Small comment regarding markers etc.

I use Inkscape quite a lot for technical sketches (mechanical engineering). I think that a pretty good start to make Inkscape even friendlier to engineers (snapping is already absolutely fantastic) would be to include some better default styles for markers and line styles.

I agree with Johan that one quite big problem with the markers is the way that they are currently implemented, but I believe that this is how SVG defines them so I don't know how much we can actually do about it. However, I made some custom arrows and line styles, which you can see here:

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5153/mechengtemplate.png

I think they look quite OK (IMHO much better than with the default markers and line styles), and I'd be glad to share them with other people. If there's some general agreement maybe they could even be part of default markers and line styles in Inkscape.

P.S.: PGF markers are based on arrows from PGF LaTeX package so there might be some problems with the name...

Regards,
Rok



On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Diederik van Lierop <mail@...1689...> wrote:
On 12/03/2010 04:27 PM, Daniel Krause wrote:
> I've put together my thoughts in this document.  I would love some
> feed back.
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1hSD8lW0Nv3Z3BHFXXg9vDsBI4U0CaWw1kPzMxdp2yRI
>

That's quite some ambition you're showing here, but you're more than
welcome!  There are two things I'd like to comment on:

Accuracy: that's indeed a problem, and has been for years. For example,
when entering values for a line or rectangle, these values will show
rounding errors after pressing enter. Any engineer would find this very
annoying, see for example

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168002
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/190557
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/210145

I'm not sure if the underlying cause is the same, but what could be part
of the problem is that Inkscape might apply the requested precision (as
specified in the preferences, on the SVG output tab) each time a value
is entered. If this is the case then I believe that this rounding should
only be applied once, when saving the file. It's only useful for
reducing the file size.

Dimensioning: the way the markers have been implemented currently is
very clumsy for engineering purposes. Markers are "centered" at their
node; this is OK for dots, but not OK for arrows which should have their
tip at the node instead. But it you would move the arrow's tip to the
desired position by creating a custom marker for this purpose, then you
would probably still have the dimension line running all the way to the
baseline. The dimension line should however probably stop short of the
baseline, otherwise the arrow's tip will not be visible.

> I'm a bit selfish,

No, that's what we developers call "scratching an itch"!

Regards,

Diederik

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