- Inkscape Devel - Inkscape Mailman

google SOC
by Greg Steffensen 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

Hi, I'm getting my application in really late, and Google isn't working for some reason. My name is Greg Steffensen, I'm an undergrad at the University of Richmond, and here's the text of my application: ------------------------------------ Toward an Implementation of an Intuitive Visual Mapping of Remote Vector Graphics Repository Access Interfaces OR Creating an openclipart.org <http://openclipart.org> GUI for Inkscape This is a proposal to implement an interface to the open clipart library ( openclipart.org <http://openclipart.org>) in Inkscape, as suggested by the "Create a Clipart Library interface" item on the Inkscape Summer of Code ideas page. I'll introduce myself, describe the technical design I'd implement, and list some remaining technical questions and ways a mentor might help. I'm a 22 year old computer-science major at the University of Richmond (I'll be a senior this year). I'm also a open-source geek. To date, my personal free software contributions are limited to a patch to add fixed-aspect resizing of elements to the Dia diagramming program (if you'd like me to send you the patch for inspection, let me know) and a wrapper to allow easy use of the IE7 javascript library within Zope. I build websites for fun and cash. I've tried many distros, but have been happily using Gentoo on my own box for about 6 months now. I'm originally a self-taught programmer (I started on PHP, but I haven't used it for years, promise!), and am now most of the way through my school's CS program, and am doing summer research on the security of distributed computing with one my professors currently; for that work, I'm writing a custom distributed computing framework that I'm GPLing, based on Python and Postgresql. My preferred language is Python, but I consider myself competent in Java, C and PHP too (but I haven't used PHP in years, promise!). I use GTK constantly, and as I mentioned, I've contributed to Dia, so I know how to get around gnu-ish code. Philosophically, I align myself with the FSF, though I don't consider myself a zealot. Blah, blah, blah. Let's talk turkey. I've coded up a quick prototype of this project in Python, more as a demonstration that I'll actually be able to do this than as a preview of the actual solution. I just threw it up at the site I'm using to host my distributed computing project for convenience; you can download it at https://developer.berlios.de/project/filelist.php?group_id=3863 (the tgz is listed under Inkscape, obviously). I didn't have time to recompile Inkscape with support for extensions (yeah, yeah, save your Gentoo jokes), but it should work like a normal Inkscape effect extension; it takes an inkscape svg doc on standard input, puts up a gui for the user to search for then select clipart from openclipart.org <http://openclipart.org>, then writes the doc back to standard output, with the clipart inserted. It should be installable with a bare-bones .inx file like any other extension. The gui is GTK, of course, via libglade. Its pretty minimalistic, but should show that this project will not be difficult. I currently see two ways to build this thing; either as an extension, as the prototype is, or integrated into the main codebase. The advantages of doing it as an extension are that its more likely to be robust (it won't affect existing code, and should be easier for the maintainers to review), it can (optionally) be developed in a dynamic language (resulting in faster development and making it easier for others to patch and extend), and it will be easier for other projects (such as Dia or Kivio) to take advantage of the code. The main advantages of integrating it into the codebase are performance, tighter UI integration (the interface can appear as a child window within Inkscape), and wider distribution (anyone that can run Dia can run it, as opposed to needing to have extensions enabled and Python installed as well). Currently, the extension route looks preferrable (performance is a total non-issue and I expect the vast majority of Inkscape users to have Python), but either approach should be doable without too much difficulty. Either way, the code will have to query the openclipart.org<http://openclipart.org>server somehow, download the clipart, and insert it into the document. And, either way, the most natural way to provide the basic UI seems to be through the new Iconview class in GTK 2.6. Ok, now I'll summarize the most obvious issues that appeared while building the prototype. The main one is that the openclipart.org<http://openclipart.org>website is clearly in need of a technical tuneup. The keyword search is barely functional, and performance is already iffy. If they'd be willing to let me, I'd prefer to actually work on the site myself. I love doing database-based websites, and I'd be able to add a cleaner REST-based API for this and other code to use. Hopefully, I could also add some search results caching to speed it up. Which brings me to the next issue; I don't want this fancy new feature to kill the openclipart folks' bandwidth and run up their hosting bill, so the most important new feature to add is probably a way to cache clipart data that past searches have already returned locally. This should be easy; it just requires a storage directory and an index file. Along those lines, I'd probably also try to get the openclipart people to give each clipart a unique id associated with their system; it appears that all clipart currently has unique filenames, but its hard to be certain since they organize it into hierarchical namespaces. Even if so, they probably ought to be giving the files a numerical id in addition to a filename anyway (assuming they aren't already; I didn't find any, but didn't search exhaustively). That would make caching past retrievals locally technically simpler, would make the most likely to be used clipart available even when network access is unavailable, and would significantly reduce the load on the servers. In terms of the UI, I'd like to give people the ability to search by keyword or browse by categories (I certainly am not advocating that they get rid of the hierarchical structure entirely). I'd also provide simple boolean searching logic (AND, OR, NOT), which could be implemented with or without server access (although its easier on the clients and server if its done on the server). Searching by clipart author is also desirable (though not in the default interface), to help people find work of similar visual styles. The UI should make basic metadata available (the clipart title as the icon caption, and all associated keywords visible as a tooltip, for example). A list of the most recently used clipart should be available for convenience. Clipboard copying and large previews of icons will be available through a right-click popup menu. To insert clipart into their document, I intend to support dragging-and-dropping (this should be possible regardless of whether the interface is implemented as an extension or in the main codebase) or through basic icon activation (double-clicking, etc). The conceptual questions I've currently noticed about the UI include where clipart should be inserted into the document, and at what size. Through a dragging-and-dropping interface, it may be possible to place clipart near the drop location, though I am not yet certain of this. Otherwise, placing it near the center of the document, with dimensions noticably less than those of the whole document, seem like reasonable defaults (placing it at the center will, of course, require arithmetic). Gnome HIG compliance is also intended. One feature that may be necessary is XSLT-based conversion of incoming clipart to a more standard Inkscape-friendly format. The prototype seems to already be running into problems in this area; attempting to drag the new clipart object on the canvas makes my Inkscape 0.41 freeze, unless you save the modified canvas as Inkscape SVG beforehand. It is probably solvable by modifying the clipart object to use an svg "g" object instead of "svg" or something like that. Cleanup like this will be one major area that mentors could advise me on. The other major bug that the prototype demonstrated seems to be caused by gnome svg rendering support (librsvg, I assume). Many of the openclipart.org<http://openclipart.org>files cause my Gnome 2.10 to freeze when rendered by my app or Nautilus; Inkscape renders them fine, so I'm assuming the problem is in the SVG renderer, and for now I'm working around it by displaying the PNG images that the openclipart.org<http://openclipart.org>website provides, instead of the actual svg (the actual SVG is inserted into the document, of course). I would also write a tutorial for this feature, and try to publicize any new APIs for the openclipart library that I developed. The things that a mentor would be able to help with include Gnome HIG advice (I have no familiarity with it), insight into the Inkscape renderer (to help solve any bugs related to merging two svg documents, as described above), and information on how to make the feature as widely available as possible. Anyway, sorry to go on for so long, but I figured more detail was better than less. I'm actually a reasonably fun guy, sorry about the stodgy tone of this app, just trying to give you the info you want. I'm really a free software nut, and have a lot of hope for its ability to kickstart the economies of the developing world. This feature in particular is one that, while not technically very interesting, would probably be REALLY appreciated by your users, particularly the less technically adept ones that appreciate conveniences; if there's a single feature on your list that is likely to increase Inkscape's user base, I think this is it. Thanks! -----------------

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Inkscape stats - June 15, 2005
by Bryce Harrington 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

Statistics May 15 Jun 1 Jun 15 ========== ====== ====== ====== Max Week's Rank on SourceForge: * 38 33 Total SF Page Views * 1,935,964 3,679,803 Total SF Downloads * 254,647 270,500 Total Freshmeat URL Hits 18,691 19,149 19,482 Total Freshmeat Subscriptions 181 183 186 Lines of Code in src/: 373,651 374,180 375,836 Code lines 259,984 260,236 261,201 Comment line 67,053 67,136 67,657 Blank 53,244 53,443 53,632 Lines of Docs in doc/: 26,848 27,790 27,792 Lines of content in website: 39,865 42,490 42,610 Size of the Inkscape wiki: 27,052 26,729 27,712 Bugs open/total: 208/1196 215/1223 199/1271 Features open/total: 442/ 712 453/ 728 466/746 Patches open/total: 11/ 221 11/ 230 18/247 CVS Commits (as per inkscape-cvs) 11,897 12,040 12,181 Inkscape-devel membership: 173 179 180 Inkscape-announce membership: 197 202 207 Inkscape-user membership: 242 248 257 Num Translations: 33 33 33 Ave Translation Ratio: 47.0 47.8 48.3 * - Statistics unavailable

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Google Summer Of Code Mentors
by John Cliff 15 Jun '05

15 Jun '05

Hi guys, sorry about the blank mail. With the proposal submissions now closed we need to think about who is willing to mentor for us as an organisation, and who is going to be on the tesam that review the proposals and rank them. Google are setting up a web app that will allow multiple people to simultaneously review the proposals, I'm basically asking whose willing to participate in this process? If those of you willing to mentor people would let me know that'd be great, and I'll get you access to the mentor list. Cheers John __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Google Summer Of Code Mentors
by John Cliff 15 Jun '05

15 Jun '05

Hi guys, __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html

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Fwd: [cairo] SVG Scene Toolkit update
by unknown＠example.com 14 Jun '05

14 Jun '05

----- Forwarded message from Liam Breck <svg@...808...> ----- Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:01:18 -0400 From: Liam Breck <svg@...808...> Reply-To: Liam Breck <svg@...808...> Subject: [cairo] SVG Scene Toolkit update To: cairo@...278... We've posted a new release of the... SVG Scene/Canvas Library for cairo & Pango http://networkimprov.net/airwrx/awscene.html This release deepens the SVG support with paths and shapes, and renders to a cairo Win32 surface. (Text and images are rendered via Win32 GDI at this point - Pango coming soon.) It includes an example app and a build of cairo for Windows. The SVG Scene toolkit enables applications to create views by constructing an SVG content model, or scene. (This functionality is also called a canvas.) The scene may be displayed simultaneously in multiple windows, possibly on separate clients. Rendering of the scene is done via cairo and Pango, which in turn support diverse environments, e.g. Windows, MacOS, Postscript, Xlib, etc. The scene may be manipulated by multiple processes, enabling compound documents. The SVG Scene library supports ownership of content model elements by widgets of high-level application frameworks, but is not tied in to such frameworks. The current release is a prototype that requires Windows 2000 or later. Full source code is included, licensed under GNU LGPL. Feedback requested! Liam Breck Network Improv Boston, Mass. USA _______________________________________________ cairo mailing list cairo@...278... http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo ----- End forwarded message -----

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question on Google's Summer of Code
by Jeon Jeongho 14 Jun '05

14 Jun '05

Hello. I'm interested in Google's Summer of Code. = resume starts = I am a little aged student of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University. I have worked IBM solution SI (for 1 year), P2P LEGAL! ;) multimedia streaming server development at Korean top portal NAVER (for 2 years), and intranet and internet board game developments as part-time job. On opensource, I'm leading document translation projects (apache httpd, linux gazette) and have made minor patches (on i18n). I can speak C++, but I'm mainly using C, Java, Perl, Python. = resume ends = I plan to make many presentation format (PDF, swf, SVG, XSL-FO, CSS for print, ...) creation/convert tool/library. There are many good opensource tools/libraries. But I'm concerned about i18n (especially CJK) and (from the latest spec) new feature support. Then I'll evaluate them each, and choose one or start from scratch. I learned Google's offer from the new, and found that Inkscape's vector format import/export project and my goal overlap. Please let me know what I can do for Inkscape, within summer or without just summer limit. +-----------------------------+----------------------------------------+ | Jeon, Jeong ho | http://www.myscan.org/~mahajjh/ | | electrical engineering, | mahajjh@...834... | | seoul national univ. | si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes :-) +-----------------------------+----------------------------------------+

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Fwd: Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor 3.2 released
by unknown＠example.com 14 Jun '05

14 Jun '05

----- Forwarded message from Tonny Kohar <tonny@...498...> ----- Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 14:09:57 +0700 From: Tonny Kohar <tonny@...498...> Reply-To: Tonny Kohar <tonny@...498...> Subject: Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor 3.2 released To: www-svg@...157... Kiyut just released Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor 3.2, a cross platform vector drawing application based on SVG. It features various tools for optimizing content creation, giving designers unsurpassed support for creativity. These tools include property palette, source editor, resources editor, SVG specific shape tools, transformation tools, and additional illustration tools. Sketsa uses SVG as a native file format. What's new: - Added Direct Selection Tool - Improved Lasso Tool (Direct Selection) - Improved Property Editor (added TSpan Property) - Improved Document Object Model - Improved Canvas Background (add Background Color) - Fixed Source Editor Find/Replace bug on Windows - Fixed Point Tool during Zoom - Other bug fixes Features: - SVG native file format - Produces clean SVG file without proprietary namespaces - Property palette - DOM Editor - Source Editor - Resource Editor: gradient and filter - SVG specific shape tools rect, ellipse, line, polyline, polygon - Additional illustration tools: Pencil tool for freeform shape and Pen tool for curve shape - Transformation tool: rotate, skew, scale, and translate - Basic Text Tool - Export or rasterize to JPEG and PNG - Plugins Support Check out the screenshot at http://www.kiyut.com/products/sketsa/screenshot.html Check out the web start at http://www.kiyut.com/products/sketsa/webstart/sketsa.jnlp For more information about Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor, please visit http://www.kiyut.com/products/sketsa/index.html ----- End forwarded message -----

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maybe some good ideas of vector work in QT4
by Gazal, Geraud (GE Healthcare) 14 Jun '05

14 Jun '05

Hi, if you have a few minutes, it may be interesting to get a look a this page : http://qt4.digitalfanatics.org/articles/rc1.html The vector deformations (and some other screenshots) are really nice. Regards, Matiphas

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Autopackage wiki page
by Mike Hearn 14 Jun '05

14 Jun '05

Hi guys, Aaron has added a wiki page CompilingAutopackage to describe what must be done. Remember, in much the same way that they can install anywhere, they can be built anywhere too. That means they can be improved anywhere! So, I'd like to ask all Inkscape developers to take a quick look at the specfile, and make sure it's as you see fit. The basic stuff is things like checking the dependencies are OK, more advanced stuff would be packaging plugins and extensions too. I'd really like to push the idea that like with Windows/Mac software, packaging is a part of the development process and should be considered as a feature rather than something that somebody does mechanically at the last minute. Let me know if there are any questions, and I'll hopefully be sending in some patches this summer. thanks -mike

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Mozilla SVG Blog and Call for Opinions
by Jon Phillips 13 Jun '05

13 Jun '05

Looks like the MOZ-SVG is calling for opinions in regards to issues posted on the MOZ-SVG blog...probably a good thing to weigh in on as developers and users: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/tor/ Jon -- Jon Phillips USA PH 510.499.0894 jon@...235... http://www.rejon.org Inkscape (http://inkscape.org) Open Clip Art Library (www.openclipart.org) CVS Book (http://cvsbook.ucsd.edu) Scale Journal (http://scale.ucsd.edu)

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