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Extension parameters
by Romain Thouvenin 21 Feb '07

21 Feb '07

I wanted to slight modify webbrower_* extensions so that they directly bring to the web page in the relevant language when it exists. I thought the good way to do that would have been to give the address as a translatable parameter that is not set by the user, but I didn't find how to do that, it seems impossible. I guess it is impossible, since there are several extensions for visiting a web page. Am I right ? Do you have an idea to work around my problem ? Maybe using a parameter proposing the different languages to the user ? Romain

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Marker menu dynamic updating
by Bryce Harrington 21 Feb '07

21 Feb '07

I've committed a fix to one of the marker menu bugs. Previously, the marker menu had been split to show markers in the <defs> above the line only if they were non-stock markers. However, the problem happens that if one alters the stock marker in the <defs> section without changing its ID, it doesn't show at all in the menu. Now, the menu shows ALL markers from <defs> above the line, regardless of whether they're stock or not. This obviously has the downside that for people who use a lot of stock markers, the menu will get cluttered, however I suspect that may be a less common use case than we thought initially. Also, a more important underlying change is that in order to do this I've added some svg preview cache code based on code used by the icon renderer. This allows us to render each marker preview once, instead of three times (once for each menu), and avoids performance trouble if the marker menu is dynamically changed. (I needed to dynamically update the marker menus when selecting stock id's to ensure that if you select a stock id, it immediately shows up in the above-the-line markers in all three menus.) This will also eventually help solve a problem where if you have the fill-and-stroke dialog open when switching between two docs with custom markers, it doesn't update properly; I haven't fixed this, but just need to figure out how to hook in with the callback for "document selection changed". (This dynamic marker menu underlying structure is also needed for future anticipated changes to the marker system...) Bryce

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Senior Project: SVG Crush
by Ted Gould 21 Feb '07

21 Feb '07

Hey, So as we're talking about GSoC I also realized it's time to come up with an idea for a senior project. Here's the one I'm thinking about proposing. I'd love it if anyone has any ideas or suggestions about how to improve it. SVG Crunch SVG is a XML vector graphics format standardized by the W3C for use in the Web. It is currently supported by most major browsers and is increasingly being seen on websites. As it continues to grow in popularity economic pressures will start to come into play. Even though bandwidth has become cheaper, it is still not free. This project is to create a utility to remove excess information in an SVG file to reduce its overall size. Phase One -- Basic XML compression -- There are some basic things that can be done to an XML file to make it smaller. Things like removing spaces and carriage returns. Also renaming name spaces from things like "mathml" to "m". The optimizations are simple but important. At the end of this phase the file should be no different to an XML parser. Phase Two -- SVG Compression -- SVG provides several ways that file size can be reduced as part of the format. These some of these include: using a "pointer tag" (use) to refer to objects that are identical; allowing style to inherit down the XML hierarchy; groups to take style for a set of objects; and many more. These optimizations should be applied to the document in order to reduce the size of the file. At the end of this phase the files should render no differently on an SVG renderer. Phase Three -- Display specific compression -- As a vectored format SVG provides elements that can be rendered at any resolution, but rarely does a graphic on the web need to be zoomed in at 1600%. This phase of the compression should focus on removing the precision of numbers and in some cases removing points that are unnecessary based on a target resolution provided by the user. At the end of this phase the files should look no different to a human at the target resolution. This project will be developed and published as an open source project. It can be done in any language that has an XML library available for it. Thanks, Ted

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8080s no more
by Aaron Spike 21 Feb '07

21 Feb '07

I think we've fixed the 8080s in the wiki urls. Try to prove me wrong. Aaron Spike

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Fixed_g_ascii_strtod
by unknown＠example.com 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

Due to a recent compile error, I have found the following in fixed.cpp: /* * until 2004-04-22, g_ascii_strtod could not handle having a locale-based * decimal separator immediately following the number ("5,4" would * parse to "5,4" instead of "5.0" in fr_FR) * * This is the corrected function, lifted from 1.107 gstrfuncs.c in glib */ It defines a function fixed_g_ascii_strtod and config.h defines a macro to point g_ascii_strtod to fixed_g_ascii_strtod. Perhaps it is ok now to purge the fixed function from our code and use the normal function? (trying to build now with "#define g_ascii_strtod fixed_g_ascii_strtod" commented out, but since that'll take a while a decided to already mail this) Cheers, Johan

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Google Summer of Code 2007
by Tobias Jakobs 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

Hi, Google is doing it again. Here is the link: http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/02/speaking-of-summer.html Regards, Tobias

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"Implementing UI Changes"
by Bryce Harrington 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

There is definite "method to the madness" for making UI changes, but afaik there hasn't been a definitive location for outlining the general guidelines on UI changes. Perhaps the best place would be in the Inkscape Developer's Manual, so I've started a section here: http://wiki.inkscape.org:8080/wiki/index.php/DeveloperManual#Implementing_U… Please review and add. I don't think we need exhausting details, just explain what the general motivations/principles are that Inkscape UI developers should strive to follow. Bryce

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SCaLE Roundup
by Ted Gould 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

Hey all, I thought I'd write up a quick summary of SCaLE, hopefully everyone else who was there can add to (and correct) what I've put here. -- The Booth -- I was a bit concerned that this year we'd just run into the same people as last year. That was definitely not the case. On the most basic level, I'd say that 50% of the people we talked to hadn't heard of Inkscape. We definitely got the word out there. But, I think there were some other notable conversations. - Both of the companies doing network monitoring are interested in doing network maps using SVG. I thought that was pretty cool. They were talking about SVG even before we talked to them. - We got visits from two people from studios in LA. I don't really believe that either will turn into anything, but it was interesting, and probably good to get buzz into that community. Interestingly, one asked if Inkscape was in RHEL 4, and I didn't know. I talked to the Redhat guys, and they built the package right there. There is now Inkscape for RHEL 4 :) - We met the editor of Linux Gazette, and his wife. Apparently she was needing vector illustration to make the move off of Windows. She was trilled to find a way to move to Linux. - We talked with a guy who works at RPI and wants to remove the Adobe CS from their curriculum and replacing it with Open Source tools. Apparently they don't really teach the tools, as much as they use them to teach about work flow. So each student has to buy the full suite for a minor amount of functionality overall. He's working to change that. - Linux.com stopped by. Their overview was pretty flattering, and now is on the Inkscape site. He asked if I'd do an interview, and I didn't realize it was going to be video. You can now watch me stumble over my words trying to say something insightful. - I did an interview with the booth next to us (everyone else was scared). They hired a 'booth babe' to make a video asking stupid questions of conference attendees. It was cute. But I have to harass John Tabor for giving me misinformation about the whole thing :) -- The BOF -- We had the bird of a feather which went very well. We were a bit shocked that they didn't leave the projector in the room, so Josh wasn't able to show all the artwork he collected from folks to show off Inkscape. John showed a little bit of mapping stuff as we had a good group of people huddling around his laptop. There were several people who just wanted to know more about Inkscape, but there were some experienced users also. In particular, there was a guy from Ticketmaster that uses Inkscape to prototype websites. Overall, it was a good crowd and discussion, and we could have definitely gone longer than the hour we were allotted. -- The Talk -- I gave a talk about Inkscape Extensions, with the goal of inspiring new developers to jump on board. I was really worried that it was going to go long, but I was actually about 10 minutes short. They said that it was going to be recorded, but it was not. Josh has some video, but the audio isn't good. Hopefully some post processing will help. For those who want to flip through the slides, they are here: http://gould.cx/ted/presentations/scale5x/ Overall, I think we did pretty good. It's always fun to get together with Inkscapers and hang out. Even promoting Inkscape some. Thanks go to everyone who helped out: Jon, John, Josh, Erin and Hillery. --Ted

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I'm back... and whitespace
by Jon A. Cruz 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Whew. After a not-too-fun delay, I'm finally back. I got a dev environment going based on Darwinports too, so I'm finally on GTK+ 2.10.7 instead of the 2.6 that Fink had stalled at. And for my first large commit, I fixed some DOS line-ends that had come around when I wasn't looking. I just wanted to point that out in case someone had been working in one of those files and gets some conflicts.

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Cairo PDF
by Aaron Spike 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

I just looked through the last two months of the Cairo Mailing list. I found it encouraging that even though we don't have any Inkscape advocates working explicitly on perfecting Cairo's PDF output, they continue to move along and make advances. When we get around to fixing the gradient rasterization issue, I think it will feel really nice to a continuous (no matter how gradual) stream of PDF enhancements for free. Just a little extra encouragement, if anyone has the desire to look into this. As far as I know Miklós' patches are still waiting for some polish work: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2007-January/009075.html http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2007-January/009080.html Aaron Spike

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