Linux Format is targeting geeks more than artists. The first break out box is titled: Inkscape: The User Interface Intuitive operation -- experiment for yourself! And has a paragraph that reads as follows: Inkscape uses a standard design for its windows, with a menu bar across the top, a toolbar along the side and a workspace, or canvas, connected to both. More importantly, it comes with a built-in tutorial system -- that, incidentally, was creating using Inkscape -- which is interactive and displays directly on an Inkscape canvas! The tutorial goes on to make a business card. The author basically does his own text along a path to show how to rotate and resize different characters (he does mention that it is easier to do text along a path in Illustrator than Inkscape 0.38 :). It talks about drawing simple beziers and does some simple boolean operations along with some gradients also. The align dialog is also used. Overall, the article is 3 pages long and covers the basic features of Inkscape. The business card that is created isn't that aesthetically pleasing, which doesn't make the app look as impressive. The thing that upset me the most is that the magazine comes with a 4 GB DVD with tons of stuff on it, not including Inkscape :( A big plus is that we got a screenshot on the opening page of the tutorials section -- a high visibility position. I wouldn't recommend that anyone else spend the $16 to read the article. --Ted

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [thimo@...153...: Bug#261848: inkscape: segfaults on startup (Alpha)]
by MenTaLguY 08 Aug '04

08 Aug '04

> interface.cpp: In function `void sp_ui_menu_key_press(GtkMenuItem*, > GdkEventKey*, void*)': > interface.cpp:323: warning: cast from pointer to integer of different > size > interface.cpp: In function `GtkWidget* > sp_ui_menu_append_item_from_verb(GtkMenu*, int, SPView*)': > interface.cpp:444: warning: cast to pointer from integer of different > size These bear further investigation... > seltrans.cpp: In function `gboolean sp_sel_trans_handle_request(SPKnot*, > NR::Point*, unsigned int, gboolean*)': > seltrans.cpp:634: warning: cast from `gboolean*' to `const > SPSelTransHandle*' > increases required alignment of target type !!! as does that... > sp-ellipse.cpp: In function `void sp_genericellipse_update(SPObject*, > SPCtx*, > unsigned int)': > sp-ellipse.cpp:142: warning: cast from `SPCtx*' to `SPItemCtx*' > increases > required alignment of target type > sp-ellipse.cpp:142: warning: cast from `SPCtx*' to `SPItemCtx*' > increases > required alignment of target type > sp-ellipse.cpp:142: warning: cast from `SPCtx*' to `SPItemCtx*' > increases > required alignment of target type > sp-ellipse.cpp:142: warning: cast from `SPCtx*' to `SPItemCtx*' > increases > required alignment of target type These are harmless though. > spiral-context.cpp: In function `void sp_spiral_drag(SPSpiralContext*, > NR::Point, unsigned int)': > spiral-context.cpp:440: warning: `sp_view_set_status' is deprecated > (declared > at view.h:194) Harmless, but it is something we should take care of (I was the one who marked those as deprecated, as I wrote the API that replaced it). -mental

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traits class specializations in header files
by MenTaLguY 08 Aug '04

08 Aug '04

One of Peter's recent commits (moving Traits::TreeIterator<SPObject *> into a separate header file) started me thinking more about what should go in a separate header file and what shouldn't. In _general_, I think "one class, one header" is the right approach, but some auxiliary classes (for example, traits specializations) have a more intimate relationship than most classes, and don't introduce any dependencies of their own. Any thoughts on where a good place to draw the line might be, in general? -mental

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] File open Dialog
by Tobias Jakobs 08 Aug '04

08 Aug '04

Am So, den 08.08.2004 schrieb bulia byak um 22:49: > > I have an 6MB SVG image in my SVG folder and it took over half an hour > > to show the preview on my P800! It is even slow, if I browse some bigger > > PNGs. If you worry about not being up to date you can compare the > > timestamp in the thumbnail with the file date. And no, I don't think > > that thumbnails are garbage, as long as all programs use the same. > > Well, 6Mb is not what I would call typical. Half an hour sounds like a > lot. How long does it take to actually open that file? I don't know, I just opened the file once in Inkscape and that was some time ago. You can get the file here and test it: http://hagemaenner.de/stuff/inkscape/ > On a 450MHz Windows machine that I tested, it works quite acceptably > for SVG files of average size and complexity (up to several hundred > Kbytes). I'm not saying using stored previews is not an option; I'm > just saying that the current code works quite acceptably for the > average user, so implementing an alternative is not a priority (though > of course I would not object if someone develops and commits it). > > > I'm just speaking about the preview area. It has the "Preview" title, > > Which is rather redundant IMHO, especially being so button-looking - > is it actually clickable? what does it do? why does it have a keyboard > accelerator? > Yes it is. Gimp doesn't generate the Thumbnail automatically, because that can take some time an bigger images, so you must click on it or into the preview area to generate a thumbnail. You can even select all images in dir and click on it to generate thumbnails for all images. > What we actually need is a checkbox or an expander triangle to turn > the preview on or off. > > > some space around the image > > Which is confusing - I want the preview to match the actual look, > without having to guess if this margin an actual part of the file or > not > But it looks nice. ;-) > > shows the file size > > Which is good, but properly belongs in the file list as a separate > sort-able column, not in the preview (by the way, Bob, can we add the > filesize column to the list?) > Btw. you didn't sent this Mail to the list. Tobias

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Markers and angle bisectors
by David Turner 08 Aug '04

08 Aug '04

I'm still improving Inkscape's marker support, and have discovered another deficiency in the spec: 11.6.2 "the marker's positive x-axis should point toward the angle bisector for the angle at the given vertex," Consider the attached SVG. The black line represents a path Its end point is at the bottom left of the drawing. Confusingly, all of the markers in Inkscape are designed to point from the end of the line towards its start, a convention I've followed here. The red lines represent the inner angle bisectors. The blue lines represent markers with positive x-axis pointing towards the angle bisector. You will notice that the two arrows point in opposite directions. This is clearly undesirable. The correct action would be to use the inner angle bisector for the leftmost marker, and the outer for the rightmost marker. A rule which accomplishes this is: If the clockwise angle from the incoming vector to the outgoing vector is greater than 180%, use the outer angle bisector, else use the inner angle bisector. Incoming vectors are those which are closer to the start of the path. This is the rule I intend to implement in Inkscape. -- -David "Novalis" Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 "PLAN WHILE YOU CAN, LITTLE THING OF EARTH. WE ARE NOT YET CAST DOWN." - Mary Gentle, _Ash: A Secret History_

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