On 13/02/2012 05:54, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Valerie wrote:
Maybe Inkscape could send an announcement on the website asking for an OS X team, something in the lines of "As some of you know, Inkscape currently lacks a native OS X build. However, as Apple products have become more popular, more people are also asking for a native version of Inkscape. However, not all the developers use OS X, so if you are a developer familiar with OS X, we welcome you to join the Inkscape team to help produce native OS X builds."
Noted, thanks :)
However, do we have an up to date information on state of affiars with native GTK+ builds?
The bit-rotten and partially broken menubar integration code has been removed from trunk and the 0.48.x branch. Both branches now build out-of-the-box with GTK+/X11 or GTK+/Quartz backend (depending on how the rest of the dependencies was configured).
Inkscape built with the Quartz backend of gtk2 has still several user interface issues to be addressed in Inkscape's code (AFAICT): no global menubar integration for now, no Mac-alike keyboard shortcuts, no function keys either, slower startup time, slight delays in drawing updates on-canvas. OTOH the many crashes (e.g. when trying to save a new drawing or open a second dialog window) caused by the outdated broken code (ige-mac-menu.*) are gone now.
Major drawback of the "native" builds for a graphics application like Inkscape (or MyPaint or GIMP): gtk2/quartz (upstream) does not offer support for tablets beyond simple drawing device (no pressure sensitivity, etc.).
There is a blueprint for new packaging routines for Quartz builds, but that's still WIP and needs to have some details (like bundling the required python modules) addressed.
Notes: above comments are based on using MacPorts for the dependencies, and on my own experience with creating local builds of trunk with the Quartz-backend of gtk2 (32bit, Leopard) as well as with the X11-backend (Leopard, Lion). Possibly Jon has plans to move to jhbuild-based builds entirely for the Quartz-backend - personally I have not tried this build system [1] yet nor have I seen any packaging scripts or build instructions for that on the list here or the Inkscape wiki.
~suv
[1] http://live.gnome.org/GTK%2B/OSX/#Building.2C_Bundling.2C_and_Integrating