- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

20 Nov '07

To all the devs out there, I just wanted to send a warm-hearted THANKS for Inkscape and all your work. I have been using it to design my house plans and without this wonderful free-of-chains tool, my options would have been dismal and slight. Your work is making a difference in the world; Inkscape is a marvel and I'm sure you never get thanked enough. Regards, Donn Ingle South Africa.

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Online vectorizing application
by jiho 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

Hello everyone, I just found out about this app developed at Stanford: http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ which offers high quality bitmap vectorization/tracing through and online interface. There is a comparison of its output with Adobe and Corel's ones. The good part is that Inkscape's trace (well Potrace one actually) is already _way_ better than those two ;) However, VectorMagic takes it even a step higher. Their output is really nice. For comparison purposes I created a file with their test images, Inkscape's trace and VectorMagic trace: http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/VectorMagicTests.svgz Bear in mind that their second image is hand tweaked in the middle of the tracing process and that mine are probably not the best Inkscape/ Potrace can do. I tried to tweak Potrace's parameters the best I could but I am no expert. Be that as it may, their output is still superior, particularly on the first image. Since it is developed in a university lab I wonder how they would license it. Maybe getting them a bit exited about Inkscape would incline them toward putting their code under a license liberal enough for Inkscape to use it. I did not contact them but I think it would be a good thing if someone more officially involved in Inkscape contacted them and discussed a possible collaboration, or at least pointed them to the traces Inkscape/Potrace can produce. I would love to see a fifth column on their comparison page with Inkscape kicking Adobe and Corel's a.... ;) Anyway, even currently their tracing service can be very useful to Inkscape users (they export SVG!). JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

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Inkscape under KDE - focus question
by Donn 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

Hi, I know KDE can do all kinds of funky tricks with windows and focus etc. I was wondering if anyone out there has a way to do this: Make the floating dialogues (like align) release the focus (perhaps when the mouse is away) so that the main canvas keeps it. I am quite worn down by all the click one has to do to get the focus (keyboard) back onto the canvas between uses of dialogues -- one has to click the title bar so selections are not lost and then carry on. So, it's click, select, click the dialogue, work, click title bar, continue, repeat. I could set focus to follow mouse, but that affects *all* other apps and it's not cool. Just wondering. /d -- If there is anyone in the audience who believes in telekinesis, please raise my hand! -- James Randi

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Inkscape architecture - another idea
by Donn 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

Hi all, I have been back on my house plans for a day and one thing just occurred to me: I am having trouble setting a scale. It sounds simple enough: pick a unit, call it X mm's and carry on. But, the plans have been to a draughtsman and back, into the scanner and onto a bottom layer. So I am tracing (drawing over) those drawings and his scale is 1:100 which after the scan and the resize to fit A4 is anyone's guess :) So, my idea is this: Have a tool that one can snap from one point to another -- say along a line of known world length (call it 6000mm) and have it set the the grid size accordingly. I'm not gifted numerically, so giving particulars is unlikely to happen soon, but I'd say that if the grid could mark-off 1 "meter" and 0.5 "meter" lines according to the 6000 "mm" ( which is some random pixel count after all the resizing/scanning ) such that they visually match that same line - it would be very helpful. So, after using the tool, I'd be able to draw a line next to the original (which is marked at 6000mm) and my line would be (say) 600px. I'd also have a grid across the whole drawing set accordingly. (Oh, while I'm on it - a way to click a point on a corner of the drawing to say : start the grid here!) I guess it would have to fiddle with the overall matrix of the drawing, but here I lose all credibility :) Sorry if this is garbled, I'm still waking up and in a rush to meet the builder and ... I gotta go! Now - go forth and write code because *I* said so :D :P /d

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Cloning clones
by unknown＠example.com 18 Nov '07

18 Nov '07

Hi all, Right now the cloning ctrl+D explanation text says: "Create a clone (a copy linked to the original) of selected object" This was confusing for me, since I read it as: Create a clone. A copy linked to the original of the selected object. I'd like to add a feature that does what I initially tought ctrl+D did: create a clone of the original of an object. This way I can clone around without making enormous clone chains. (often i have the original somewhere off-canvas, and it is much easier to clone a clone) shortcut = Ctrl+Alt+D Does this make sense? What would be the explaining text? "Create a clone of the original of selected object" Thanks, Johan

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Icon sizes in Inkscape UI
by Michael Grosberg 18 Nov '07

18 Nov '07

Hi, I'm trying to create icons for Inkscape's Tango icon set. I noticed that while the icons in the current default set are designed as 16x16 pixel icons, they are rendered as 13X13 icons. I tried first to recreate the import and export icons. They look fine on the toolbar, but in the menu they don't look well at all. Strangely, the other icons look somewhat better. It almost looks as if the two icons I created are being rescaled using a "nearest neighbor" algorithm instead of interpolation. I checked and double checked - they are exactly on the grid and in the same size as the rest of the icons. So, I'd like to know, first, as long as this size is used, what should I do to make the icons look OK? Secondly, why was the 13X13 pixels size used in the first place? As far as I know Inkscape is the only app using this size. I also noticed odd icon sizes both in the SVG file (such as 27X27 icons) and on Ubuntu, some icons that should be small such as the four "affect" buttons at the end of the select and transform toolbar are excessively large. One more question I'd like to open for debate is, are too many icons used in the menus? Usually, only "important" features get icons, to make them more easily recognizable in a long menu. Giving everything an icon misses the point because easy recognition is no longer possible. We can still have all the icons in the icons.svg file, but I think the number of actually used icons in the menu should be lower.

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new button
by bulia byak 17 Nov '07

17 Nov '07

Jon, what is that new button you added to the main UI? For me it's just disabled so I have no idea what it does. Judging by the code, it has something to do with "adjusting the display". Do you think this adjusting has to happen so often as to deserve a button right where you added it? I think any adjustments are best kept in preferences. In any case, the place you chose for the button is most unfortunate. I always hide the scrollbars to free some extra room for the canvas, and now this just results in two empty strips of unused space to the left and upwards from your button. In other words, your single button takes as much space as the two scrollbars! Please reconsider this. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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2Geom assertions => exceptions
by unknown＠example.com 17 Nov '07

17 Nov '07

Hi all, I've made a nice system to replace the 2geom assertions I think (this is what makes LPE crash in at least one case). Please have a look of what I coded into the 2geom dir of Inkscape now [1]. My next step is to change asserts into assert_invariants, such that an exception is thrown instead of a terminate(). I'd also like to splice the exception stuff from utils.h into a separate file. Planning on moving this to lib2geom svn head very soon; just give a shout when it's not any good! Cheers, Johan [1]: http://inkscape.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/src/2 geom/utils.h?revision=16507&view=markup

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today's compile error
by bulia byak 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

main.cpp: In function 'void sp_do_export_png(SPDocument*)': main.cpp:981: error: 'errno' was not declared in this scope main.cpp:981: error: 'ERANGE' was not declared in this scope -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [Inkscape-user] Improved performance of the object snapper
by bulia byak 16 Nov '07

16 Nov '07

On Nov 16, 2007 12:04 PM, Diederik van Lierop <mail@...1689...> wrote: > bulia byak wrote: > > IMHO the key thing here is not just snapping to extensions of bbox, > > but _visualizing_ what it is that you snap to. In AI, it flashes the > > snap line when it snaps. We need to add infrastructure that would > > enable such displays when snapping, then smart guides will be easy. > > > > Absolutely! It's also needed for the post-snap visualization that was > discussed a few months ago, in which something lights up for a second at > the point that has snapped. What would be a good starting point in the > code to find out how such a thing would be drawn to the canvas? Do you > already have passive elements like that, not allowing user interaction > and disappearing after some time? Of course. We have a number of classes that draw various helper things on the canvas. These classes handle proper canvas redraw (so you don't have to worry about that) and usually have methods for setting coordinates, colors, showing/hiding etc. Note that unlike regular objects, these helper thingies can use inverse color so they are visible on any background. But these classes do not do any user interaction; that is performed by upstream classes that uses these display classes. They also have no provisions for automatically disappearing after a time, that you will need to add in your own code. Here they are: display/sp-ctrlline - draws a straight line, used by node tool bezier handles and by gradient tool for gradient lines display/sodipodi-ctrrect - draws an upright rectangle, used for rubberband selection display/sodipodi-ctrl - draws a number of various small fixed-size shapes, such as diamond, circle etc; used for knots and nodes display/sp-ctrlquadr - draws an arbitrary quadrilateral, used for text selection display/canvas-bpath - draws an arbitrary path with antialiasing, used for the red helper path in Node tool and for Pen tool, as well as for Tweak tool's circle (note: this one is slightly buggy, it leaves behind some dirt on the canvas; I want to switch it to using cairo but it's not yet possible due to incompatibility of buffer formats). You can search the codebase for a lot of examples of using these things. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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