On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 2:01 AM, Jasper van de Gronde <th.v.d.gronde@...528...> wrote:
On 2010-11-15 21:19, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology wrote:
Did somebody say "font hinting" and "inkscape" in the same voice?
Wow, please don't get rid of this feature -- I've been wanting something like it for a long time, and never thought to look at the "Save as" dialog.
Though I understand that it just adds UI confusion to have 2 ways to output PNGs.
You're right that for at leas some applications this kind of feature would be cool to have. However, at the moment (as far as I understand) this export method is far from feature complete (and wasn't really meant to be used for serious work). In combination with the UI confusion this leads to people getting stuck on exporting things that should be no problem exporting.
So it might be better to remove the option from the save as dialog for now (I'm thinking a hidden option if it's still needed for testing or something).
I'll say that I really don't think this is an issue for 0.48.1 personally. When the Save vs Export paradigm changes (much like it has in the GIMP) is the appropriate time to address this, provided nobody has the interest otherwise atm. I admit, it obviously both confuses some and benefits some, but for 0.48 we can chalk it up to a "known issue" imho.
What can I do to achieve font hinting via the bitmap-export dialogue? A simple checkbox would be very nice, and an export hint to say "always export this object with font-hinting/cairo". I'm a skilled programmer, but have no experience with the Inkscape core (and not heaps of spare time, but that's another story...). Where should I start?
Personally I'm really looking forward to the GSoC cairo branch (you can check it out from Launchpad to test it if you like), and I'd recommend seeing if that already does what you want by default. If not, it might be easier to modify it so that it does do what you want.
The Cairo branch is wonderful on many levels. It fixes our seam & pattern issues where gaps and other precision problems have plagued us forever. It's a bit faster and less resource hungry in my limited testing. There are also small other benefits here and there that are like "Yeah, that feels more right" too (feel in a visual sense). However, there are upstream fixes that need to take place for it to even be considered (gradient problems and raster image scaling problems are the big ones as far as I know). To me it's a shame that we can't get more extensive testing in trunk to potentially find other issues, but as things stand, the rule of "don't commit obviously broken stuff" is what prevents that. So yes, lets encourage testing of the branch but know that it just may tease people for now. :)
Cheers, Josh