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Linux Questions' Graphics App of the Year - Vote
by Joshua A. Andler 02 Feb '07

02 Feb '07

If Inkscape is your favorite linux graphics app, go hit up the vote. :) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=514972 Votes for all categories (distro, database, text editor, etc.) can be found at: http://www.linuxquestions.org/awards -Josh

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Scheduling of 0.45 final?
by Bryce Harrington 02 Feb '07

02 Feb '07

Hi all (especially translators), It appears we're very near the time to do the final release of 0.45, so it would be good for us to schedule when to tag the final official 0.45.0. If I understand, there are no further code bug fixes planned for this release, but there is still some work related to translations. Is there anything else we are waiting on besides this? E.g., documentation or packaging fixes? For any remaining work (including translations), can anyone that needs more time please tell me when you plan to be finished? Then we can evaluate when to set the release dates. Regarding translations, it looks like some string issues have been identified and discussed. It's a little unclear what the status of these are, but I found a bug item where we could collect all of this information for the release: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1645093&group_id=… Please, if you know of untranslatable strings, spelling errors, or other such issues that still are not fixed in the release branch, can you please add them to this bug? Even if they cannot be fixed for 0.45.0, we should put priority on fixing them for 0.45.1. Thanks, Bryce

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Gaussian Blur filter
by Tavmjong Bah 01 Feb '07

01 Feb '07

Hi, I've been playing with the Gaussian Blur filter for updating my book and have a couple of comments: 1. In the release notes it states that one can achieve a different blur in the vertical and horizontal directions by first stretching a path, then blurring it, and finally shrinking it back. This appears to work only if the path does not have a "transform" attribute after it is stretched. The SVG standard includes a provision for separate x and y blurring and Inkscape seems to have the code in nr_filter-gaussian.cpp to handle this; this seems to be a more natural way to achieve the desired result. A second blur slider could be added. Or what about using "Blur Handles" that function like the rectangle tool corner radius handles? 2. The term "Blur Radius" in the release notes should be defined. A look at the code reveals that it is the Standard Deviation of the Gaussian. This definition maybe has only meaning to the mathematically astute but one should be able to come up with a meaningful definition. 3. Why is a filter object created (or renamed) every time a blurred object is moved? The filter parameters don't change. Why would the filter object ever be renamed? This leads to the general question of how Inkscape handles SVG files that come from other sources. A number of people have complained about Inkscape mangling their files and I think that this is one example of that. Tav

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Interesting things in Xara land
by Joshua A. Andler 01 Feb '07

01 Feb '07

Apparently they got acquired by another company... http://xara.com/press/magix.asp

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [Inkscape-user] Baffling UI
by Joshua A. Andler 01 Feb '07

01 Feb '07

bulia byak wrote: > On 1/30/07, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote: > http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Adobe-Illustrator-CS/… >> (found a better link) >> >From the middle to the left, see warp tool, and twirl >> http://www.coe.fau.edu/abinder/handouts/Itools.htm >> >> These are taken from Adobe Illustrator CS verison 1 > > OK, I admit I wasn't aware of this - it wasn't available in my older > version which I used until recently. It's indeed a good feature. > Different from ours but having its own strengths (and limitations). We > need to catch up, not by copying but by thinking how we can do the > same better and more flexible. > I fired up my copy of AI10 and played with them. Here are some thoughts: They have separate tools for warp, twirl, pucker, bloat, scallop, crystallize, and wrinkle... none of which you can configure (at least not that I could find in my version). I don't have my tablet at the office so I don't know if pressure makes a difference either. It seems like overkill (in typical AI fashion) to have SEVEN tools to accomplish these various (but somewhat similar) tasks. My first question is, do we add this functionality to an existing tool or create a new "distortion" tool? Either way, I propose a bunch of modifiable parameters (including size of affected area, as it seems AI can't do that... at least not with the mouse). Oh and can't forget that if we could enable pressure and tilt interaction for tablets that would totally rock. Anyway, if we go the parameter route, it also seems like a good time to perhaps look experimenting with a "preset" system. So people can save and load presets. If we make it very flexible we could ship with a bunch of presets and also have community contributed presets on the website that people could download. I guess I look at this distortion/modification stuff in the way I'd love to see our brush capabilities go (when we can directly paint with objects/patterns/etc). I believe (easily) loadable sets of options, presets, and brushes will really help foster more community contribution. Some people may not know how to contribute, but, they may be very artistic and willing to give back. This seems to be the case for every other program with loadable brushes and such. I'm not married to any of the above ideas or even believe that this is the best way to go, for the most part I'm just throwing a bunch of ideas out there to stimulate more conversation about this. :) Also, is it my imagination or does this seem like a prime candidate for the live path effects? I will add items from the discussion to a wiki page once the conversation has built up a little more (and other thoughts/ideas are out there). -Josh

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Inkscape roadmap for 0.46 and beyond
by Bryce Harrington 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

Hi all, I think I've mostly finished with the reworking of the roadmap. Thank you to everyone who has provided ideas or critique: http://wiki.inkscape.org:8080/wiki/index.php/Roadmap This shouldn't be taken as gospel, of course. It's likely that tasks will need to be resorted as we move forward, but I think this gives us a starting point to plan around. Two factors I've tried to account for in the prioritization are first, that we have a goal to achieve SVG Mobile (aka SVG Tiny) support by version 0.50, and second that developers are going to want to work on separate aspects of Inkscape in parallel, rather than everyone focusing on one area for one release. Thus I've added categories in each section to roughly define what these different areas are, and have attempted to avoid putting too many tasks in any one area. Please feel free to re-prioritize or elaborate on any of the items here. It would especially be nice if we could more distinctly call out lower level tasks for some of the higher level task descriptions, so that new developers can more easily find things defined well enough for them to work on. Also, linking to mail archives or wiki pages with more info about the tasks would be quite helpful! If you adjust priorities, it would probably be better to move things *later* than earlier. There's no problem with planning to do things far in the future but actually getting them done early! But if we put too many things into 0.46, it could get a bit overwhelming. One of the things that's gotten really clear is that if we really do want to get SVG Mobile support by 0.50, then we're going to need to start thinking about cutting ground on Animation. Fortunately the spec only requires "Basic Animation support", with a subset of the features, so it sounds pretty doable if we give ourselves plenty of time and do some really good brain storming on it. For 0.46, we could focus on conceptual definition - what we want, how it should work, and so forth. I know a lot of people have good ideas on this, so it's probably going to be mostly a matter of getting those ideas recorded and organized, so future prototypers have something to inspire and guide their work. Bryce

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Mac OSX package status
by Aaron Spike 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

Have we made any progress toward Mac packages for this release? Aaron Spike

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] [Inkscape-user] Layers dropdown
by bulia byak 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

On 1/31/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote: > Inkscape could benefit from a similar approach, but it surely needs a > lot of thinking first. My humble opinion is that beginner vs. > advanced profiles won't work because one can be quite advanced in > some areas (eg node editing) and beginning in others (eg. color > management). Furthermore, a beginner and an advanced users > essentially have the same goals, it's just that the beginner does not > know how to achieve them and restraining them in a limited or a less > accessible functionality mode won't help them. In addition, as > someone already mentioned: how can one know when he is ready to > switch to advanced mode? Exactly my thoughts. > On the contrary, CAD/technical, diagramming, GIS, artistic, child > modes could be very efficient in exposing only the "right" features > to the user or exposing the same features differently. Indeed, > depending on which kind of work you do, your _goal_ is different and > the application can help you achieve it. Agreed. And as a first step towards this, let's make it easier for the user to make such "profiles" for himself. We really need a "Save as template" command which should be very easy to program based on the "Save a copy". All it has to do is just go to the templates directory in the save dialog, to save the user from wading there on his own (which is confusing and different on different platforms). Any takers? -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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pre2: drop-down lists in extensions on windows broken
by bulia byak 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

I cleared all previous installs and reinstalled pre2 on this winXP machine, but it does not help: in Effects > Generate from path > Pattern along path, the two drop-down lists are empty and cannot be opened. When I run the effect, I get Traceback (most recent call last): File "share\extensions\pathalongpath.py", line 264, in ? e.affect() File "C:\inkscape\share\extensions\inkex.py", line 157, in affect self.effect() File "share\extensions\pathalongpath.py", line 233, in effect if self.options.repeat: AttributeError: Values instance has no attribute 'repeat' Can anyone else confirm this? If it's real, it should be fixed before the release, since this is one of the major new features in 0.45. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] Using Inkscape Canvas for your project
by Jon Phillips 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

<topPost /> Thanks for the reply Damon. I'm cc'ing the Inkscape development list, Bryce Harrington and Mental, two core developers working on this issue. More below... On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 16:07 +0000, Damon Chaplin wrote: > On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 15:37 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote: > > Message body follows: > > > > Hi, have you considered using Inkscape's canvas for your > > project (http://inkscape.org). We are trying to modularize > > our code more so that we can help other projects and get > > more contributors. Plus, we want the benefits of Cairo on > > our app. > > I wanted to create a new cairo-based canvas widget for GTK+ so > Inkscape's canvas wasn't really an option. > > Do you have a list of features of your canvas somewhere? Unfortunately not...plus, it is not modularized well-enough yet...hence we are seeking out if it could be of use to others, and to try and combine efforts on various parts of Inkscape. > Here's the list of GooCanvas Features: > > o Optional model/view split. > o Uses interfaces for items & views. > o Basic items - rect/ellipse/polyline/text/image/group. > o Path item, using SVG path specification strings. > o Embedded GTK+ widgets. > o Layers/stacking order with raise/lower functions. > o Cascading styles - line width/style/dashes, colors, fill patterns. > o Affine transformations for all items - rotations/scales/skews. > o Event handling - button/motion events, "pointer-events" property > like SVG. > o Grabs - support for pointer & keyboard grabs. > o Keyboard focus traversal. > o Accessibility (item title & description properties and hierarchy > stuff). > o Printing (output to a given cairo_t). > o Scrolling. > o Zooming. > o Item visibility setting - on/off/above zoom threshold. > o Simple animation. > o Scalable - support for thousands of items over a large canvas area. > o Support for different units - pixels/points/inches/millimeters. > o API docs. > o GooCanvasTable for layout of items (though this isn't in cvs yet). > > It is already pretty stable and mature (better than > GnomeCanvas/FooCanvas). Though the API is likely to change a little bit > more in future before stabilizing. > > I'd be interested to hear what things are needed for apps like Inkscape > that GooCanvas doesn't have. > > Damon This is quite impressive Damon. Bryce and Mental, what are your thoughts? Regardless if a collaboration happens or not, it is great to connect and get to know each other. Perhaps you would be interested in the upcoming libre graphics meeting conference in may 2007: http://lgm.scribus.net (temp site). Jon > -- Jon Phillips San Francisco, CA USA PH 510.499.0894 jon@...235... http://www.rejon.org MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto Jabber Chat: rejon@...896... IRC: rejon@...897...

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