- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Re: [Inkscape-devel] new booleans patch
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

The updated patch from the author and my hookup patch (which puts the new commands into the menu and as shortcuts - ugly, just for testing) are here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=857377&group_id=93… Bryce, can you give Fred developer access to the CVS so he could create a branch for testing the new functions? (Or maybe I can now do this too as an admin, but I don't know how :) _________________________________________________________________ Get holiday tips for festive fun. http://special.msn.com/network/happyholidays.armx

2 2

Re: libgsf + Inkscape
by Jody Goldberg 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 09:49:19PM -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote: > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Dom Lachowicz wrote: > > > > I just committed a bunch of documentation. We're a bunch closer to 100% API > > documentation now. Nice work. > Very cool. May want to think about a webpage too... at the least, a > list of features. Yah. I know. I tend to be better at writing code than web pages. Probably when gsf 2.x comes out or someone steps forward. > Possibly libgsf and neon would obviate any need for gnome-vfs but I > haven't really looked in enough depth to say for sure. I haven't > confirmed that gnome-vfs actually supports WebDAV, and if it does, > how good the support is. > > WebDAV is composed of a number of different methods, some basic (GET, > PUT, HEAD), others more advanced (MOVE, MKCOL, PROPFIND, etc.) So when > a lib or app says it supports WebDAV you have to check 'how much'. Neon > supports a wide range of them, according to its feature list. > > http://www.webdav.org/neon/ Interesting I'll have to have a look. As mentioned our plans had been to use libcurl for network related activity. However, I have not checked on its webdav status any more than gnome-vfs. > Have a look at Neon and let me know what you think. Would it be > feasible to use it in conjunction with libgsf? I'll have a look. > The direction we're heading is to make wrapperization of the app easier, > whether that be with Python bindings (via SWIG?), Bonobo, or even a kind > of SVG Canvas. Being able to plug inkscape into other things opens lots > of very interesting uses of it. That would be very interesting. Abi and Gnumric had previously discussed supporting embedding by just rendering an svg image. Something like this would be nice.

2 1

Re: [Inkscape-devel] new booleans patch
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

Are you subscribed to the inkscape-devel list? Let's move our discussion there, because many people will be interested in your code. >the code is "borrowed" from the >sp_path_selected_combine(), and there's a check on the >number of elements in the selection (looks like it, at >least). It only checks that there are at least two objects selected: if (g_slist_length (il) < 2) return; So we need to fix it for the case when there are more than two. If you can make intersect and union functions accept any number of objects in one go, that would be the best. And for difference functions, we need to check that there are exactly two objects selected, and complain if not (for now you can just print a g_warning and do nothing). > > Inset and offset, although very very useful, are > > unfortunately more buggy. > > When you do them repeatedly, the number of nodes > > grows very fast, and soon > >oops... yes the number will grow fast (exponentially). >isn't there already a function to cleanup a path in >sodipodi? None that I know of. i recall seing somewhere discussion on how >to simplify a path... besides it's just a lame >approximation of the offset, there's probably wiser >algorithms (that i do not konw about) You can discuss this on the list with people who have much better knowledge of algorithms than I, such as Nathan Hurst. >well, the soutline/offset/inset algorithm is quite >stupid: build an offset path, and treat it like a >polygon. the "difficulty" lies in building the offset >path. the code is still rough, and doesn't like null >segments in the path, path with multiple subpath, >closed paths, etc... i have to admit it hasn't been >tested thoroughly; just outlining a path twice as you >suggested brought up a number of serious problems i'll >have to investigate. on top of that, the result of the >offset is transformed in a svg path description (so if >d="", it means the algorithm completely failed), and >the precision used to store the coordinates in the d >attribute seems insufficient. We plan to increase it from 6 digits to at least 8. Do you think 8 will be enough for you? >technically, coordinates >are rounded to a 1/32 grid by the code in livarot; >dumping the path with less precision in the xml tree >can cause ugly things. the cusps you mentioned are >usually small segments making sharp turns because >coordinates were rounded. using a round or bevel join >"removes" them (btw, how do you set the miter limit in >inkscape?) I don't think setting meter limit is implemented. Anyone? I think now the best course of action is this. I'll ask Bryce to give you access to the CVS so you could create a branch for testing and development of the new commands. You will store the entire Inkscape tree there, so that people would be able to checkout and test it without patching. To hook up your commands to the menu and as shortcuts, I did a simplistic patch, which I will now upload to the Inkscape tracker along with your updated patch; you can use my patch as a starting point. _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

1 0

Re: [Inkscape-devel] new booleans patch
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

After some testing I can say that the four basic operations (union, intersect, diff, symdiff (which is similar to combine, except that it adds nodes where sides intersect)) are very stable. I could not force them to do something wrong or misbehave. The only problem is that when more than one object is selected, these commands only operate on the first two objects while others simply disappear. But I think it will be easy to fix. The quality of these operations seems to be good: no extra points, no curve distortion. Inset and offset, although very very useful, are unfortunately more buggy. When you do them repeatedly, the number of nodes grows very fast, and soon some very strange artifacts appear (such as dense "clusters" of nodes that really distort the shape). Also, when you do inset or offset to a path with many nodes, it becomes extremely slow, and Inkscape may hang for minutes. Sometimes, a path simply disappears (the object is there, but its d="" attribute is empty). The outline stroke function works acceptable. Sometimes the strokes are distorted (usually near ends or sharp cusps) but the number of nodes in the resulting shape is not too big, and for simple strokes it gives good results. >Actually, having looked at the patch, I think we really need to leave >this 'til the next release. Three reasons: First, it's in C++ and we >had decided to hold off on changes that commit us to C++ until 0.37. What is the value of preserving plain C compilability? Will people complain if we require C++ for 0.36? I, for one, do not care what is the compiler, so long as the program works :) >Second, it's a good bit of code, and deserves to be tested. The best way to test is to release! We're not doing 1.0, after all. It's just a 0. release. >Third, we >will need to do some additional development (buttons, etc.) to integrate >it. I could certainly live without buttons - menu commands and shortcuts are quite enough for the time being. Besides, we could borrow buttons from the other patch, and I think I remember seeing the icons somewhere in the sodipodi innards already. So my opinion is this: let's include the four boolean operations and outline path for this release, and then help the author debug the inset/offset operations for the next release. _________________________________________________________________ Get holiday tips for festive fun. http://special.msn.com/network/happyholidays.armx

2 1

Re: [Inkscape-devel] non-ASCII chars
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

>So... it's often good to do 'sanitizing' of input. In this case, where it's >direct user input, speed should not even be a problem. OK, what about: u = g_utf8_get_char (utf8); if (u == (gunichar) -1) { g_warning ("Bad UTF-8 character"); return pos; } if (!g_unichar_isprint (u)) { g_warning ("Non-printable character"); return pos; } is this enough sanitizing? :) _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

3 2

Status of priority-6 bugs for 0.36 release
by Bryce Harrington 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

All of the priority 9 bugs and all of the bugs listed on the roadmap for required the 0.36 release have been resolved and closed. (It's been pretty amazing how much intensity was placed into bug fixing this last week; 20 bugs closed!) The remaining priority-6 bugs are listed and commented on below. My thought was that the priority-6 bugs "would be nice to close" but were not required. We've closed a number of them, and I think the remainder can be left for a future release. If anyone feels differently on any of these, speak up now. Bryce [ 851467 ] Export selection bounds too small There is a patch for this that John Stracke is developing for Sodipodi. If we wait a tad longer it might become more matured. See Sodipodi Bug#758775 for the patch. [ 841633 ] Icons problem for win32 I'd like to get confirmation that this still occurs, as I suspect the GtkButton rework may have resolved it. It doesn't cause a crash and sounds like its platform dependent, though. If the problem still exists, then it should be made high priority for the next release. [ 850936 ] .32 crashes when setting printer destination It no longer crashes but it does emit an ERROR message. This should receive high priority in the next release but may be acceptable for 0.36. [ 853804 ] SVG COMPLIANCE: Paths shown will fill when fill:none The issue is that "file: none;" and "fill:none;" behave differently for the given case. This is important for importing SVG but perhaps one we can leave 'til next release as it doesn't impact general use. [ 852619 ] XML editor crash There are a couple XML editor related bugs, but they appear unrelated. This particular bug is uncovered after a sequence of steps that may not be encountered by most users in general usage. [ 50549 ] spiral crash This is an easy bug to reproduce, however the spiral shape does not seem like one that would normally get heavy use. [ 847886 ] transformation inaccuracies The change from float to double addressed part of the bug, the remainder appears to be a legitimate issue but may not be noticeable to regular users. [ 851937 ] Postscript file output does not respect document size More of a feature request than a bug, I think. [ 851131 ] Print preview does nothing I'm not sure if print preview is implemented, as it's never worked for me. I've commented out the menu item. If this *does* work for anyone, let me know so we can leave it in but mark it a 'known issue', and get it fixed. Otherwise we should list high on the feature request list. [ 853858 ] errors when copying objects between docs Bulia estimates this will require too much effort to fix for 0.36. It's listed as a known issue on the release notes page. [ 850971 ] Crash while deleting too much using the XML editor This bug is in regards to deleting the sodipodi namedview element via the XML editor. I looked into the code to see if there was an easy way to trap it but to do it right it looks like it would take some research. Since it's an unusual error I don't think a quick fix would be appropriate, and some time should be taken during the next release cycle to find a good solution. [ 851779 ] Style property "currentColor" not used properly This is another compliance issue for importing SVG files. Specifically, from gnuplot.

4 4

RE: libgsf + Inkscape
by Bryce Harrington 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Dom Lachowicz wrote: > > > I'll work on getting at least the API documentation up-to-snuff during > >the > > > coming week. On the whole, the parts I envision a project like Inkscape > > > using strongly resemble STDIO's FILE operations enough for a strong > > > similarity to be found. > > I just committed a bunch of documentation. We're a bunch closer to 100% API > documentation now. Very cool. May want to think about a webpage too... at the least, a list of features. > >The Inkscape file management is one area in need of major reworking. > >Since Inkscape is at root a file editor, having powerful file management > >capabilities is important. As well, some currently only blue-sky ideas > >are brought within feasible reach by having support for things like > >WebDAV, archive access/extraction, etc. Several libs including libgfs, > >gnome-vfs, and neon have been suggested. We will be using one of these > >rather than creating our own, so we can focus our energies into SVG > >editing. ;-) > > I'm not familiar with neon, but I can definitively say that LibGSF better > fits your needs than GnomeVFS. At a bare minimum, we're able to piggyback > directly on top of GnomeVFS if you so choose, and with much less hassle. > With LibGSF, you get superb portability to other platforms and a wide > variety of inputs and outputs. Your application is inherently pluggable, at > least in terms of "file sinks." Possibly libgsf and neon would obviate any need for gnome-vfs but I haven't really looked in enough depth to say for sure. I haven't confirmed that gnome-vfs actually supports WebDAV, and if it does, how good the support is. WebDAV is composed of a number of different methods, some basic (GET, PUT, HEAD), others more advanced (MOVE, MKCOL, PROPFIND, etc.) So when a lib or app says it supports WebDAV you have to check 'how much'. Neon supports a wide range of them, according to its feature list. http://www.webdav.org/neon/ > As a side note, I've grown a bit bored with working on LibRSVG. I'll have to > check out Inkscape. We'd love to have you, we've been quite impressed with what you've done with librsvg. The project's quite fun - progress is swift, there's a good teamwork attitude, and plenty of room for new ideas. > >Alan had mentioned it also supported WebDAV? > > If GnomeVFS supports WebDAV, so would we. If not, we could add a plugin to > LibGSF probably pretty easily. Have a look at Neon and let me know what you think. Would it be feasible to use it in conjunction with libgsf? > >Cool, it sounds like this would take care of several user feature > >requests we've had such as cut and paste operability between Inkscape > >and AbiWord. There's also been interest voiced into bonobo. Most of us > >don't have much depth in the tech behind these so the more help/advice > >available, the easier it'd make it. > > Yeah, if it'd be possible to get at least image/png and image/svg on the > clipboard, that'd be awesome. And if you could make Inkscape into a > BonoboControl, that'd be sweet too. With LibGSF, you'd be able to load and > save things from BonoboStreams insanely easily. The direction we're heading is to make wrapperization of the app easier, whether that be with Python bindings (via SWIG?), Bonobo, or even a kind of SVG Canvas. Being able to plug inkscape into other things opens lots of very interesting uses of it. That, plus being able to interact with files (or svg streams generally) through network connections... I'm not sure I can imagine all the uses, but it would certainly make things possible that haven't been before. > >Yes I noticed these in the API docs, but I was wondering what the > >motivation for inclusion of them in this was? Are there special XML > >file management capabilities it provides over what'd be available from a > >generic XML library? > > Well, there is a really easy routine to create a XmlParseCtx from a > GsfInput. There are also a bunch of nice SAX utils. There is also a nice set > of functions for writing XML documents. I'm not sure if either is > appropriate for your needs, but they're there if you need them. Cool, thanks. Bryce

1 0

real world usability test
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

Today my 5 years old daughter spent about 20 minutes in Inkscape, drawing stars. She enjoyed it a lot. She had no problem understanding the role of the selector button ("click it and then you can move your stars around"), node edit button ("click it and you can do funny things to a star by moving those small dots in it") and the star itself. She also used ctrl-z often. The main reason for joy is that the program did not crash :) There were some problems; the biggest bummer was when she accidentally grabbed the handle of the main toolbar and detached it - then she clicked on the canvas and the toolbar was gone! Bad, bad Inkscape. Also, the lack of a palette was a bit of an inconvenience, although I switched the fill&stroke dialog to HSV and she had no problems dragging the hue slider to get different colors for her stars (with two other sliders set to maximum). Overall, I think the program passed this test :) I don't think it would be that enjoyable with Sodipodi, with its myriad of confusing buttons and sinking windows... _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

2 1

Re: [Inkscape-devel] max undo
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

> > One thing: right now subsequent arrow-key movements are stored as >separate > > undo steps. I'd like to combine all adjacent moves in one direction >(only > > horizontal or only vertical) in one step. Is there already a mechanism >for > > that, or do I have to dig into the undo system to implement it? > >Yes, there's already a facility present for that: >sp_document_maybe_done(). Thanks for the pointer. I tried this but it did not work until I replaced: doc->actionkey = NULL; by doc->actionkey = key; in sp_document_maybe_done(). This fix seems logical to me, but it's not my code so please confirm that it's correct. I've just committed a version that puts subsequent same-direction arrow-key movements into one undo step (in both selector and node edit) so you can test how it works. Previously, maybe_done was only used in the item properties dialog (which is planned for elimination btw). _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

2 1

Re: [Inkscape-devel] max undo
by bulia byak 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

>Realistically, are users ever going to backtrack through more than ~300 >levels of undo anyway? Easy :) Real drawing sessions may span hours and hours. Right now, however, a crash is a more likely outcome of being in Inkscape for too long, but in the future... My opinion is that a vector app must have unlimited undo, or at least very large. It's the promise of the vector: everything is preserved, no loss of information. Unlimited undo is part of that appeal. One thing: right now subsequent arrow-key movements are stored as separate undo steps. I'd like to combine all adjacent moves in one direction (only horizontal or only vertical) in one step. Is there already a mechanism for that, or do I have to dig into the undo system to implement it? _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE 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…

6 11