On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, William Swanson wrote:
I have a few friends who use Macs, and the X11 requirement seems to be a real tripping point for them when installing Inkscape. One friend figured it out and wrote up the following instructions:
"If you are running later than OS X Tiger 10.4 you will need to download the X11 software from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/x11formacosx.html. Or, if you already have OS X Tiger, you will need to insert your OS Disc #1 and run a Spotlight search in the CD for "X11User.pkg". Once you find and install that file, start another search for "X11SDK.pkg" and install that."
Actually, you only need the X11User.pkg, not the X11SDK.pkg, unless you want to compile Inkscape from source on OSX.
For Panther (10.3) users, you get X11 from the Apple website from the address mentioned above. For Tiger (10.4) users, its on the installation DVD. You don't need to search for it using spotlight though. It's as simple as clicking on the "Optional Installs" icon and selecting X11 from the list of Applications.
Inkscape.app tells you this when it starts and can't find X11, though I've just improved the wording to make the Panther/Tiger distinction clear. The dialog now says:
Failed to start X11
Inkscape.app requires Apple's X11, which is freely downloadable from Apple's website for Panther (10.3.x) users and available as an optional install from the installation DVD for Tiger (10.4.x) users.
Please install X11 and restart Inkscape.
| Get X11 for Panther | | OK |
"Once you have both of those installed (with the OS Disc inside your drive), take out the disc, run the inkscape.dmg install file, and X11 will pop up. It might take a minute or two the first time you try, but it will load."
The delay is caused by the fontconfig cache being updated. This should happen automatically and be slow the very first time it is run. Unfortunately we have had problems with it not always running, so Inkscape.app now prompts the user to run it explicitly the first time they use Inkscape on Tiger. This dialog now warns them that it may take some time to run:
Font caches may need to be updated
There is a problem on OS X 10.4.x where X11 installation does not always generate the necessary fontconfig caches. This can be corrected by running /usr/X11R6/bin/fc-cache as root.
This may take some time. Please do not close Inkscape.
| Ignore | | Run fc-cache |
Cheers, Michael