- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

Document Unit Change problems.
by Tavmjong Bah 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

Hi, Trunk/experimental has the ability to change the "Document Unit" in the Document Preferences dialog. Changing the unit changes 'lengths' throughout the document. This process has quite a few problems as demonstrated by the number of bugs reported. In order to get a handle on these problems, I've started a Wiki page to track the issues and to get an idea about possible solutions: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Units_In_Inkscape:_Document_Unit_Ch… The problems are quite complex. The simplest solution for the short-term (on the 0.91 release time scale) might be to just disable document unit changes. Please look at the page and add your comments, bugs, etc. Thanks, Tav

2 2

Bug with pixel perfect SVG
by Fabien Sanglard 23 Sep '14

23 Sep '14

Hello, I am trying to open in Inkspace (Mac OS X v0.48) a SVG file (wolfd_4.svg) that is a pixel perfect version of a PNG (wolf3d_4.png). Chrome and Safari are able to render the image well (chrome_rendition.png and safari_rendition.png). However when loaded in Inkspace (inkspace_rendition.png), I can see gaps between the squares that are supposed to be pixels. Is there any way to fix this ? Fabien PS: Safari Mac OS X v7.0.6 (9537.78.2) Chrome Mac OS X v37.0.2062.94

7 10

Changing trunk to 96 pixels per inch.
by Tavmjong Bah 22 Sep '14

22 Sep '14

Hi, The experimental branch has been using 96 pixels per inch per the CSS 2.1 standard for over two months now without complaint. Is there any objection to switching trunk to this value? As Inkscape has switched to using 'pt' for text size by default, it is important that this change happen to ensure that the size of text rendered in browsers match the size of text rendered in Inkscape. Tav

8 22

Paying for Downloads
by Martin Owens 22 Sep '14

22 Sep '14

I've here at Free Software Day (Boston) and have just completed a panel on the economics of Free Software development. Something which came up and something I want to have a serious discussion about is the implementation of an opportunity to donate screen like libreOffice: http://donate.libreoffice.org/home/dl/deb-x86_64/4.3.1/en-US/LibreOffice_4.… If one clicks on this link, it waits a few seconds and gives you the file. But as well as the file it also offers you an opportunity to donate/contribute to the project. I'd like to implement this for inkscape.org but it would have to be blessed by the community since other developers are users may have valid concerns which should be taken into account with this format. Things I'm thinking about: * Making sure we have suggested amounts * Offering something in return? Maybe offer an ability to buy swag? * What is SFC's position on these kinds of pages? * Have an invitation to contribute other things. Time, bug tracking etc? * Give donators a badge on their website user? I'm looking for any contribution to this discussion, good or bad. Please let me know what you think. Best Regards, Martin Owens

7 8

Windows testing needed
by Josh Andler 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

Can someone on Windows please apply the following patch and check to see if it affects building? https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1323592/+attachment/4184115/+files… Cheers, Josh

3 2

Inkscape Hackfest Planning IRC Report #1
by Tavmjong Bah 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Contents: * Introduction * Hackfest LGM * Hackfest FOSDEM * Updating FSA * Mac OSX Introduction ============ A group of interested Inkscape developers met via IRC with Karen Sandler, the Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)[1]. The primary motive for the meeting was to discuss organizing a hackfest in conjunction with the 2015 Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) at the end of April in Toronto.[2] If you are interested in participating, please add your name at: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Hackfest2015 We also briefly discussed updating the Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement (FSA) and the Mac OSX port. We will meet again next week at the same time (Monday 19:00 UTC, 21:00 CEST, 15:00 EDT, 12:00 PDT) at inkscape-devel on freenode. Hackfest LGM ============ Hackfest: Location ------------------ Two possibilities: Toronto: Advantage: No extra travel required. Cheaper hotels, etc.? Disadvantage: Need to find local host. Boston: Advantage: There are many possible places to hold the hackfest. Disadvantage: Extra travel to/from Toronto. US Visa requirements. Possible place: MIT * Martin is contacting LGM to see if they can help us find space. Hackfest: Costs --------------- What will Inkscape pay for? Travel, accommodation, food for sponsored attendees? Refreshments? Equipment? Video projector? We need to decide who to sponsor. Probably 10, maybe up to 20 people. Preferably those with a "job to do" and not just passers-by. Hackfest: Topics ---------------- Code and documentation, see web page for ideas (and add your own). We should outreach to new contributors; maybe have a training period the first morning. Hackfest: Sponsors ------------------ We discussed who might sponsor a hackfest (and why they might). * Karen will inquire with RedHat and Google. * Bryce will contact Samsung. * Intel? Canonical? * ScislaC will compile a list of companies using Inkscape. Hackfest: FOSDEM ================ It might be possible to have a "warm-up" hackfest at FOSDEM.[3] Hacking is one of the main activities at this conference and there should be no problem finding space. FOSDEM 2015 is the weekend of 31 January/1 February in Brussels. Updating the FSA ================ Before we started discussing the hackfest, we briefly discussed updating our Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement (FSA) with SFC. Inkscape was one of the first groups to join FSA and our FSA is a bit out-dated. There are at least two places where changes are needed: 1. The SFC is financed by its members. Member groups are required to give 10% of the funds they raise to the SFC. Inkscape's agreement predates this requirement. The SFC would like to see Inkscape's FSA brought into alignment. The Inkscape board has agreed in principle to this change. 2. Inkscape needs an active board to successfully manage Inkscape's resources. At the moment, board member serve until they resign or until they are removed by a majority vote of the community members. It would good to have a criteria for removing inactive board members without the need for a potentially disruptive vote by the community members. Karen and Bradley will be at the Google Summer of Code Mentor's meet-up as will three Inkscape board members. This will be a good time to finalize the new agreement. Mac OSX ======= We discussed the status of the native Mac OSX port and the possibility of paying a developer to finish it off. The port is done but there seem to be problems with the underlying libraries (Wayland or gtk+/quartz).

1 0

IRC meeting for hackfest planning and fundraising
by Bryce Harrington 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

When: Tomorrow, Monday Sept 15th at 12 noon (3pm eastern) Where: #inkscape-devel on Freenode IRC Who: Inkscape team; Karen Sandler Karen and I will be discussing plans/ideas for an upcoming Inkscape hackfest. The principal topic we want to discuss is the fundraising/budgeting side of things, but other aspects are within scope. All are welcomed to attend, but this will mostly be interesting to people wishing to help out in organizing the hackfest and/or fundraisers. Bryce

3 3

Merging Policy
by Tavmjong Bah 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

Hi, The merge of the latest features from Liam into the Experimental branch raises the question of best practices for merging. In particular, I am not sure that merging multiple features at one time is a good idea. Other projects seem to divide commits into the smallest possible pieces. I think that this is good practice as it better documents what is being committed, allows for better reviews, and makes it easier to cherry-pick from one branch to another. In particular, the commit message: "Merge in ponyscape features by Theo and worked on my LiamW" doesn't give any information about what are the purpose of the changes. It takes reading the code and/or searching the web to find this information. (See: http://liamwhite1.deviantart.com/journal/ ) As far as I can tell, the commit: 1. Adds the new LPE's: * Attach path * Bounding box * Ellipse * Fill between many * Fill between strokes * Joint type * Taper stroke 2. A tagging system. 3. Objects dialog. 4. Multi-path manipulator 5. Filter effects chooser. I think these should have been committed separately with a line or two explaining what each does. Also, each LPE should be a separate commit. As an additional question: is the experimental branch going to become 0.92? I think there have been too many changes to the experimental branch to try to merge it with trunk. Tav

6 6

Units in Inkscape
by Tavmjong Bah 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

Units in Inkscape ================= Introduction ----------- The recent debate about units in Inkscape highlights the fact that we do not have a clearly defined approach on how to handle units in Inkscape. Units are not as straight-forward as one should think they are. This essay attempts to resolve this problem. Historical View --------------- Part of the problem with units in SVG and CSS in general is why they are there in the first place. In the early days it was assumed that one would want to display drawings on a screen at full scale. In other words, a "one inch square" would be display on a screen as a physical one inch square. This required that displays be queryable as to what there true DPI was. Display manufactures rarely provided the means to query the DPI of the display, and when they did, they often returned incorrect results. Thus, the use of "real" units never became popular and in reality is usually not what one wanted. Eventually, after long arguments, the CSS working group dictated that one inch would be fixed to 96 pixels regardless of screen resolution (ironically, with so called "Retina" displays, there is once again interest in scaling drawings based on DPI). A Philosophy ------------ Absolute units should not be used inside an SVG file with one exception: The 'root' width and height may have units, which with a proper 'viewBox' determines an appropriate scale for a drawing. (This sets the 'real' world value of the SVG 'user unit.) This reflect the opinion of the majority of the SVG working group. It should be noted that the relative units 'em', 'ex', and '%' can be useful in some cases. Inkscape & Units ---------------- Inkscape should not write out absolute units other than in the root SVG element. Inkscape must, however, be able to interpret units from non-Inkscape produced files according to the CSS defined value of 96 pixels (initial user-units) per inch. The use of units in the Inkscape GUI is for ease of authoring only. The actual values should be stored as 'user-units'. Changing the "Inkscape GUI unit" should not introduce any 'transforms' on elements (as seems to being done now) nor should changing the SVG root 'width'/'height units or the 'viewBox'. The GUI should reflect the chosen Inkscape GUI unit scaled to take into account the SVG root 'width'/'height' and 'viewBox'. For example: <svg width="100mm" height="100mm" viewBox="0 0 100 100"> describes a drawing 100mm x 100mm where one 'user-unit' is equivalent to one mm. If the Inkscape property inkscape:document-units="mm" then the GUI would show a width of '25.4' for a rectangle 25.4 'user-units' wide. If inkscape:document-units="in", the GUI would show '1.0'. To implement this, one either needs to find the proper scaling from examining the SVG root 'width'/'height' and 'viewBox' properties or create a new Inkscape property that fixes this scale (in which case changing the 'width'/'height' would change the 'viewBox' and vice versa). Tav

8 26

Re: [Inkscape-devel] Units in Inkscape
by mathog 12 Sep '14

12 Sep '14

On 11-Sep-2014 10:23, Nathan Hurst wrote: > Ok, that's another vote for using double precision everywhere. That > gets us 14-15 digits, which should be enough for anybody. Adding more digits to the numerical representation does not in itself provide numerical stability, it just makes it easier to sweep the problem under the carpet of "looking at a smallish number of digits". Conversely, at least with respect to this units question, numerical stability, which for the purposes of this conversation means when a diff of two SVG's shows no changes, can be achieved if the lengths and coordinates inside the document are never changed, instead only one transform (or its equivalent) at the top level is. Then an end user could flip endlessly between different document units and never corrupt the numerical representations in the drawing. The only change that would show up, if no other changes were made, would be the values for that one transform. This assumes that the code did this: "we are currently using mm, user wants inches, REPLACE document unit transform with the pixels to inch transform" If instead it did: "we are currently using mm, user wants inches, MULTIPLY document transform by mm to inches conversion" then the single unit transform itself might not be numerically stable. (It could be if all of the units scaling factors have terminating binary representations with precision to spare, and the same is true for all combinations of their products.) Regards, David Mathog mathog@...1176... Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

3 2